Black Skies

About the Game

Black Skies is a grounded, narrative survival experience set in the frozen aftermath of a global collapse.

The world goes dark in an instant. Power dies, radios fall silent, and the temperature plunges. What follows is an eerie stillness that lets the cold move in and swallow everything.

In this silence, you navigate a vast, snow-choked wilderness where shelter, warmth, and awareness mean survival. The environment is not a backdrop. It is the threat. It erodes, punishes, and occasionally offers brief moments of safety.

Black Skies focuses on atmosphere, isolation, and the slow tension of realizing the world will not fix itself. 

 The story unfolds through the landscape, through Walker’s inner thoughts, and through the fragments left behind in a world that stopped without warning.

This is a survival experience built on realism, restraint, and quiet danger.

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Who Is John Walker?

Walker is a professional. Calm, disciplined, and trained to survive places most people couldn’t even stand to breathe in. 

Before the collapse he served as a federal forest ranger in the Teton wilderness, a job that demands quiet competence and absolute self-reliance.

He doesn’t brag. He doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t need to. The way he moves, the way he observes, the way he reacts when things go bad tells you everything you need to know: this isn’t his first time staring down danger and walking straight into it.

He carries himself like a man who has lived through loss and learned to lock the wounds where no one else can see them. Stoic, steady, unshakable. The cold doesn’t rattle him. The dark doesn’t slow him. When the world goes quiet, Walker gets sharper.

You’re not playing a blank slate. You’re stepping into the boots of someone who already knows how to survive - someone whose instincts were carved by experience he rarely talks about. He’s not invincible, but he is prepared.

In Black Skies, you aren’t becoming a survivor. You’re remembering you already are one.

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Core Experience

This early version focuses on atmosphere, tone, and survival.
Explore the valley. Read the quiet. Endure the cold.

The story unfolds through Walker’s inner voice and the world around him. No lectures. No handholding. Just clean observations from a man trained to notice everything and waste nothing.

The landscape does not speak, but it reacts. A flicker of light, a broken branch, a distant sound in the trees. Every detail carries weight if you are paying attention. Black Skies is a slow-burn experience built on tension, solitude, and the instincts of someone who knows how to stay alive when the world stops answering back.

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Advanced Physiology Simulation

Black Skies now uses a full human biology model under the hood.

Your metabolism is real now. You can see it. You can feel it. You can hear it.

Your warmth, hunger, thirst, stamina, and heart rate all interact like a real body fighting to survive the cold.

Wind strips heat through convection.
Cold raises your heart rate.
Burning calories warms you but drains hydration.
Running heats you up but exhausts you.
Starvation, dehydration, and stress create real survival spirals.

This is not a set of timers.
This is your body reacting to the world.

Heart rate is now the signal of your metabolic engine, driving every other system in your body.

Clothing layers matter. Shelter matters. Fire matters.
Your decisions matter.

Note: The new system is fully implemented but intentionally tuned to be forgiving in this Early Access build. You will not freeze to death instantly while balance is refined.

Every step you take affects your biological stability inside a living environment that pushes back.

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Vision

The goal of Black Skies is to build a world where every element has meaning. Nothing is arbitrary. Every object, structure, and detail will serve survival or narrative purpose.

This prologue lays the foundation for a larger, evolving world that will grow through future updates: new regions, new missions, and new layers of survival built around logic and realism.

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About Voiceovers and Ethical AI

The voice performances in Black Skies were created using ElevenLabs with the licensed voice of Bob Carter, a professional voice actor who has chosen to offer his voice through this platform as part of his own creative business.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1115778/

Every line in the game was generated under that agreement, and Bob Carter is paid directly for each use of his voice. This approach allowed me to work with a real actor while keeping development sustainable for a solo project.

While generative AI is a complex and often controversial topic, this project was built around a simple rule: the artist must be credited, respected, and compensated. The voice you hear in Black Skies is not a replacement for a performer - it is the performer, working through new tools.

This is the only use of Generative AI in this project.

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Core Systems and Expansion Path

Black Skies grows outward from three core systems that define your body, your mind, and your decision making. Everything below expands those systems and the world they exist in.

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Core Systems

Physiology System
A full human biology simulation. Heat, hunger, hydration, stamina, and heart rate all interact like a real body fighting the cold. Future updates will deepen accuracy, tune difficulty, and expand how the environment affects your internal stability.

Mental System
A psychological model that tracks stress, fear, trauma, and emotional resilience. Upcoming updates add new breakdown states, long term mental scars, recovery paths, and more ways the world can push back on Walker's mind.

Cognition System
Walker’s tactical and analytical thinking made playable. Future updates turn situational awareness into a real mechanic with dynamic problem solving, priority selection, and a non linear objective structure guided by his expertise.

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Simulation and World Expansion

Resolution Engine
A deep simulation layer that treats the world as evolving configurations. Player actions ripple outward and the world reacts logically. Updates expand long range consequences, environmental dependencies, and dynamic world behavior.

Survival Expansion
More tools, shelters, hazards, and environmental logic. Everything added serves a real survival problem. No filler. No busywork.

Wildlife
Predators, prey, and natural behavior that fits the valley. Wildlife introduces real risk, real food sources, and new strategic considerations.

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Character and Interaction

Avatar Improvements
Better animations, better physical responses to cold, fatigue, and stress. Walker’s body will reflect his condition more clearly as the systems deepen.

Shelters and Structures
More places to take refuge. Each one designed around realistic survival logic and environmental integration.

Weather and Hazards
Wind, blizzards, exposure pockets, microclimates, and environmental dangers that expand the world’s realism and difficulty.

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Narrative and Story Progression

Non Linear Story Structure
Future updates remove the straight line. Quests become optional threads that unlock through exploration, timing, and player choice. Walker identifies objectives based on what he sees and what he knows, not because the game tells him to.

Environmental Storytelling
More world objects, structures, wrecks, and clues that reveal what happened. The story is something you uncover, not something handed to you.

Psychological and Emotional Depth
As survival stabilizes, Walker’s inner world begins to surface. His voice, his memories, and the weight he carries gain more presence through updates.

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Developer Notes

This Early Access release is the beginning of Black Skies, a contained, self-sufficient prologue that establishes the tone, systems, and philosophy behind the world.

My focus now is depth, not breadth. Every object, location, and mechanic will serve a purpose, either to sustain survival or to reveal something about the world and Walker's place in it. Nothing will exist just for show. As the game grows, your ability to interact with and shape your environment will expand alongside the narrative itself.

Future updates will move toward greater player agency and non-linear storytelling, where choices, timing, and exploration define your experience. This prologue is the foundation of a larger, evolving world: new regions, new missions, and new survival challenges that remain true to the setting and its logic.

Buying in now directly supports ongoing development. It helps me continue refining this framework into a cohesive, living experience where every addition feels earned, and every moment in the cold matters.

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Official Discord Server

 https://discord.gg/qqESN9kZha