Aaand we’re back!

We are thrilled to share the release of our expanded Combat Arena Alpha (CAA) update—a true milestone for Kindred Fates. While the previous version of the CAA contained a roster of Kinfolk and arenas to choose from inside of the main menu, this update transforms the arena experience into something far bigger, introducing open-world integration. All of our systems for single player open world used in our story mode now exist in this update, as the CAA itself is a smaller piece inside of the main game. Even the arenas themselves are now locations embedded within the open world! While this update does not provide single player missions or allow for free exploration of the open world just yet, it does however provide many gameplay features that exists in the single player. After years of hard work, we’re excited to finally give players a glimpse of the game’s broader vision!

This initial update has mostly been stripped down to match in parity with the previous CAA so that we may better test the latest changes and optimizations to our gameplay and netcode. However, we will continue to release new content in following updates as we roll out towards the Beta release in early 2025.

Reaching this point has been no easy feat. As a small indie studio, we’ve poured our lives into striving to deliver our dream game. This milestone is a testament to our passion for Kindred Fates, but we can’t do it alone. With your support—sharing the game, joining the Combat Arena Alpha, or spreading the word—we can continue bringing that dream to life. Thank you for standing with us as we push the game closer and closer to it’s full potential.

Below are the patch notes for the Alpha Combat Arena version 3.0

• You can now play as a human character with a randomized appearance. Appearance customization will be included in a future patch.
  
  
• A brief movement tutorial has been added.
  
  
• A small campsite has been added that acts as a hub between PvP and PvAI matches. This area will continue to be updated with new features in future patches.
  
  
• Practice matches can now be played against the AI by interacting with the binoculars at the campsite ruins. There are three difficulty levels to choose from.
  
  
• Team loadouts can now be customized at the green tent found near the lit campfire in your campsite. You can also add or remove Kinfolk from your party here.
  
  
• The start menu in now available. By pressing TAB on keyboard or the options button on a controller, you can now access a menu that allows you to quickly navigate between the following UI pages:
  
  
  • Inventory
    
    
  • Team
    
    
  • Missions
    
    
  • Network
    
    
  • Help
    
    
  • Settings
  
  
• From the Team menu, you can now inspect individual party members to give them items to hold, view their info, check their stats, adjust their equipped abilities, and even set them as followers!
  
  
• From the Network menu you can now queue up for public or private online PvP matches. Private matches have also been updated to allow for easier arena selection.
  
  
• The new arenas “Grand Chime” and “Echo” have been added to the game.
  
  
• Major improvements to character responsiveness when playing online.
  
  
• Lock-on has been re-enabled with several major improvements. This feature massively improves the feel of melee combat and can make it easier to land certain ranged attacks. When aiming a skill shot or spawn attack while locked on, you can also move your mouse or the right control stick to lead your shots.
  
  
• Improved support for a wide variety of monitor resolutions and aspect ratios.
  
  
• Many many performance improvements.

• Many major improvements have been made to the game’s lighting and post processing effects.
  
  
• Custom lighting and weather profiles have been added to each arena.
  
  
• Embear now has dynamic smoke!
  
  
• The title screen page has been updated with new visual effects.
  
  
• The game now features volumetric clouds and fog.
  
  
• Ability icons now have dynamic animations for different types of abilities.
  
  
• There are now icons to represent your Kinfolk’s buffs and debuffs!
  
  
  
  SETTINGS CHANGES
  
  
• Added quality settings "VeryHigh, High, Medium, Low, and VeryLow". These settings effect graphical quality and FPS. While the game defaults to "Medium" with a good mixture of performance and visual quality, players are free to raise or lower their quality setting to better suit their PC.
  
  
• Added a "RenderScale" slider. This setting essentially provides a slider with a tradeoff between smoother gameplay and clearer visuals, by increasing or reducing the resolution that the game is rendered at.
  
  
• FPS and RAM metrics visualizers have been added to the settings page.
  
  
  
  NEW KINFOLK
  
  
  Awburn
  
  A short and relatively nimble Fire type Kinfolk with well rounded stats overall. Awburn trades in access to some of the most explosive Fire type abilities for a smaller frame and access to some Light type abilities such as Angelic Ray. This is a very accessible Kinfolk for anyone to pick up and play.
  
  
  Tadalon
  
  A slippery, combo heavy, Water type Kinfolk who excels at initiating engagements. Tadalon favors a melee-centric playstyle, with access to a wide variety of attacks that can be chained or reactivated for different effects. This Kinfolk has an above average skill floor and a high skill ceiling.
  
  
  
  
  NEW ABILITIES
  
  
  Ignite
  
  Fire type homing attack. The user produces a ball of eerie fire that slowly moves toward a selected target. The flame explodes on impact, dealing a small amount of damage and burning all enemies hit by the attack.
  
