Super Sky Knights | Shamus Donaldson Portfolio

Super Sky Knights

Platform:

Mobile - App Store, Google Play

Engine:

Unity

Language:

Team Size:

Overview

Super Sky Knights is the sequel to my first game, Sky Knights. With this project, I set out to expand the core gameplay mechanics while also updating the visual style from 8-bit to 16-bit pixel art. The title’s “Super” prefix is a direct nod to the Super Nintendo era, referencing games like Super Mario Bros. that reimagined earlier titles with expanded features and visual upgrades.

The player still controls an ostrich-riding knight, tapping the screen to ascend and releasing to descend, while carefully lining up their lance to strike airborne enemies. However, this game introduces structured progression and enemy variety in place of an endless high-score chase.

Super Sky Knights is divided into 12 levels, grouped into 3 themed sections:

Each section has its own pool of enemies, mechanics, and visual identity.
Section 1 features returning vulture-riding knights from the original game.
Section 2 introduces dragon-riding Vikings and Valkyries as new enemy types.
Section 3 introduces magic carpet–riding genies, each with unique abilities such as launching fireballs, phasing in and out of visibility, and conjuring magical shields.

Gameplay Structure

Levels 1–3 in each section require the player to defend a tower by defeating a set number of enemies.
- The tower loses health when enemies hit it.
- The player loses the level if the tower is destroyed or they’re hit by an enemy.
- Enemy spawn rates and difficulty scale with each level.
Level 4 in each section removes the tower and shifts into a side-scrolling format, where the player flies to the right, dodging or defeating enemies until reaching and destroying an enemy tower to complete the section.

Project Design Goals

For Super Sky Knights, my primary goal was to expand and improve upon every aspect of the original game while continuing to develop my Unity skills. Specifically, I focused on:

Visual & Artistic Upgrades
- Transitioned from 8-bit to 16-bit pixel art, and hand-drew a larger, more diverse cast of characters.
- Supplemented art with assets from the Unity Asset Store for more detailed elements like towers and skyboxes.
Level Progression System
- Created a main menu and level select system where levels unlock sequentially after completion.
Gameplay & Systems Enhancements
- Improved physics handling and flight controls for tighter, more responsive gameplay.
- Added health bars
- Developed a modular enemy script to assign different stats like fly speed and damage to each enemy type.
- Expanded my use of the Unity animation system to create unique animations for all characters.

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Post-Mortem

Super Sky Knights was an important step in my development as a game designer. It was both a spiritual sequel and a personal challenge: to take everything I learned from Sky Knights and build a bigger, more polished, and feature-rich game.

What Went Well

Clear Vision and Thematic Consistency: The “Super” branding helped focus my design decisions, from the 16-bit art style to the expanded level structure, and gave the project a strong, nostalgic identity.
Improved Technical Execution: I successfully implemented a level progression system, modular enemy scripting, and animation-driven character behavior, all of which pushed me to become more confident in Unity's systems.
Gameplay Variety: Designing different enemy types for each section—especially the genies with abilities like phasing and shielding—added a meaningful layer of combat strategy and player decision-making.

Challenges

Balancing Difficulty Across Levels: With the game’s increasing complexity, tuning spawn rates, enemy behavior, and flight controls for fairness became difficult without extensive player feedback. Some levels leaned unintentionally too easy or too punishing.
Time Management: As a solo developer handling design, art, coding, and testing, the scope of the game stretched timelines. Polish on certain aspects (like UI transitions or sound effects) took a backseat late in production.
Animation Overhead: Committing to unique animations for all characters was a great learning experience but significantly increased production time. If I had scoped more tightly, I could have allocated more time for visual effects and feedback polish.

What I’d Do Differently

Integrate playtesting earlier and more frequently, especially to adjust level difficulty and pacing before finalizing content.
Spend more time up front creating design templates and modular systems for repeated behaviors (like damage handling or flight AI) to avoid rewrites.
Allocate time for better onboarding, such as tutorials or in-game tips, to help first-time players adapt to the evolving mechanics across levels.

Final Thoughts

Despite its challenges, Super Sky Knights was a project I’m proud of. It helped me push beyond my first game, solidify my technical skills, and create a fuller, more thoughtful player experience.