Flying over from mobile back in 2021, we were impressed with how at home Sky: Children of the Light immediately felt on Switch. Now two years on from this port, thatgamecompany is still managing to add new content to the game, the most recent of which has just landed in the ver. 0.20.5 update.
This latest patch has all the usual bug fixes and improvements alongside the continuation of the in-game Season of Remembrance, fresh features in Shared Spaces and the reintroduction of the Days of Bloom event for 2023.
The full details of this update were shared in a recent thatgamecompany blog post, though we have assembled all of the information for you below. For a closer look at everything added to Sky: Children of the Light, read on:
Sky: Children of The Light ver. 0.20.5 (Released 23rd February 2023)
Season of Remembrance Continues
This update brings the second half of Season of Remembrance! Two more Spirits are preparing to share their memories when the remaining Seasonal Quests become available.
There will also be a Double Seasonal Light event! For a week from March 6th through 12th PST (UTC -8), Seasonal Candle locations in the daily realm will be doubled, so players will be able to forge an extra Seasonal Candle each day.
Seasonal Quests will remain available after Season of Remembrance ends, and so will the props in the Remembrance Guide’s Friendship Tree that can be unlocked with regular Candles or regular Hearts. For other Remembrance items though, including Ultimate Gifts, be sure to unlock emote expression upgrades and cosmetics from the Seasonal Spirits before they leave.
Season of Remembrance continues until 23:59 April 2nd PDT (UTC -7).
Shared Spaces Updates
We’ve been working on a Vault-sized batch of updates to Shared Spaces during Season of Remembrance, and 0.20.5 contains another set of improvements and fixes.
For starters, we’ve added:
- New Shared Spaces spells! Use these to place a Shared Space almost anywhere in the realms outside of Home—perhaps a cozy corner tucked away in your favorite spot in Hidden Forest, an inviting platform to manta-watch in Daylight Prairie, or your best artistic sculpture of a Dark Crab in Golden Wasteland.
- Updates to better connect Shared Spaces into your experience as you travel through the realms. You can now glimpse other players in a Shared Space before you choose whether to join them, and you can enter or exit a space more easily without visual effects cutting away from the scene around you.
- A higher cap on the total number of items that can be placed in a Shared Space attached to a shrine, without overloading the less powerful devices some players may use to play Sky.
- Numerous updates to Shared Spaces menus and UI. Place props the way you want more easily and with more precision, and adjust your Space more easily with an improved edit function. The meter indicating the item limit now depletes as you fill your Space, and some new particle effects add some pizazz when placing and removing props.
- In 0.20.0, we added a small set of props available with the Shared Spaces in Vault of Knowledge and Daylight Prairie. Now in 0.20.5, we’ve added unique sets to the other Shared Spaces shrines in the Hidden Forest’s Treehouse area and Wind Paths, Golden Wasteland’s Treasure Reef, and the Secret Area accessible from the Vault of Knowledge.
- Better visuals to indicate the “border” of a Space.
These are just some of the highlights for what’s been changed for Shared Spaces, so stop by a shrine or grab a spell to give the latest version a try. We can’t wait to see the new and creative ways players use them!
Days of Bloom
Days of Bloom is back for 2023! This year’s event is being expanded from two weeks to three—from 00:00 March 20th until 23:59 April 9th (PDT, UTC -7), join Spirits from the Season of Lightseekers to take in the transient beauty of this time of year.
Over four phases of this year’s event, rains arrive in the desert of Golden Wasteland’s Forgotten Ark, gradually transforming an arid hillside into a vibrant meadow:
- Phase 1: For several days, rains will occasionally fall, and a Lightseekers Spirit will cast spells to help new sprouts emerge from the sand.
- Phase 2: Grasses will grow for several more days, and a trail of petals appears on the wind for players to glide upon.
- Phase 3: From March 27th through April 6th, buds emerge across the field and then blossom into full bloom. The trail of petals will emit Light to collect every couple hours.
