Blog Posts

Skadi Tower Devlog 1

Hello, friend!

It’s been a while. I’m currently working on a mobile puzzle game called Skadi Tower with Chapin Boyer. We’ve decided to put Helicopter Tennis development on hold while we focus on this new (but actually, older) project. Our goal is to share regular updates on our development here though please forgive me in advance if we miss a beat or two while chipping away in the code mines.

About the Game

Skadi Tower is a mobile-first puzzle game about clearing towers of ice, floor-by-floor, step-by-step. To quote a friend – “It’s about the next floor, not the one you’re on.”

It’s about the next floor, not the one you’re on

Ideation & Prototypes

The first prototype was created back in 2019 for my game programming class at the NYU Game Center. It was inspired by one of my favourite Pokémon puzzles - Sootopolis Gym’s ice tile puzzles from Hoenn (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald). There’s something deliciously satisfying about walking across and cracking the entire pane of ice, tile by tile.

The original prototype

After simmering on the back burner for about 2 years, I picked up the project again and created the first 3D prototype version in 2021. The original 3D controls allowed the player to move along all three axes in 3D space but I couldn’t figure out a good solution for making all the tiles in the level visually readable for players. It took many more iterations to get the camera and controls to a place that I felt landed with playtesters.

Playing around with the camera angles

Early this year, Chapin & I decided to collaborate on the game together - and I’m thrilled about the progress we’ve made since that time.

• we made over 100+ levels
• we added a collectible system
• we added save functionality for level completion and collected collectibles
• we implemented the main menu UI (multiple Figma mockups later)
• we updated a bunch of back-end systems (the grid manager, level loader, player controller, amongst others)

v0.2.7a

Preview Builds & Updates

This devlog post was meant as an intro to the game - we’ll be writing more posts sharing our active development. We’ve also set up a community Discord server where we plan to share hot-off-the-presses updates and preview builds of the game.

If you would like to playtest the latest version of the game and are open to giving us feedback on it, please join us on our Discord server.

Thanks for reading!