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Maverick Skies is coming to iPhone and Android
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
Maverick Skies is coming to phones. Next to Steam and the Epic Games Store on macOS, Windows and Linux, you'll find it on iPhone and Android, on the App Store and Google Play.
Made for two thumbs
This isn't the PC game squeezed onto a small screen. We rebuilt the controls for touch:
Your left thumb flies. Put it down anywhere on the left side of the screen and the stick is there.
Your right thumb fights.DASH sits right under it, with your abilities on an arc around it. BOOST, DRIFT and FOCUS wait in a row beside them.
Every hint speaks touch. Prompts name the button you tap, not a key you don't have.
You play in landscape, and bigger text is on by default so you can read your cards mid-fight. The game keeps clear of your phone's camera and rounded corners, so nothing important hides under them.
Fly with friends
Online co-op and versus (1v1 duels and 2v2 teams) come to phones too. Couch co-op stays on computers: one phone screen only has room for one pilot's thumbs.
When can I play it?
We'll tell you as soon as there's a date. In the meantime, tell us what phone you play on in our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Versus: duels and 2v2
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
Online co-op lets you fly *with* a friend. Versus lets you fly against them. It comes in two modes: a 1v1 duel and 2v2 teams.
How a match works
Everyone starts a fresh run with their own ship, modules and weapons. First you build: fight your own swarm, level up, pick your cards. Then the hunt starts.
A ring called the Hush keeps the match moving. It closes in stages, and flying outside it drains your hull. A match has four parts:
Build: the ring is wide and you grow your ship.
Contact: the ring closes and you start running into each other.
Showdown: the ring is tight. This is where it's decided.
Collapse: a last minute while the ring closes to nothing.
The host picks how long a match lasts: Blitz (5 minutes), Rapid (8) or Classic (12).
Nothing pauses
Level-up cards slide in at the side of the screen, and you pick while you fly. Nobody waits for anybody.
Little things that matter
Pressure waves. Kill an elite and the other side gets a pack of enemies on top of theirs.
No peeking. You can't see your opponent's weapons, modules or numbers, only their ship and its hull bar. Now and then the edge of your screen shows roughly where they are.
Open or Fair. Play with everything you've unlocked (Open), or even out the stat upgrades so it's skill against skill (Fair).
2v2 teams
Teammates start side by side and play like co-op: one team level, a card each at every level-up, and you bring your partner back by flying close. No friendly fire. Empty seats are filled by bots, so you can practise alone against three of them.
What's next
For now you play with friends: host a game and share the room code or a Steam invite. Ranked play comes later. You'll climb by Ace Points from CADET to MAVERICK, and a match-finding queue arrives once the game is on the stores.
Versus is part of the full game, not the free demo.
We've talked about online co-op before, mostly about fixing lag. We never actually told you what it is. So here it is: Maverick Skies has online co-op. Two pilots, two computers, one swarm.
Getting together
From the title, open MULTIPLAYER and press HOST A GAME. Give your game a name if you like.
Your friend finds it under OPEN GAMES, or types the six-letter room code you send them (something like K4Q 9TX). Steam friends can join straight from your invite.
On the same network? Your game shows up on its own.
Pick your ship, press READY, and the host launches. There's a chat in the lobby too, with quick lines for pads (*Ready!*, *Wait for me.*, *Good game!*).
Flying together
Your ship, your save. Each of you flies your own ship with your own upgrades, and everything you earn goes into your own save. The host's save decides the planet and the story.
One hand, a card each. You level up together, and every level-up deals one shared hand to pick from.
Teamwork pays. Focus fire on the same target and your hits land harder. Dash past your partner and you cover them for a second. Fill the LINK meter and dash together to fire the Link Strike, a gold beam between your two ships.
Nobody gets left behind. When a ship goes down, the other pilot flies close to bring it back.
When the connection drops
Nobody gets kicked out. If your friend's connection drops, an autopilot flies their ship until they're back. If the host drops, the game hands hosting to the other computer, and you pick up from the start of the sector.
No servers, no subscriptions
The game runs on your two computers. There's no server of ours in between and nothing to sign up for. A Mac and a Windows PC play together, as long as both have the same version.