- During this phase, players have the chance to join a large group of Sky children, using a feature that players who were part of the AURORA Concert may remember. Meditate at a shrine near the Lightseekers Spirits to join hundreds, even thousands of other players gathered in the Forgotten Ark.
- However, every couple hours players who meditate at this shrine will be transformed into a butterfly and become part of a great gathering of these Light Creatures (and collect Light that is available only while in butterfly form).
- Phase 4: In the last few days, the flowers reach the end of their bloom and eventually fade out, as the meadow bids farewell to the event.
Players interested in keepsakes of this year’s Days of Bloom can choose from several different items available for purchase or for in-game currency.
Talk to the Event Guide in Forgotten Ark to unlock these:
- Bloom Butterfly Fountain: 80 Candles
- Place this item close to butterflies, and it might attract one or two for a short visit.
- Red Bloom Cape: 110 Candles
New Bloom IAP can be found in the in-game shop:
- Bloom Gardening Tunic: $9.99 (all prices USD)
- Bloom Picnic Basket: $19.99
- The Picnic Basket functions as a chat table and comes with a Gift Season Pass to give to friends. If using this item near butterflies, it just might attract a fluttering visitor or two.
The biggest Days of Bloom updates are in the Forgotten Ark, but familiar fixtures from previous years will return, too. Relax under pink or lavender trees in Home and the social hub of Hidden Forest. Within the first two weeks of the event, the flowers on these two trees will bud, blossom, and then eventually fall (and share Light with players who gather to see them before those blossoms fade entirely).
For players who prefer to collect a Days of Bloom souvenir from previous years, head over to the Bloom Guides from 2021 and 2022 who will be in Home and the Hidden Forest social hub. Older items available for in-game currency can be unlocked from their Friendship Trees:
- Pink Bloom Cape: 70 Candles
- Purple Bloom Cape: 105 Candles
- Pink Bloom Hair: 20 Hearts
Near each of these past Bloom Guides, peek into a small box to see returning IAP items. Each functions as a chat table:
- Pink Bloom Tea Set: $19.99 (includes 35 regular Candles)
- Chat becomes available once a Sky child has finished their cup of tea
- Purple Bloom Tea Set: $19.99 (includes 35 regular Candles)
As always, free spell versions of all new and returning Days of Bloom items are available in Home and in the Spell Shop in the Forgotten Ark so that all players have a chance to enjoy them. Days of Bloom is available to all players who have progressed to at least Golden Wasteland.
Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving Time will take effect at 2:00 am Pacific Time on Sunday March 12th, moving clocks ahead an hour. Time notation for events in Sky will change from UTC -8 to UTC -7. If you are in a region that does not observe this time change, after March 12th daily reset will occur an hour earlier for you.
Note that due to technical limitations affecting the servers, after reset on March 13th, the clusters of Season Candles and Treasure Candles from March 12th will remain in their level for one additional hour while the clusters of Season and Treasure Candles for the 13th spawn in their respective level. The total number of Season and Treasure Candles available in the game returns to normal at 1:00 am March 13th PDT. We appreciate your understanding.
Improvements and Bug Fixes in this update include:
Highlights:
- Potential fix for the Wind Paths bug that insisted on bending the fabric of spacetime.
- Fixed Light not appearing in certain sequences of Eye of Eden.
- Fixed a bug hiding the reflection on the ground while in the room at the end of Eye of Eden and in the Ancient Memory of a Shard Eruption.
- Props placed in an area are now no longer removed when the player equips another prop.
Season
- To better match lore within Sky, the appearance of Shared Memory candles has been updated to more closely resemble crystals. The total number of visible Shared Memory spells placed by others in an area has also been reduced.
- Tweaks to Ultimate Gift prop, including some recharge (as originally mentioned in the 0.20.0 patch notes).
- Avatar no longer sinks into terrain when using emotes from the Tiptoeing Tea Brewer or Pleading Child.
- Blue particles from Season's Ultimate Gift prop are no longer visible while watching cutscenes.
