Sky: Children of the Light and Laya’s Horizon are two video game titles which centre around flying as a core movement mechanic for traversing landscapes. They both feature different core goals – for example, the aesthetic of Sky: Children of the Light is more focused around social multiplayer interaction and stamp collection, while the aesthetic of Laya’s Horizon is that of challenge and mastery. A comparison of both their flying mechanics and corresponding level design does yield some useful insights for reference, nonetheless, if one is interested in drawing inspiration from these two games for another game featuring flight mechanics.
The gameplay of Laya’s Horizon has greater emphasis on flight than Sky: Children of the Light, and is much more useful to learn from in this regard. In Laya’s Horizon the mechanics and level design accentuate the fluidity of flight, while in Sky, flight is treated as secondary and often a mechanic to be constrained in service of narrative, rather than truly highlighted.
Four main points are worth studying:
- The mechanics in Laya’s Horizon are framed around flight, whereas Sky contains mechanics which are largely superfluous and detract from the the flying experience
- The quests in Laya’s Horizon are varied and heavily revolve around flying, compared to the repetitive grinding of Sky: Children of the Light.
- The level design of Laya’s Horizon encourages you to remain in the air for as long as possible, whereas in Sky: Children of the Light, you’re constantly bound to the ground.
- The collectibles in Laya’s Horizon modify your flight style compared to the purely cosmetic and price-gouged items in Sky: Children of the Light
Mechanics
In Laya’s Horizon, the root mechanics are centred on flight and enhance its experience, while in Sky, running on the ground is a much more frequent action than flying.
Boundless upwards flight poses a challenge, because if the player can continuously fly upwards over a level, they may encounter nothing rather than the intended experience. It is interesting to compare how the two games address this.
Sky tries to constrain this by limiting how much flight power you have.
Laya’s Horizon provides more natural limits by only granting you extra boost whenever you are close to a surface. When you are high, you eventually fall if you run out of boost power.
Laya’s Horizon lets you control flight by adjusting Laya’s arms. This allows for fluidity and expressiveness, rather than the awkward toggle that Sky has for switching between horizontal or vertical priority.
Another problem for Sky is that it’s designed as a multiplayer game. It’s very easy for players to lose sight of each other if they’re flying at speed and separately. So Sky has a hold-hand mechanic to avoid players losing each other, and it also doesn’t allow for navigation as fast as Laya’s Horizon.
Sky also has mechanics that detract from the essence of flight and encourage you to break momentum stay on the ground. Lighting candles requires players to be still, and mostly upon the ground. When you are on the ground, you can also slide on slopes. Spirit memories which require players to drag a piece of light also deliberately require a slow place and is best suited for the ground. There is even swimming.
(In fact Sky is probably not as easily ideal for a multiplayer game as Journey, where players move slowly and gravitate to each other more easily – the presence of another player close by is more important for flying, because you move so slow on the ground. In Journey, the limit on flight is useful for keeping players together towards the ground where there is a 2D plane of movement, since there is three-dimensional direction of motion in the sky. Also as a result, Sky has a lot more passive multiplayer when flying – players can’t do much when being led by another player.
Additionally, Sky has shoe-horned multiplayer features like requiring other players to open locked doors. These often require you to stand still, which breaks the momentum of movement and flight. As a result, people often try to bypass these areas without helping others.)
In Laya’s Horizon, by comparison, you’re encouraged to maintain flight momentum for as long as possible. When you crash into the ground, you are given one more chance before your flight run ends. This discourages players from landing on the ground for as long as possible.
Quests
Laya’s Horizon features four main types of quests which explore different aspects of flying:
- research challenges – challenges with the capes
- races – speed at varying difficulties
- spark runs – accuracy
- follow – mixture of speed and accuracy
- Dashwing captures
Meanwhile Sky has players doing the same quests looping over and over, which mostly require you to remember specific locations in the game. The races in Sky are either sliding races, which is the first one you experience, or the flying race which hardly requires you to move at all.
Laya’s Horizon also relies on the judicious placement of sparks, blue triples, trampolines and balloons to encourage the player on paths that keep them up in the air.
Level Design
A challenge with designing levels for a game featuring flight is giving freedom while also giving people something to explore, rather than emptiness.
There are very few places in Sky that actually take advantage of the vertical dimension. What this means is that in a game called Sky, you actually spend a lot of time on the ground. Not only this, but there are parts of the game with features that drain your wings without you flying.
Laya’s Horizon addresses this by having levels that slope downwards. You can see much of what is in front of you, while trying to maintain your height in the air.
The obstacles in Laya’s Horizon are peppered across the landscape and there probably aren’t routes as distinct as in Sonic games for example (which often have distinct high, low and sometimes even medium routes). But there’s constantly something to engage your flight skills.
Collectibles
In Laya’s Horizon, the collectibles largely aid in the experience of flight.
- The Burst cape and Overload cape modify your speed
- The Glide cape
- The Nimble cape
- The Bird cape
The other charms increase or modify your capacity to boost, allowing your preferred flight style to modulate your bursts of speed.
In Sky, the clothing items are purely cosmetic and what’s more, they are extremely price-gouged. The other props may have features but they hardly accentuate the experience of flight at all – there are musical instruments and props designed for seated arrangement.
Lack of guidance for daily quests
Laya’s Horizon quests tie into flight
Capes change flight style rather than just being cosmetic
Lack of vertical dimension in level design
Encouraged to avoid hitting the ground
Also in Laya’s Horizon, you’re discouraged from flying up into nothing as the level design slopes downward
In Sky you’re constantly on the ground
Sky has isle of prophecy
Has Sky been consumed by in-app purchases?
The subscription gave Snowman creative freedom
The business model inevitably affects gameplay design
In Sky, most of your time is spent on acquiring currency
Laya’s Horizon has no persistent currency
Laya’s Horizon races and other challenges emphasise flight – speed and accuracy