Sky: Children of the Light
ThatGameCompany · Puzzle, RPG, MMO, Indie
Overview
"Embark on an unforgettable social adventure and an ever-expanding world. Sky: Children of the Light is a heartwarming and beautifully animated social adventure experience designed to be played together by you and your loved ones. Set in a wonderland above the clouds, Sky invites you and your friends to fly up to explore the buried mysteries together and rebuild a fallen kingdom for its ancient inhabitants. Using your courage and compassion, players must connect as a community to share and build on their flame to spread light back into the world."
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,996 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Praise for Sky is mostly praise for the place. Reviews most often talk about how it looks, how calm and cozy it feels, and the people met inside it: kind strangers, friends made in game, or a partner, sibling or friend group to play with. The music, the wordless story and its ending, and flying come up after that. Some call it a comfort game for after a bad day, and a few credit it with helping them through hard periods in their lives.
The complaints are mostly about the economy. Cosmetic prices and limited-time items come up in 45% of longer negative reviews, and the daily candle grind in 32%. Positive reviews raise both too, often as a warning to newcomers. Bugs and server splits come up nearly as often as the grind in negative reviews, followed by unskippable cutscenes, a confusing start, and a PC camera and control scheme that some find clunky.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
A world that looks like a paintingHigh
Roughly a third of longer reviews praise the visuals. Players describe each realm as distinct and atmospheric, with clouds, light and sunsets as the standouts, and plenty of reviewers stop just to look. Negative reviews praise the art as well before getting to their complaints ("The game is visually very pretty.").
A calm, cozy escapeHigh
27% of longer reviews call the game relaxing, cozy, peaceful or calm, and players describe using it to unwind after work or school. Some like that there is no combat. Several reviews call it their comfort game, and some say it helped them through depression, anxiety or isolation. The calm has limits that players mention with affection: the dark dragons ("krill") and the final realm, Eye of Eden, scare some newcomers, and veterans joke about it.
Kind strangers, friendships and holding handsHigh
28% of longer reviews talk about the friendly community, friends made in game, or playing with partners, siblings and friend groups. Players praise strangers who wordlessly guide new players through the story, the handholding and emotes, and couples and long-distance friends who use the game as a shared space. Some veterans say the people are the only reason they still play ("THE PEOPLE ARE NICE (THE GAME NOT SO MUCH)"). Solo players are split: some enjoy the quiet, while others find the social game lonely when nobody stops to help.
Music and soundMedium
The soundtrack is praised in 14% of longer reviews, often paired with the visuals ("eargasm music with eyegasm visuals"). Players talk about falling asleep to it, playing the in-game instruments with others, and the music swelling at emotional moments. Negative reviews that mention the music mostly praise it too; the complaints that do come up are about playing instruments with PC controls.
A wordless story with a moving endingMedium
The story, its lore and its ending come up in about a fifth of longer reviews, and that count includes people who found it hard to follow. Fans praise how it tells a story about loss and rebirth without dialogue ("Not a single word of dialogue and it still makes me sob."), and the Van Gogh season is singled out as a highlight. Critics call the story thin or confusing, and some long-time players feel newer seasons are lighter than the early mystery. Journey comes up in 6% of longer reviews, more often in negative ones: fans call Sky a bigger, social Journey, while some negative reviews tell people to play Journey instead.
Flying, and a free startMedium
Flying is mentioned in 11% of longer reviews, and fans describe soaring through clouds as the core joy. About 10% point out that the game is free to start, often surprised at how much it gives away. A smaller group praises how well it runs on old laptops and low-end PCs, and players coming from mobile welcome PC's higher frame rates and no longer having a phone that overheats.
Where players are split
PC controls and the cameraMedium
Camera and controls come up in 8% of longer reviews and in 19% of the negative ones. The complaints are specific: a camera that swings to point at things, assisted movement that grabs ledges or steers the character, jumps that don't fire, floaty flight on keyboard, and limited rebinding (a left-handed player could not bind the arrow keys, and another could not invert one camera axis alone). One reviewer put it bluntly: "STOP MOVING MY CHARACTER AND CAMERA FOR ME". Several call it a mobile port and say the phone version feels better. Others, often long-time mobile or Switch players, find the PC version smoother and easier on the eyes, and newcomers on controller say they adapted quickly.
Play the story once, or stay for yearsMedium
A small group of reviews, mostly negative, advise enjoying the first trip to Eden and then leaving ("Play this game to complete the realms and the story, then uninstall it."). Their reasoning is that the postgame is repeat runs through old realms for candles and cosmetics. On the other side are players who log in daily for the seasons, events and friends and say there is always something new. A smaller set complains that going through Eden takes away their winged light until they collect it again.
Social features cost candlesLow
A small group objects that a game about friendship charges candles to befriend people, unlock chat and upgrade friendships, and that strangers appear as grey figures until you befriend them ("spending candles just to talk to someone makes it hard to save"). Others defend the system as a safety measure for a young playerbase and say it makes each friendship deliberate.