- Shared Memory playbacks now properly show avatars' tiptoeing animation.
- Unfroze avatar legs that wouldn't move when doing emotes after taking a sip from the tea kettle prop.
- Art updates in seasonal area.
Audio
- Fixed audio distortion issues with vocals of “Queendom” in the AURORA Concert becoming desynchronized.
General Fixes & Improvements
- [PlayStation] Fixes for Brighter Together, Wing Master, Where to Next?, and Teddy Bear achievements, including saving achievement progress properly between game loads.
- [PlayStation] Fixed a bug impacting some consoles where the music sheet legend did not correctly indicate the Circle button as “enter.”
- [PlayStation] [Switch] “Clear All” option for props in Shared Spaces now works properly on consoles.
- [Switch] A player leading and holding hands with a friend no longer flies toward the ground after tapping on the friend’s avatar while in mid-flight.
- "Make a new acquaintance" daily quest now completes right after meeting the acquaintance, rather than after they leave the area.
- Fixed a bug causing Spirit memory fragments to be collected instantly if a player stood on the fragment spawn location.
- Several white Candles in the Hidden Forest temple no longer erroneously give Light when lit.
- Fixed slow Social Light at Vault of Knoweldge’s "waterfall" and Valley of Triumph’s hot springs still appearing despite its intended replacement with Treasure Candles.
- Added hint text if a player attempts to break handhold with someone they're leading while flying.
- Wings of AURORA cape now has the ability to teleport the player wearing it to the AURORA concert mode of the Coliseum from anywhere in the game, as originally intended.
- Dark Crabs will no longer be able to unflip other crabs while they’re being held by a player.
- Fix for a bug that could cause Dark Plants to not appear properly (e.g. those that appeared on the turtle in Daylight Prairie’s Sanctuary) for players in certain situations.
- Avatar no longer puts their candle away when another player leaves the level area.
- Performance optimizations for shadow creatures in Trial of Fire.
- Translation corrections and improvements.
- Crash fixes.
Graphics & Visuals
- Applied eco-friendly code fertilizer and other improvements to spruce up the in-game grass.
- To address potential health and safety violations, and questionable construction quality, we patched a hole at the top of the stairs in Hermit Valley. Stay safe, Sky kids!
- Fixed a bug that dropped frame rates drastically low when going from Wind Paths to Vault of Knowledge’s Starlight Desert.
- Animation fixes for the Waving Bellmaker in Daylight Prairie twitching during their cutscene.
- Lookout Scout Spirit animation now plays properly at the end of their quest.
- Players now properly see other players’ stances.
- When placing a new snack on the Campfire Snack Kit prop, the avatar's torso no longer flips.
- Fixed snack being displaced on the stick when avatars that are using the huge spell use the Campfire Snack Kit.
- Fix for other avatars not looking at the player's avatar when they should, and to other players looking in the wrong direction while standing on objects like props.
- Pickaxe now properly placed on the "No thanks" Spirit in Isle of Dawn.
- Numerous fixes and polish for visual effects in Vault of Knowledge as well as Treasure Reef and other areas of Golden Wasteland.
- Visual improvements to shadow that the regular umbrella prop casts when worn on an avatar.
- Numerous small fixes for clipping. For instance, Spirits like Cheering Spectator and Stealthy Survivor clipping with scenery, the first Dark Dragon in Golden Wasteland’s Graveyard clipping into column, and various decals clipping into the terrain such as at the end of Eye of Eden.
- Dug out the small candle pedestals in the Village area of Daylight Prairie that were partially buried in the terrain.
- Improvements for appearance of several older props, such as the spotlight from Season of Assembly, the Star Collector's lamp from Season of the Little Prince, and the Rose Ultimate Gift (to preserve its lighting in caves).
- Fixed murals in cave near the entrance of Hidden Forest disappearing at certain camera angles.
- Visual polish for a bug affecting part of the orange To The Love outfit from the Season of AURORA.
- Visual improvements for hammock and brazier props.