A message from the team

Thank you for supporting Helskate in Early Access! <3 <3 <3 It’s a week since launch and it’s been motivating and heart-warming to see so many players vibing with what we made. We know there are a lot of things to improve and we appreciate you supporting us while we work hard on fixes and improvements (roadmap here). Speaking of which…

Cutscenes & Levels First, we’ve implemented the cutscenes that were missing from the initial build and removed the temporary text. There’s a lot of story, systems, and mechanics that didn’t quite make the launch build and we’re keen to share that with you all soon.

On Unfinished Content Why did we ship with unfinished content? Due to many factors, we set a launch date and pushed hard to hit it. This is not ideal and as a result some things didn’t get completed. However, we figured it would be better to have temporary content there rather than simply hide it.

Helskate is a true Early Access game. We want to make big changes and to iterate fast, especially on the levels and mechanics. It’s MUCH easier to modify and improve levels that have rough or incomplete art than it is to rework levels with finished art. But we’ve heard you - seeing dev textures was off putting for players. In the short term, we’re improving the rough first pass art for the level process. And, of course, final art is being worked on with more to come soon.

Beta Branch Live! With all of this in mind, the Beta branch is now live. We will be updating this branch often with the latest fixes and features. Go here and do this to switch to the Beta branch:

We’ll push updates to the main game when they’re stable and tested.

A Small Team One thing which we haven’t shared clearly is the size of the team. It’s quite small. We work with lots of amazing freelancers but there are relatively few full time developers. So, thanks so much for your patience as we work hard to complete features and implement your feedback. As always, we read through all your reviews and community posts and the Helskate discord is a great place to get in touch.

Thanks again!

<3 The Phantom Coast Team

CHANGE LIST (2024-02-22)

Improvements -Added missing cutscenes and removed temporary text -Replaced Temp title screen with improved temp title screen -Crafting materials drop tuning -Added button in pause menu to return to the hub -Added button in pause menu to reset the player to the start of the level

Level Fixes -Replaced Checker dev textures -Improved lighting in prototype tiles -Collision/Grindline improvements

Bug Fixes -Improved collision reliability -McTwist animation now playing -Improved blending between skating and tricks

Join us on Discord!