The player controls the crew of a castle on a floating island and must build walls and weapons around it to fight off pirates. Much like in its inspiration FTL: Faster Than Light, the crew must travel across several randomly generated locations on a map while the Big Bad, the Storm King, is on hot pursuit.
The game also contains a Macrocosm mode that is a Simulation Game unrelated to the main scenario. In it, the player must build and manage a city on a randomly-generated floating island. QR Codes are used for uploading high scores and Macrocosm island snapshots to the official website.
The ROM is freeware and can be downloaded either on its site
or on Github.
Not to be confused with the 2005 cartoon of the same name.
Skyland: Tropes
- Achievement System: The game has an internal system for achievements that also acts as the mechanism for unlocking new weapons, tools and decorations as they are completed.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: The Storm King's fortress is represented by a massive storm that steadily engulfs the map as you progress.
- After the End: The descriptions of some items mention a sunken surface world that's been destroyed by wars.
- Arrange Mode: Challenge mode contains a set of 13 fixed battle scenarios.
- Auto-Pilot Tutorial: The various tutorials play on their own as Milo explains the game's rules.
- Big Bad: The Storm King is the main antagonist in adventure mode.
- Boss Battle: Each adventure map ends on a mandatory fight. The Storm King acts as the Final Boss and can be encountered at any time by charging into his black storm. You have until map 4 to gather enough resources to fight him, as there is no exit point on that map.
- Cap: Most resources in Macrocosm mode cap at 99. The cap for stored food depends on how many granaries you have built.
- Character Customization: The player can draw their own 13x10 pixels flag that appears both in-game and in the online leaderboards.
- Clone Degeneration: Clones have less HP than the original crewmate and cannot heal. A clone of a clone will have even less health.
- Continuing is Painful: On beginner difficulty, you can rewind battles a couple of times upon losing. On normal and hard, losing in adventure mode means an immediate game over and sets you back to square one.
- Critical Status Buff: The Nemesis weapon normally deals 25 damage per shot. When it has 50% health, damage rises to 50. At 25% health, it will deal 100 damage.
- Deflector Shields: Force Fields must be placed in front of your weapons to protect them while allowing them to shoot through. They are vulnerable to ion projectiles.
- Easter Egg: Certain islands have QR Code blocks on them with messages coded in ROT-13. In some events you'll only have a few seconds to notice this and click on the block before an automatic cutscene triggers and ends the level.
- Endless Game: One mode is just one battle after another until you lose.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: The Radar tool allows you to view the inside of the opponent's castle and teleport your invaders to specific spots in it. It also has the passive effect of expanding your range in the map.
- Escort Mission: One sidequest covers the entire length of your island in lemon trees that must be delivered to a further point in the map. The longer your island and the more trees you keep intact, the better.
- Excuse Plot: Adventure mode simply involves the unseen protagonist travelling across the world and building a powerful enough island to fight the Storm King with. The only named crewmate is Milo in the tutorials and all the plot events are random.
- Fog of War: You can't see the inside of an enemy vessel unless you install a Radar.
- Funny Background Event: When you choose the Multiplayer option in the main menu, the paddles in the game of Pong that's running in the background change to angry faces for an instant.
- Game Within a Game:
- Macrocosm mode is an isometric city builder mode that has no ties to the main game aside from the floating island theme.
- You can unlock a game of Checkers that can be accessed from the extras menu.
- Played for Laughs with a cartridge for Skyland itself. Playing it just resets the game.
- Hard Mode Perks: Normal and Hard difficulties in Adventure mode have higher score multipliers.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Two weapons are very rare and can only be used once. One is the Splinter Rocket that splits into multiple projectiles on impact. The other is the Atomic Missile that causes a huge explosion and sets its surroundings on fire.
- Kill It with Fire: Certain weapons can set the enemy castle on fire, which causes Damage Over Time to multiple blocks at once.
- Level Goal: The first three maps in adventure mode have a spot on the far right side marked as the exit. The fourth map lacks this and forces the player to take on the Storm King. Reaching the end of map 4 for the first time is worth an achievement, though.
- Luck-Based Mission: If you get really lucky with the random events, you can have a castle strong enough to defeat the Storm King before map 4.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Macrocosm mode has no story.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Many of the enemy pirates faced in the game are goblins.
- Player Versus Player: Two players can play the normal mode against each other.
- Random Event: Upon moving to a neutral or uncharted island, you can find various kinds of good or bad events.
- Real-Time with Pause: You may freely pause the action during battles to survey the field and build blocks. Moving blocks gets a money penalty during battles though.
- Scoring Points: The game has a scoring system that is boosted on normal and hard difficulties. The longer you take to clear a level, the more points you lose in the calculation. Plundering blocks, defeating the Storm King and the money remaining after clearing the game are all worth bonus points. After clearing adventure mode, you can generate a QR Code to upload your score to the leaderboard on the game's website, complete with your custom flag for an icon.
- Sequel Hook: The final data cartridge draws ominous attention to the fact that the goblins have a citadel on the planet's surface.
- Shout-Out:
- Sky Pirate: The enemy crews in adventure mode are pirates on floating castles.
- Speaks in Binary: In one random event, a robot who speaks in binary offers a drone launcher to the player.
- Teleportation: Crews can invade the enemy castle via a teleportation device. A radar is required to choose an specific spot, or else it is set at random.
- Terrain Sculpting: The normal mode requires the player to build a fortress over an island and expand the island itself as needed. Macrocosm mode likewise is about building a city over a randomly-generated island while reshaping its terrain. Free play modes are available to let players build whatever they wish.
- This Is Gonna Suck: If you engage the Storm King before map 4, the narrator laments how you are not strong enough. With some luck, you might just have the resources to prove it wrong.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Enemy crews can surrender once they are disarmed. You can spare them and recruit one of their members or just finish them off for more money.
- Video Game Tutorial: Players are required to view the Introduction tutorial upon starting the game. After this, viewing any of the other guides is optional.
- Visible Silence: The only line uttered by the Storm King is "..."
- Wave-Motion Gun: The Decimator fires a barrage of wide shots after a long charge period.
- Weather-Control Machine: Unlocked by defeating the Storm King. It allows you to benefit more from weather-specific items like the Spark Cannon and the Salvage Arm.
- Weather of War: The Salvage Arm and Solar Cells only work in clear weather. The Spark Cannon only works during storms.
- A Winner Is You: After defeating the Storm King, the game displays a closing narration about how peace is back to the world and shows the adventure log one final time.
- World in the Sky: The game's world is made out of islands that float in the skies of a sunken world.
- You Require More Vespene Gas:
- In the normal game, you must manage both money and the energy generated by power rooms. If your hardware's power usage exceeds the limit, then all weapons stop working. A island collapses if all of its power rooms are destroyed.
- In Macrocosm, you are required to gather resources from various kinds of blocks to build houses and other constructs.