When can I play it?
Online co-op is part of the full game. The free demo stays single-player and couch co-op. We're testing Steam invites between computers now, and Epic comes right after.
Mining used to be something your drones did while you got on with the fight. This week we made it something you play.
Your pilot goes out
Stop inside an ore field's ring and, after a moment, you fly out of the ship in your own pod. Your pilot cuts ore one tier above your drones, so the grey rocks you couldn't touch now read PILOT in gold. Move and you fly home along the tether (the ship is slow until you dock), or dash to snap straight back. Leave the pod alone too long in a loud field and something comes for it. In co-op, each pilot has their own pod, and two pods on one rock cut together.
The cut and the break
Seams. The rock your pilot cuts lights up a seam now and then: tap Interact as it burns for a clean cut.
Cracks you can hear. The rock jolts and the beam climbs in pitch as it nears the break.
Chain reactions. Big breaks crack the rocks around them, and the chain counts up: CHAIN ×5.
Scrap to catch. Breaks throw chunks out; fly through them before they fade.
Every ore does something
Cobalt pulls loose scrap aboard, crystal splits your cut into the next rock, iridium knocks enemies back, and void ore freezes everything nearby for a moment.
Things to find
Rare cores glint inside about one rock in forty. Collect five shards of an ore and your pod wears its colour.
Geode fields: hollow rocks that pay out in gems.
? rocks: cheap to cut, and you only find out what they were when they break. Sometimes it's void ore.
Surprises: a fossil, a hidden stash, an old drone that wants to help... Box has something to say about each.
A heavier hold
A full hold no longer stops you: you can keep mining past capacity, but the ship gets slower the heavier it gets. Hold Interact to drop a canister of scrap and come back for it later.
Mining planets
Two Salvager worlds, Share Hook and Ore Wake, are now mining planets: a belt of ore fields around a station, and you finish the sector by banking a cargo quota. No boss, just you, your pilot and a very loud belt.
For streamers
With MINING on in the Streaming tab, your chat picks which rock your pilot cuts (!1, !2, !3) and tells you whether to keep cutting or run.
Six new achievements
Clean Getaway, Chain Reaction, Deep Cut, Core Sample, Side by Side, and one classified one we are not telling you about. They're on the achievements page.
Go dig something up, and tell us your best chain on our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: Box found the internet
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
This week the skies got a lot louder. Most of it is Box's fault.
Box has opinions now
Box is the Maverick's flight recorder, and it used to read your log back to you in a flat voice. We rewrote its lines so it gets excited, loses the thread, argues with its own notes and takes your near misses personally. The new takes are going into the game as we approve them, a few dozen a day. Same box, more personality.
Ninety-six new memes
Fly long enough and the game starts quoting the internet back at you. There are now over 400 meme moments hidden in Maverick Skies, and 96 of them are new this week: games, films, anime, music and the odd thing only a flight recorder would find funny.
Most of them do more than talk. Your wing might break into a dance, a horn might honk back, a kill might leave a stamp, and some only show up when you do something very specific. We're not telling you which.
Your allies speak up
When a captain you sided with joins your wing, they now say so, and they say goodbye when they leave. That's 76 new voiced lines across Doss, Keln, Vey, the Cantors, Ysolde and the rest. The answers to the secret third choice are voiced too.
79 new classified achievements
Many of the new memes come with an achievement. That makes 201 achievements, and 122 of them are classified: they stay hidden until you earn them. Classified achievements never pay scrap; they pay cosmetics, horns, liveries and the odd new trick. The full list (minus the secrets) is on the achievements page.
What's next
We're listening to every new line and picking the best takes before they go into the build. Found a meme? Keep it to yourself, or brag about it on our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: let your chat fly with you
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
Plenty of you play Maverick Skies on stream, and your viewers always have an opinion about which card you should have taken. This week we gave them a say. It's called chat play, and it lives in a new STREAMING tab in Settings.
Chat votes
Viewers vote by typing a number in chat, like !1 or !2.
Level-up cards. Chat votes on your hand, but you can always pick yourself.
The route. On the star map, chat votes on where you fly next.
Boss fights. When a boss arrives, chat picks a fair fight, a weakened boss or an armoured one.
