Skyfall, milestone 4: the buy phase and the war room (June 2026)

June is when Skyfall became a multiplayer game with a metagame. Rounds still ended with a kill, but now every round break was a shop, and every shop had to work for four players at once.

Round Shards

Each round pays Round Shards, plus a bonus per kill. Between rounds the same catalogue is shown to everyone, and each player has their own cursor on the grid. Carts sync live, and a player locks in when they are done. The round starts when everyone is locked in, or when the timer runs out.

The arrows

The catalogue is where the arrow set grew: bramble arrows leave thorns that follow the level geometry, bombs blast around corners, drills pass through walls and can be replenished, bolts home in, feathers fly flat and fast, and toys only knock people back. The shield soaks one hit. Each arrow got its own sprite, a stuck animation and an ammo counter in the HUD. Thorns and blasts wrap around the map edges like the rest of the world.

A trap item was built and then removed from the buy phase; the disabled-item code went with it.

The War Room

Matches are set up in a lobby called the War Room. Players ready up, vote for a map on a grid with previews, and pick a first to 5, 7 or 10 rule. Each player’s vote shows as a stacked border. Clipboard support and a redesigned party code chip make it easy to invite friends from a private lobby.

Matches end, and then what

The end-of-match screen got a redesign with rematch voting and each player’s status. A pause menu lets you reach the options mid-match. The replay screen gained a scrubber and controls, so a kill can be inspected frame by frame.

The lesson

The buy phase is where Skyfall’s design became visible: every shop choice changes the next round’s geometry. It also forced the first serious look at Nakama performance, because four players buying at once is a lot of state to keep in sync. The fix was a more scalable simulation on the server.