Other players and moderationLow
Against the reviews that praise the community, a minority report the other side: toxicity toward new "moth" players, creeps targeting younger or female-presenting players, cheaters who disrupt instances or fling others out of the map, and reports they say go nowhere ("the creators do not take reports seriously even with proof"). A few say accounts were banned without explanation.
What frustrates players
Pricey cosmetics and fear of missing outHigh
Prices come up in 40% of longer negative reviews, more than the grind or bugs, and in 19% of longer reviews overall: in-app purchases, season passes, single items and limited-time stock. Some players accept that a free game sells cosmetics. Their objections are to single capes and accessories that reviewers price at $15 to $40, prices they feel keep rising, season passes needed for the best season items, and items that vanish for months or years before a traveling spirit brings them back. Positive reviews sometimes carry the same warning in a gentler form ("Get over the Fomo and just enjoy flying and playing dress up"), and several reviewers call themselves happy spenders who still think the prices are too high.
The daily candle grindHigh
The candle grind comes up in 19% of longer reviews and 32% of negative ones. Players describe a daily "candle run" through every realm that takes one to three hours, a daily cap of around 20 to 25 candles, and cosmetics that cost far more than that. A few describe hearts, the second currency, as even scarcer for players without active friends. In their words, a cozy game turns into a chore ("They somehow turned Journey into a day job."). Some reviewers say the grind is bearable if you ignore the collecting, and a few enjoy it. A higher daily candle limit is a recurring request.
Bugs, crashes and server splitsMedium
Bugs and server problems appear in 14% of longer reviews and 31% of negative ones. Players describe server splits that separate friends mid-run, even while holding hands ("I was even holding hands with another player and we got split into different instances."), repeated "server error" messages, crashes after updates or when switching to fullscreen, softlocks where a needed spirit or memory never spawns, and quests that don't register. Long-time players say updates fix old bugs and add new ones. Some fans shrug it off ("A beautiful, broken, buggy disaster... but lovely all the same."), while negative reviews call it unacceptable given the cosmetic prices.
A confusing start and unskippable cutscenesMedium
Confusion and cutscenes appear in 8% of longer reviews and in 18% of the negative ones, more often from players with few hours on Steam. Newcomers say the opening hour is a run of short cutscenes ("Walk ten feet, press F, cutscene."), that the game explains little about portals, wing upgrades or currencies, and that joining a friend took some of them an hour or more, with one blocked by a message that the friend was somewhere they had not visited yet. One reviewer notes that cutscenes became skippable after an update, though the camera taking control is still a complaint.
Updates that remove player shortcutsLow
Some long-time players object to updates that patch out the shortcuts they used to make the grind tolerable, such as idle chatting during wax events, shared-space tricks and camera-based candle collecting, and to changes to the Aviary Village hub. One reviewer welcomed a later Aviary Village update. These complaints come almost entirely from veterans.
Accounts, logins and smaller issuesLow
A handful of players could not link their mobile, Switch or Google account to Steam and had to start over, or lost access through a deletion or email problem. Isolated reviews mention motion sickness or migraines from flashing light effects, the game failing to launch on some PCs and older CPUs, and the requirement to stay online even when playing alone.
3. The player conversation
Reviews are warm and personal, and some read like letters to a place. Negative reviews often open with praise before explaining why the reviewer cannot recommend it. What people raise depends on how long they have played. Among longer reviews, those with under five hours on Steam bring up confusion and cutscenes more often than long-time players do. Players with 50 or more hours raise prices, the grind and bugs far more often than newcomers, and they also talk more about the friends they made. Some of the harshest reviews come from long-time players who say they still log in daily and describe it as burnout or sunk cost.
The balance held steady across the reviews: 87% recommend it in reviews written in 2024, 87% in 2025 and 86% in 2026. Grind complaints grew slightly over that time, from 18% of longer reviews written in 2024 to 22% of those written in 2026. Players who moved from mobile, Switch or PlayStation often compare versions, usually praising PC's graphics and frame rate, while some prefer the phone's touch controls.
4. What the developers could do
- Raise or rework the daily candle limit. The grind is one of the two main complaints, and players ask for more candles per day or faster ways to earn them, describing the daily run as a chore that burns them out.
- Lower cosmetic prices and keep returning items predictable. Nearly half of the longer negative reviews raise prices or FOMO, and they name the cost of single items, rising pass prices and long waits for traveling spirits.
- Fix server splits and post-update regressions before adding content. Players single out friends being separated mid-run and bugs reintroduced by updates, which hit hardest in a game built around playing together.
- Make joining friends simple on PC. Some new players describe spending an hour or more trying to get into the same session as a friend.
- Give PC players camera and movement options. Players ask for a way to turn off the assisted camera and auto-grab, independent axis inversion, and full key rebinding, including for instruments.
- Shorten the opening and explain the systems. Early quitters cite strings of short cutscenes and no explanation of portals, wing upgrades and currencies.
- Act on player reports. A minority report creeps, cheaters disrupting instances and reports that go unanswered, which matters in a game reviewers describe as full of young players.
- Smooth account linking from other platforms. Players moving from mobile or Switch describe failed links and having to start over.