Help or hinder. Every few minutes chat votes between a repair, a supply drop or a magnet, and an elite, a drone surge or a raid wave.
Your chatters in the game
Elites named after chatters. Enemy captains fly with a viewer's name over the ship.
Wing call signs. Your wingmen carry your chatters' names.
Chat on screen and a hype meter: when lots of people talk at once, the bar fills and drops you supplies.
Raids, subs, gifts and cheers land in the fight: a raid brings a drone wave led by the raider, a sub drops scrap round your ship.
Twitch, YouTube and Kick
Type your channel and chat play reads it: no sign-in needed.
Twitch. Sign in to add channel point rewards (a repair, a supply drop, an elite under the redeemer's name, a drone surge), Twitch polls, predictions on each boss, and votes posted in your chat.
YouTube. A YouTube poll whose choices match the vote counts as the vote. Soon you'll also be able to sign in with Google so the game starts the poll for you and posts each vote in your chat (Google is still reviewing that part).
Kick. A Kick poll counts as the vote too, and channel point rewards you name after the game's land as their effects.
You stay in charge
Everything is off until you switch it on, and every feature has its own switch. Pick a preset (Votes only, Cozy or Chaos) or set each one yourself, including whether chat may hinder you at all. F9 pauses all of it at once, mods can pause it from chat with !mav pause, a word filter keeps rude names off the ships, and streamer mode hides your channel name. There's also an OBS overlay that shows the open vote and the hype meter on your stream.
Chat play works in solo runs only, never in co-op, Versus or the challenge boards. A run your chat changed is marked CHAT on its results, and your achievements still count.
What's next
We're testing it on our own streams. Streaming the game? Tell us on our Discord what your chat did to you.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: a reason to come back tomorrow
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
A good run makes you want another one right away. This week we worked on the day after: what's waiting for you when you come back tomorrow, next week and the week after.
A new race every day and every week
Everything lives on one new screen, Challenges, straight from the title.
The daily. One sector a day, with the same seed, ship and rules for every pilot, plus a twist such as twice the swarm. Medals pay once a day, and a streak calendar keeps count.
The streak forgives. You get one free missed day each week, so a busy evening doesn't cost you your streak. Streaks of 3, 7, 14 and 30 days pay out, and the bigger ones add a pilot title.
The weekly sector. One recipe from Monday to Monday, with harsher twists than the daily. Its gold medal pays a title of its own.
Weekly orders. Five orders a week, and finishing all five pays a ship livery you can't get anywhere else. Miss one and it comes back around later in the rotation.
Your nemesis comes back
The ship that ended your campaign doesn't forget you. Next campaign it comes back as a named bounty, a little stronger and tagged THE ONE WHO GOT YOU. Take it down and it pays double. And when a run ends, the results tell you one real thing the next run brings, such as a nemesis, a sealed blueprint or a place on the map you haven't seen.
Bring a friend
Send a run. Every challenge has a short code. Copy it, send it, and your friend flies the exact same run. The new share card at the end of a sector saves your build, time and code as one picture.
Friends boards. On Steam each challenge gets a board just for you and your friends, and the best runs come back as ghosts to race.
Co-op pays both. In co-op both pilots bank the full reward, and your first sector with a new wingmate pays a bonus.
Less in the way
Quit any time. Stop mid-sector, and the title offers RESUME, with the sector, place and build, straight back into the fight.
A run after a break pays more. Your first sector after eight hours or more away pays half again in scrap.
A helping hand. Fall at the same wall twice and the debrief names what got you and how to beat it. From depth 3 on, it also offers a sturdier hull for the next try, if you want it.
Some of these open as you play rather than on day one: the daily, for example, opens once you've proved yourself in the campaign.
What's next
We're playing through all of it ourselves, day after day, to see what makes us want to launch one more. Speedrunners: the speedrun page has the details on codes, boards and ghosts. Tell us on our Discord which you'd chase first, the streak or the weekly gold.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: the title is a cockpit
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
The first thing you see in a game should already feel like the game. So this week we threw out the flat menu and the loading screen and put you in the pilot's seat.
