A world that floats

7 November 2026

This post covers days 3 to 7: how the world went from a map of ordinary zones to a sky full of floating islands, and the art made for it so far. None of it is walkable yet.

From biomes to islands

The first plan had five zones you would expect in any game: a meadow, a forest, a snowy peak, a shore and a cave. They worked, but they felt generic, and nothing about them said "balloons". So on days 3 and 4 the world was rethought around the obvious question: if everyone is a balloon, why are we on the ground?

The new world is the Sky Archipelago (a working name, like all the names below): eight small floating islands in three layers of sky. Each layer has its own light, which never changes:

Cloud Sea, the lowest layer, is always at dawn.
Open Sky, the middle, is always at midday.
Starlight, the top, is always at dusk, with stars.

Three wide sky backdrops stacked on top of each other: a peach and violet dawn over thick cream clouds; a periwinkle midday sky with white clouds and small distant islands; and a dark indigo dusk with stars, a crescent moon and rose-tinted clouds — The three skies, built: Cloud Sea at dawn, Open Sky at midday and Starlight at dusk. Each is made of layers that scroll at different speeds.

Small islands, big sky

Each island is planned to be small, about two screens wide and two tall, with its own look: a carnival, a windmill, bouncy clouds, a storm, a crater of fallen stars. The world should feel big because there are many places and a lot of sky, not because each map is huge. Distant islands drift in the background of every sky.

In the plan, every island is open from the start. Rope bridges join the islands in a layer, updrafts carry you between layers, and a world map lets you hop straight to any island, so friends can meet wherever they like. The map will also show a few foggy "Uncharted" islands: places that do not exist yet, waiting for later updates.

Carnival Isle, as a picture

To settle the look before building any island, there is one finished still picture of Carnival Isle (a working name), with a big top, two stalls and the portal for two-team matches:

Two balloons, coral and yellow, on a floating island with a red and white striped big top, two stalls labelled Rings and Prizes, lamp posts, bunting and a glowing portal labelled 2 Teams; a rope bridge leaves the island's edge, and the rocky underside, hung with roots, floats above a sea of clouds — The Carnival Isle look picture, approved on day 4. It is a single image, not a playable map.

It took two rounds of fixes to the clouds to get there: clouds must never have flat bottoms, and their undersides are solid shapes with no speckled fading.

The edges of the world

On day 7 the island edges became a real tileset: a grassy lip, two bands of cliff and a craggy underside, which a small tool fits together around any island shape. The same tiles are recoloured for all eight islands.

A test island seen from above in a midday sky: green grass with an irregular outline, edged by layered sandy cliffs that taper into dark rocky undersides, with a cloud and more test shapes nearby — The island-edge test page in Pop Plaza (working name) colours. Keys 1 to 8 switch between the eight island recolours.

Next in the plan is the first real island, the hub where everyone arrives, but only after the server, accounts and matches exist.