Social MMO Sky: Children Of The Light is heading to Steam early access in April

rockpapershotgun.com:

Journey developer thatgamecompany have announced the PC early access release date for their social MMO Sky: Children Of The Light. Having already built up a substantial community on both mobile and consoles, PC players will now be able to join in on April 10th on Steam. There will be some special PC-themed goodies available to celebrate the occasion, too, including a Companion Cube prop from Portal, a Journey cosmetic pack, and double rewards for sending Heart gifts to other players.

"We're bringing Sky to Early Access on Steam so that we can implement all the refinements that will make the PC experience shine," the studio said on their website.

The early access launch will still include the full version of the free-to-play MMO, the devs go on to say, but they'll be adding features such as Steam friends, achievements, support for remote play, HDR and VRR support over time to ensure there aren't any hiccups.

Sky is quite a different proposition to most MMOs out there. While there are daily quests and seven different worlds to fly around and explore, either alone or with friends, it's mostly a game about forming connections with other players. You can send players gifts and messages, hold hands, give them hugs, or even stack up to eight people riding on your shoulders - and when I saw an early build of Sky's PC version back at Gamescom last August, thatgamecompany co-founder and creative director Jenova Chen told me the studio's main aim was to make a game that captured the same, fleeting feelings of connection and compassion as Journey did back in 2012, only on a much grander scale.

"We've been making games to connect people online at the emotional level," he said. "I grew up playing World Of Warcraft, so MMOs is my jam, but we could never afford to make an MMO game when we were a small indie studio." As time went on, however, Chen kept returning to the idea. "We thought, okay, can we try to capture that feeling that you are not alone and you belong to something