A cockpit, in layers
The title is now built in layers: deep space and the Helix Reach station far out, the logo, and the cockpit up close, with the menu on its console. Once there's something new for you today, a monitor stands up on the dashboard and shows your TODAY card: the daily, the week's order and the goal you're closest to.
A fly-by instead of a loading screen
While the game loads, your own ship flies past, the camera rushes into the cockpit, the pilot turns to the console, the monitor rises and latches, and then the logo comes up. Every step has its own machine sound.
It plays on the first launch of the day only, so it never gets in the way, and any key skips it. With reduced motion on, it's a simple fade.
Smaller touches
LAUNCH and RESUME are bigger, because that's the button you came for.
The service record shows one clear percentage.
CHALLENGES sits on the console from day one, so you can fly a friend's code before you've unlocked the daily yourself.
What's next
We'll keep polishing the cockpit as the rest of the game grows around it. What would you want to see out of that cockpit window? Tell us on our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: legendary evolutions
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
You know the feeling: a weapon hits level 8, a Captain Cache cracks open, and it evolves. This week we asked what comes after that. The answer is legendary evolutions.
How it works
Evolve two weapons that belong together. When your ship flies both halves of a legendary, the next Captain Cache forges the bond.
Nothing is lost. Both weapons keep their bays and keep firing as before, and both hit 25% harder.
The bond strikes on its own. Every few seconds it fires a legendary attack that mixes both evolutions.
Here are all six, in the game. Press Sound on any clip to hear it.
Seventeen of the original evolutions used to borrow their weapon's icon. Now every evolution, and every legendary, has its own icon and artwork. Browse them all, with their clips, on the Arsenal page.
What's next
We'll keep tuning the strikes so each one reads clearly in the middle of a swarm. Which pair are you going for first? Tell us on our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
Devlog: making online co-op smooth
· Devlog
Hey pilots!
A quick look behind the scenes this week. Online co-op is working: two pilots, two computers, one swarm. But when we played it ourselves, the pilot who joined the game kept seeing the screen stop for a moment, then everything jumped forward. In a game about dodging hundreds of ships, that's the last thing you want.
So this week was all about online co-op running smoothly. Here's what we fixed.
What we fixed
No more frozen screen. When the connection hiccups, the game keeps everything moving instead of stopping to wait.
No more teleporting enemies. Enemies slide back to where they should be instead of jumping across the screen.
No more hitches mid-fight. The game used to pause to load things in the middle of a battle. Now it gets everything ready before the sector starts.
Much lighter on your connection. The game now sends about five times less data, so a fight with hundreds of enemies won't clog it.
Your ship always answers right away, even when the connection has a bad moment.
How much better?
We tested on a terrible connection on purpose, one that drops out for half a second every few seconds. Over the same 18 seconds of play, the joining pilot's screen used to freeze 15 times. Now it freezes a few times at most, often not at all, and only for a blink.
What's next
We'll keep testing online co-op until it feels as good as playing side by side. Want to follow along, or tell us who you'll be flying with? Come say hi on our Discord.
See you in the skies! 🚀
The Bailiff, the Ore Line and a live star map
· Patch notes
New
The Bailiff, a new boss, paces the lane firing writs, punishes circling, and ends with the Final Notice: a screen-wide laser you dash out of, behind a wall that stops it.
The Ore Line: Keln's ore train runs across the campaign, with its own fight display, sounds and music, and crates you open at the dock.
Star map: zoomed-in planets are live 3D, lit and slowly turning. Stations and fleets are drawn from their real models, and the selected place's card shows its planet.
Abilities: keys 3 and 4 open with rank, ability cards show their keys, and Barrier gains levels.
New voiced bosses and characters.
Credits on the title menu: everyone and everything the game is made with, and their licences.
Changed
No countdown before a run starts.
The hangar and dock shop now sit inside the cockpit, with text that fits its boxes. Menus use the Barlow typeface with a minimum text size.
A blocked purchase names what it needs.
Fixed
Star map labels no longer overlap each other or the dots.
Module recovery shows whole names, the whole effect and true rarity colours.
Captain portraits fill the faction banners' frames.
Be there at launch
Playtest sign-ups go to the Discord first. Or send one email and get one back the day the demo or the store page goes live.
