Skeleton Crew Recap #1

The Kickoff

Three years ago in a galaxy not so far away... @zicklag, chief of technology at Ktech Studio, had a gig developing FishFolk's Jumpy video-game on top of the Bevy Game Engine. Jumpy had two priority features that ultimately drove the creation of the pieces that would become the Bones game engine. These priorities were scripting and deterministic network multiplayer. Zicklag began making the pieces necessary to implement these features and eventually separated them into the Bones Framework. He transferred Jumpy onto the new framework leaving Bevy's renderer as the only remaining portion of Bevy and successfully achieved their priority features.

Zicklag moved on to other projects before Jumpy was finished but left an intriguingly simple fledgling engine in his wake. Previously, in an attempt to start making games, lead artist at Ktech Studio, Harsulin, and Rust coder, Latency, had began an attempt to make a top-down shooter in the Bevy Game Engine during free-time. This attempt had failed since it was too difficult for Latency to maintain sustainable development at the time. Later on, given the development of Bones, Harsulin and Latency decided to make another attempt at game making on the new engine hoping it would be easier to work with. This second attempt had a successful start and was followed by the launch of the Skeleton Crew blog series which now documents our journey making games with Bones.

Ten Months Of Bare Bones

Over the course of the last 10 months we've written 12 blog posts that follow the progress of the three person team dubbed "The Skeleton Crew". Development using the Bones Game Engine has been thus far overwhelmingly positive. While Bones has not yet progressed to be as "user friendly" as most game engines, the potential has been undeniable and the simplicity empowering. Prior to the 10 months of blogging we started our first game called Striker Ball while we learned to use the engine. Striker Ball is a 1-4 player soccer-like sports mini-game that was chosen as the first game for its simplicity and thus its effectiveness as an early stepping stone for the future. It later gained more focus and friction as we entered into June 2025 and had its 1.0 release about 7 months later at the end of January the next year. One month later, we announced our next game called Bounty Bros. followed by a post 30 days later that demonstrated character dialog boxes and one of the main characters walking, aiming, and shooting pots. This was immensely quick progress that begins to prove out Striker Ball as the stepping stone it was intended to be.

Going Forward

Bounty Bros is the next phase that builds on top of what Striker Ball has put down. It pushes the boundaries further with more new features that are common throughout the gaming world and enhances the foundation we have to build on. With every small iteration, by making fully featured games, we guarantee Bones will actually work in real world use.

Not only has Bones been easy to develop with, but it has surprised us how easy it has been to develop the engine itself. This allows us to maintain power as we move forward, never needing to halt due to incapability. Each month only seems get more exciting and we look forward to where the journey will lead us.

Written by, Latency: Lead Game Programmer at K-tech Studio