  
  Water Jab
  
  Water type melee attack. The user jabs up to three times in succession with water type melee attacks.
  
  
  Tide Mark
  
  Water type skill shot & dash attack. The user launches a glowing ball of water, damaging and marking any enemy it hits for a few seconds. After striking the enemy, the ability can be reactivated to dash toward them, dealing additional damage on contact.
  
  
  Bane Bubble
  
  Water type cone attack. The user spews a stream of bubbles that linger in the air, damaging and stacking marks on the enemy each time they make contact with a bubble. Striking an enemy marked by Bane Bubble consumes the marks and deals bonus damage based on the number of marks consumed.
  
  
  Ripple
  
  Water type self spawn attack. The user emits a rippling aura around themself, damaging enemies and revealing their position behind obstacles. If an enemy is hit, the attack may be reactivated to splash an area in front of the user, dealing additional damage to enemies struck by it.
  
  
  Uppercut
  
  Air type melee attack. The user strikes a target, sending them high into the air.
  
  
  Leaf Barrage
  
  Gaia type skill shot. The user launches a series of sharp leaves in a target direction. If all of the leaves strike an enemy, the user’s special attack is raised.
  
  
  Strobe
  
  Light type self spawn attack. The user emits three rapid flashes of bright light from their body, damaging and stunning all enemies within the radius.
  
  
  Soul Siphon
  
  Dark type cone attack. Inflicts Fear and damages targets caught inside its grip and heals the user for a percentage of the damage dealt.
  
  
  Shockwave
  
  Null type self spawn attack. The user emits a shockwave from their body, damaging and briefly stunning nearby enemies.
  
  
  Reckless Charge
  
  Null type dash attack. The user strikes with a reckless attack, dealing massive damage but harms themself in the process.
  
  
  Anti-Air
  
  Null type homing & dash attack. The user locks on to a non-grounded enemy, dashes to them, stops their momentum, and slams them to the ground. The target will lose a large amount of stamina as well.
  
  
  
  BALANCE CHANGES
  
  
  KINFOLK
  
  
  • Kinfolk can generally act much sooner after using most attacks.
    
    
  • Attack animation speeds have been adjusted across the board.
    
    
  • All Kinfolk base movement speeds, sprint speeds, and stamina consumption speeds have been adjusted across the board.
    
    
  • Most melee attacks now have some amount of forward momentum.
    
    
  • Re-enabled auto landing when flying and touching the ground.
    
    
  • Stamina is no longer consumed in flight while descending.
    
    
  • Kinfolk entering the combat arena are now set to level 30 (down from 50).
    
    
  • Embear: Rest has been added to their ability pool.
    
    
  • Slyphur: Dark Pulse has been added to their ability pool.
    
    
  • Skulken: Rush has been added to their ability pool.
    
    
  • Lumala: Roar has been added to their ability pool.
    
    
    
    ABILITIES
    
    
    • Many attacks have had their damage and cooldown times adjusted.
      
      
    • Swipes: The time between each attack has be dramatically shortened.
      
      
    • Fire Volley: This attack now uses regenerating charges.
      
      
    • Fire Burst: This attack now uses regenerating charges.
      
      
    • Light Burst: This attack now uses regenerating charges.
      
      
    • Gaia Volley: This attack now uses regenerating charges.
      
      
    • Dark Volley: This attack now uses regenerating charges.
    
    
  • Slash: This ability now has a longer initial wind up time, followed by faster reactivation times. It has higher than average forward momentum but no longer causes stagger.
    
    
    
    RECENT BUG FIXES
    
    
    • Fixed a bug with controllers where tapping an ability button too quickly would not fire the ability.
      
      
    • Fixed a bug where dig could teleport the player up to 100 meters upwards when popping out of the ground.
      
      
    • Fixed a bug where flying characters would play their jump animation when they first landed.
      
      
    • Fixed controllers not being able to end the dig ability early, forcing the player to wait for the ability to time out.
      
      
    • Fixed a bug where the aim reticles could sometimes go missing and not return until restarting the game.
    
    
    
    KNOWN ISSUES
    
    
    • Glyphs in the tutorial books are wrong.
      
      
    • When swapping Kinfolk the user will sometimes teleport a short distance.
      
      
    • Sometimes the human character will lose their clothing after summoning or recalling.
      
      
    • Inbox/Friends List are non-functional until a subsequent patch. Friends list shows example text that can't currently be interacted with.
      
      
    • Only one person will appear in "Latest Active Players" regardless of how many are online.
      
      
    • Some Kinfolk have abilities equipped by default that don't exist in their known move pool.
      
      
    • Avieon's box portrait has a visual bug.
      
      
    • Dodging isn't disabled during a death animation.
      
      
    • Starting items in the player's inventory can be deleted by feeding them to a Kinfolk (Restart the game without saving if you lose them).
      
