Skies of Fight

A celebration of sky-fighting arcade action!

If you haven't played Skies of Fight yet, go do that before you read any further!

All you need is five minutes, a gamepad or mouse, audio you can hear, and the courage to fight for the skies. Download it, play it, then come back here.

Read on

The Music

First and foremost, Skies of Fight is an homage to a killer song from the conquering warlords of 2030's War of Annihilation: The Tiberian Sons. They're incredible, and if you enjoyed this game in the slightest, please go check out their Bandcamp and hear the other excellence they've crafted. As of this writing (mid-September 2026), They have a new album in the works, which has about a dozen new takes on bangers from the Ace Combat series and a classic from Top Gun.

The game exists because of the song. Over countless listens, the entire ride fleshed itself out, and so much of it was inspired by the creativity and musicality of the piece. The swelling of the chorus is an obvious point for the ascendant transformation, but things like The Rival, for example, came about because of that hit in the music that demanded a surprise of some type.

They released their original version in 2016, and a remaster in 2022. When you play the game, what you hear is the original version first, but at the crescendo where the transformation takes place, it switches to the remaster, which has a bit more choral/vocal fullness to it. It's a tiny difference but it seemed an appropriate shift that matched the moment.

The Tiberian Sons The Tiberian Sons

Victory Gals

It's a little hard to find now, but the artist Glen Angus put together an excellent set of paintings called Victory Gals, inspired by the nose cone art on fighting planes across the 20th century.

He passed in 2007, and it is difficult to find a solid collection of the Victory Gals set but the image links to a pretty good one. His website has long been claimed by the rising tide of internet. Gangus and I weren't particularly close, but we did work at the same studio for a while, and he was quite well liked. The image here on the side has been my phone wallpaper for years and years.

Boomer Gaming Magic

We had it so good, with the arcades and the... yeah alright. I'm a child of arcades, more on that later, and while the primary inspiration is After Burner (both of them), I'd be remiss not to include Space Harrier. You probably knew about those two, but did you ever get to play Wing War?

Dogfighting is such a hard gameplay problem. You'd think that such a cool and cinematic sort of dance would lend to awesome gameplay, but too often it's just flying in loops trying to get behind someone trying to get behind you. Wing War had a clever take on it: players were forced into Attack and Guard modes, letting them take turns flexing their flying skills within boundaries that kept things focused on the fun moments.

The top down shmup section uses the background from the opening level of 194X. It just worked for the game's setting. You really can't go all in on a game about fighter jets and battle angels without giving a nod to the shmup genre.

The Joy of Surprise

It's really rare these days to genuinely surprise players. Part of that is because of how well games are marketed. Sure, the final story beats are kept secret, but we often want players to know about every system and every character so they can get excited about them early on.

When kid-you walked into an arcade and saw a flashy new game, you didn't always know what was going to happen. You had some idea, you could watch an attract screen, even read the instructions if you were a big nerd, and a quarter or two later you're on the ride. More often than not, exciting stuff happened that you didn't quite understand, but you got the hang of it eventually. The best games were exciting even if you were losing, because cool stuff was going on and surely with one more continue you could get over the hurdle...

I wanted to try and recreate that mix of confusion, joy, and determination. You think you know what's going to happen, but then you realize you didn't, oh wait you really didn't, but when Wave 4 rolls in, you, a veteran of three minutes, are now ready to finish the fight.

Character Style

I'm not an artist. I wanted to build as much of this game by myself as I could, but I wasn't afraid to purchase assets for the 3D sections that I would have no chance of building on my own. But I needed the pilot's face to be on display, it was important to have her be more than a faceless helmet. Those are the bad guys in Top Gun, after all.

The pop art style of Roy Lichtenstein had my target for a while. Bright colors, and only a handful of them, but you can always clearly tell what sort of emotion is on the character's face. Now, Roy's women were usually crying over lost love, not what I was aiming for. And I can't really draw for shit, but I wanted to give it a shot. A dear friend, who is an actual artist, advised me that I should start by just tracing. I looked up comic book fighter pilots, both the classic stuff and the modern(ish) styles, and did what I could do.

My pilot needed a rival, and for a long time I had imagined that rival as male. But when it came down to it, I wasn't able to sell the ideal of rival, as opposed to enemy, with what I was able to draw. That, and it was much easier to use the same angel for both characters! I did read a lot of Archie Comics as a kid so, yeah, once Betty v Veronica landed in my head, it wasn't going to get out. I know my own renderings didn't really do them justice.

Ten Years and Five Days

This game has been in my head since I first heard the song, and I think that 2016. I would listen to it over and over, building it up a bit like a music video, constantly discovering new bits of musicality that led themselves to interesting gameplay twists and turns. The biggest ah-ha moment was when I realized that the game could slide between genres, which just added to the idea that it would be a celebration of sky fighting arcade action.

Eventually, 2017, I spun up a Unity project, put in about six good hours, and then set it aside. I can't, I couldn't, I shouldn't. I have real work to do. This is a silly thing. Shouldn't I be working on a thing I can sell? Contract work? Project Carey, following my pattern of naming projects after game show hosts, would have to wait. I would touch the game maybe once a year, usually on crisp autumn evenings, poke at this or that, hit the asset store, and then say no. I can't. I couldn't. I shouldn't.

After ten years of that, I did. Normally Labor Day weekend is spent at a specific venue in California for a yearly get together. This year, I couldn't attend. It took a little thinking but I decided if I couldn't go to the thing I wanted to go to, I would use the time to finally get Carey out the door. I started over in Godot, brought in what I could, and got to work. Five kinda sleepless days, a Thursday to Tuesday mad sprint, with some Wednesday morning time to dot the T's and cross the I's. Here we are. I am a bit in disbelief, even now, writing this.

Thank you

I'm genuinely glad to have made this game, it's been sitting in my head for so long. Thank you for enjoying it, and for reading this far. Most of the things I make are about crushing monsters and taking their stuff, and if you want to see more of that, keep in touch.