Skygard Arena Preview

Set in a fantasy world with five unique factions and an ancient crown pitting them apart, Skygard Arena is a tactical turn-based strategy game that already holds a lot of charm in its Early Access state. Whether you want to play through a solo campaign, battle chess-like AI in Arena mode, or utilise your best strategies against others in PvP, there’s a lot to try out during Skygard’s journey to its 1.0 launch.

The campaign begins with one of your first Champions, Na Jima, preparing for Skygard’s Tournament of the Ancients, a competition in which contestants battle one another to win the Crown of the Ancients. Being a talented, young fighter from the Clouds Clans, Na Jima was chosen to represent her faction and dons her clan’s sacred bow in battle. I originally thought the tournament would occupy a bulk of the adventure, but was pleasantly surprised to see that the story expands into an even grander romp through Skygard, as you’ll embark on a chase for a thief, meet many friends and foes, and venture into dangerous territories.

Through each mission, the picture of a large, complex world started coming together. That said, the way characters went about discussing inter-faction politics and other lore did get confusing, doing so in a way that already assumes you’re familiar with this world (kind of like the splurge of vocabulary in a fantasy novel’s opening). The core conflict and goal never get lost in the mix, but much of the current dialogue does read like an early draft. Even so, the writing quality doesn’t interfere with the enjoyable gameplay.

Currently, the campaign includes 16 individual missions, the latest of which was just introduced in the Christmas update. Each one requires a good amount of trial and error to refine your strategy, as the enemies, win conditions, and map designs are always different. Sometimes I’ll have to capture three pillars in a limited amount of rounds with enemies closing in from all angles, and other times, I’ll be tasked with protecting a single character, succumbing to defeat if they die, even if my party is still standing. Regarding abilities and party comps, I’ve found that what works for one mission most likely won’t work for the next one, so I’m constantly adjusting. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm of “just one more mission,” as every battle offers a fresh challenge.

Early levels teach you how to navigate the grid-based, small-scale arena, as characters have a limited amount of movement points to spend, and you’ll need to position yourself based on your and the enemy’s line of sight while taking the range and direction of your abilities into account. Many (but not all) attacks are dealt out in a straight line, so that’s definitely something to consider when moving your party. Most maps are pretty tight when it comes to space, making every step count.

There are a finite amount of actions a Champion can choose to take during battle: one primary ability, two secondary abilities, and an ultimate. While your primary is your main damage-dealing attack, the secondary ones have more variety, sometimes offering an additional attack and other times giving you extra utility. Usually, you can only use an action once per turn, so figuring out an optimal order will ensure you don’t waste them. A basic example would be one of Na Jima’s secondary abilities called Might of the Hawk, which makes her next attack a critical strike, so casting that before using her primary action would be ideal. As you progress through a battle, you’ll pick up orbs of energy that give you ultimate charges, or a character might have a passive to generate those charges in other ways; once you have a full gauge, you’ll be able to dish out a powerful ability, such as giving a party member multiple buffs or raining down an AoE attack on your enemies.

Before a battle, you can customise your Champions in two ways: setting their Persona and choosing their passive item. Personas allow you to try out a different playstyle for the character, and each has two for you to choose from. For instance, Aerica is a ranged fighter, and she can be a Sharpshooter or an Artificer, the first being a more damage-focused build and the latter offering more support in the form of barriers and haste buffs. Then you have Artifacts, which are items that give a character a little extra edge in battle, such as Na Jima’s Mist Bracelet, which offers her haste when an enemy’s hp falls below 50% or Jorn’s Mace of Vengeance, which allows him to generate ultimate charges when a foe attacks him; you can only select one per character, and sometimes it’s a hard choice because they all offer unique value to a mission. Honestly, I’ve yet to find a piece of equipment that wouldn’t matter in a fight. If you’re hoping for a lot of variety in building your party and trying out different strategies, Skygard already offers a lot of possibilities.

In the current Early Access build, there are nine Champions to unlock throughout the campaign, including a master assassin, a 500-year-old legendary guardian, and many others. With their diverse abilities, items, and playstyles, building your party of three for each mission is both a delight and sometimes a headscratcher, as some characters work better together than others. Additionally, it’s important to note that the progress you make in the campaign is split from the PvP Arena mode, so you’ll have to unlock Champions, items, and Personas again by playing matches.

Speaking of Arena, you can choose to play Skirmishes against AI, allowing you to try out new comps against moderately difficult enemies or harder chess-like enemies that take more time to plan out their turns. When you’re ready for PvP, you can start a friendly match, inviting a friend to go against you or head into matchmaking to climb the leaderboard. I did notice that once you start a queue, the cancel button doesn’t actually cancel the matchmaking process, so if you need to back out for any reason, you’ll have to exit the game entirely (at least, until that’s fixed).

At the moment, Skygard Arena does have some issues with frequent crashing and frozen loading screens, at least in my case. Mainly, I had a problem with the game failing to reload a mission after getting defeated, especially if I chose to stick with my current team rather than heading back to camp to pick a new party. I also noticed the game would be prone to freezing if I took my time in the teambuilding screen, but if I sped through picking my characters, it’d most likely take me to the mission with no problem. Other times, the game would crash in between turns in a battle, or a character would deal an attack and then disappear completely while the sound effect played on a loop — those were much rarer than the frozen loading screens, though. I will note that any crashing or freezing only took place in the campaign; the PvP mode seemed much more stable.

Gemelli Games roadmap for Skygard Arena is eyeing a Fall 2025 1.0 launch. New champions, Arenas, items, and Steam Deck verification are all on the horizon during its Early Access period. If you’re looking for a charming turn-based tactics game, be sure to check it out!