      
    • Moving a Kinfolk in the box menu that has an item equipped will play the item pickup sound.
      
      
    • Avieon can have hurtbox visualizers appear on their talons.
      
      
    • Cone attacks veer slightly to the right of their intended direction if your camera is offset.
      
      
    • Leaving matchmaking or crashing while connecting to an opponent can leave both of your games in a bad state, where restart is required.

• One of the most important things we’ve been focusing on for the next Alpha update is ensuring players are logged in to their Skymill account as soon as they launch the game. Earlier today we verified that this is working as intended for both old and new players alike. From here we will be conducting final testing with a small number of players outside the dev team to ensure everything is running smoothly. If all goes well, the next public Combat Arena update will be releasing shortly afterward.
  
  
• On the stability side, we fixed a problem that was causing the game to use up memory unnecessarily every time it ran certain background tasks. This issue was making some of our QA testers' computers constantly crash when they switched to another program or played the game for more than 15 minutes.
  
  
• In anticipation of the Alpha update, we’ve been working hard on optimization to ensure that this update will run well on PCs of various different specs.
  
  
  • As a part of this effort, we’ve reduced the RAM usage from 16 GB down to under 8 GB. We also added quality settings: Very High, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low. These settings affect the graphics quality and FPS. While the game defaults to "Medium" with a good mixture of performance and visual quality, players are free to raise or lower their quality setting to better suit their PC. We are seeing the lower quality settings giving more than a 2x boost in FPS over the high quality settings.
    
    
  • We also added a "RenderScale" slider in the display settings. This setting essentially provides a slider with a tradeoff between smoother gameplay and clearer visuals, increasing or reducing the resolution that the game is rendered at. Adjusting quality levels automatically adjusts render scale, but the render scale value can be further adjusted if desired to customize your display settings.
    
    
  • Quality settings and render scale also play a role in memory consumption of the game. We recommend to keep the quality setting and render scale very low if you have 8GB of RAM. 16 GB RAM PCs should have an easier time, but if the game crashes, it may be because the PC ran out of memory due to other applications being open at the same time. Closing other applications or reducing the quality setting in-game may help alleviate this.
  
  
• We’ve made various improvements to our UI. It now supports ultra wide and 16x10 resolution monitors, dynamically scaling to fit the given screen resolution.
  
  
  • We improved our ability info page UI so that the process of reading ability descriptions is much smoother.
    
    
  • We added controller support for much of our UI. There is still some work left to be done on this front, but we are very nearly approaching full controller support for all of our UI.
    
    
  • We added some prompts in our UI to help make it easier to navigate and use.
    
    
  • We fixed a bug where option dropdowns in our UI would appear lopsided.
  
  
• We have successfully implemented offline local multiplayer (AKA, LAN battles/LAN co-op). This allowed us to demo PvP between two PCs at GalaxyCon without the use of internet. While local PvP will most likely not make an appearance in the alpha or beta, we are very pleased to have it working, and it opens up some fun options for the base game to potentially allow for offline co-op, trading, or PvP with friends while connected via a cable or private WiFi. Local multiplayer also has the benefit of having essentially zero network delay, which is great for local tournaments!
  
  
  
• We’ve re-enabled auto landing when flying and touching the ground. Avieon players rejoice!
  
  
• Bug Fixes:
  
  
  • Fixed a bug with controllers where tapping an ability button too quickly would not fire the ability.
    
    
  • Fixed a bug where Dig could teleport the player up to 100 meters upwards when popping out of the ground.
    
    
  • Fixed a bug where flying characters would play their jump animation when they first landed.
    
    
  • Fixed controllers not being able to end the Dig ability early, forcing the player to wait for the ability to time out.
    
    
  • Fixed a bug where the aim reticles could sometimes go missing and not return until restarting the game.

• We had so much fun at GalaxyCon Columbus! Thank you to everyone who came to visit us and try out the game. These past few months, it’s been really special getting to show the game in person to fans new and old, and to see them get excited about what we’re doing. This will be our last convention for a while, but we’re hoping to do more next year! In the meantime, here’s a short video of our booth at GalaxyCon.

The full lexicon can be found here[www.skymillstudios.com].

• Client: A player’s computer when playing in multiplayer. All the clients connect to a server to make sure the same thing is happening on everyone’s computers.
  
  
• FPS (Frames per second): The number of frames that play per second, determining the smoothness of motion.
  
  
• Host: (In P2P multiplayer) The player whose device manages the game world and sends data to the other player, making sure everyone is in sync. Also referred to as the server.
  
  
• Remote Client: (aka Remote Player) Any player whose data is being networked across the server to simulate a character's actions. In P2P multiplayer, this is the opposite of the host.
  
  
• UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.

Thanks for stopping by! The team will be taking some time off for the holidays, so we’ll see you for our next newsletter in January. We wish everyone a happy holiday season and can’t wait to show you more in the new year!