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Skyward
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About the game
Amy has spent her whole life in caves, where her village has lived for generations. The old stories speak of a crystal far above that grants a single wish, and she decides to go and see it for herself. Skyward is that climb: a platformer where the way forward is always up.
The ascent is split into three areas, the caverns, the jungle and the islands in the sky. Each one is pieced together from random sections every time you play, so the route is never quite the same. Amy can double jump, and she carries spears: they defeat the creatures in her way, and a spear that sticks in a wall becomes a small ledge to stand on. If she is caught, the area starts over from its beginning, but areas you have already finished stay finished.
Reach the top and the game shows how many times Amy was caught and how long the climb took, so there is always a faster run to aim for.
Playing it here
Skyward is a CHIP-8 program. CHIP-8 is a simple virtual machine from 1977, created for hobby computers like the COSMAC VIP, and people still write new games for it. This one targets XO-CHIP, a modern extension with extra colours, more memory and better sound, and was made for Octojam 3, a yearly CHIP-8 game jam. It runs here in the Octo emulator, with the speed and colours chosen for it in the archive.
Click Play, then press 1 on the keyboard to start; it works while the title is still scrolling in, too. F2 saves the state of the emulator at any moment and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works once the game is running: the D-pad walks, jumps (up) and throws spears (down).
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | start |
| A and D, or left and right arrows | walk left and right |
| W or up arrow | jump; press again in mid-air to double jump |
| S or down arrow | throw a spear in the direction Amy faces |
| F2 / F4 | save / load the state |
A few things worth knowing
Let go between jumps. The double jump only fires on a fresh press, so release W after the first jump and tap it again near the top of the arc.
Spears are also stairs. Throw a spear into a wall that is too high to reach and jump onto it. Only three spears can be on screen at once, so the oldest ones make way for new throws.
Checkpoints are per area. Getting caught sends you back to the start of the current area, not the whole game. The death counter at the end is only for bragging.
Credits and licence
Skyward was created by Tann and Jackie Kircher. It runs here in Octo, the CHIP-8 development tool and emulator by John Earnest (MIT licence). The game is kept in the Chip8 Community Archive, which places everything in it in the public domain under CC0 1.0. The licence text is linked from this page.