At Skies' Edge: Alpha Demo
- Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza
- 23 minutes ago
- 10 min read
A Notable Return of a Once Unexpected Entrant
The last time we discussed At Skies' Edge by Mackerel Sky at length was during its final updates for the demo it had in late 2024. Back then it was based on a concept from 2017 which was reimagined for a sudden demo release on May 1st, 2023. After a notably successful run in which At Skies' Edge (ASE) gained a large amount of interest and feedback, in late 2024 its developer made the big decision to take the full leap into game development.
On March 28th, 2026, ASE has released its next publicly accessible demo. This version being representative of the full game Mackerel Sky is working towards. In the wave of "Ace-likes" that have appeared in the last few years, At Skies' Edge is currently one of a few of them that has a recent demo available to play.
AIRCRAFT AND WEAPON SELECTION
The demo presents the player with three different aircraft with legally distinct names despite their familiar forms. Aircraft in flight arcade games being categorized as light, medium and heavy has been done for quite some time, but it is not something that feels noticeable until aircraft in the late game are unlocked. The difference between something like a 1960s third generation fighter compared to a still in active development 5th generation fighter.
In the current At Skies' Edge demo the F.GR-4, KF.21 and I-29A are noticeably different in ways that feel meaningful. In a mission where I felt as though I was somewhat hindered by the maneuverability of the F.GR-4 despite its immense weapon stores, the KF.21 on the same mission felt nimble but made me consider my more limited weapon choices. The I-29A is an air-to-air focused fighter that is quite nimble in comparison to the other aircraft. However, with no dedicated air-to-ground weapons the best players can do is double or triple up on Standard Missiles - the classic kill all missile that defines this genre.
On that note, the weapon selection system is an expansion of the multiple 'special weapon' style system made popular with the release of Project Wingman (2020). The ASE system mixes their own take on this system with a somewhat realistic hardpoint system where certain weapons can be carried, and certain weapons cannot be carried.
The weapon selection includes standard missiles, rocket pods, unguided bombs, various types of air-to-air missiles and gun pods. Depending on aircraft it is possible to carry up to four separate weapons or take a singular weapon and carry it on multiple hardpoints to increase the quantity of that weapon carried on the aircraft.
For example, the I-29A can only mount its more advanced air-to-air missiles on the inner hardpoints. The F.GR-4 is only able to mount semi-active air-to-air missiles on its fuselage hardpoints or the highly unique semi-active air-to-ground missiles only on a specific hardpoints meant for carrying heavy weapons like unguided bombs.
If the rest of the game finds a way to make aircraft unlocks and selection feel more substantial it would make aircraft selection feel a bit more important than just flying the newest aircraft the moment it appears.
FLIGHT MODEL: THROTTLE CONTROL
There is a specific facet of the ASE flight model that I will continually think of and tell people about. The way this game handles throttle control and maneuverability is amazing in my opinion.
Rather than the usual constant input mashing of binary throttle controls, where players rapidly increase and decrease thrust to maintain their ideal rate of turn, players can use a consistent throttle setting. Wherever a throttle is set to it stays there. The airspeed gauge on the left side of the Heads Up Display shows general speed ranges where the aircraft players are flying performs best in those ranges. Players that are always looking for the best turning speed or rate speed can focus on keeping their aircraft in the ACM range (air combat maneuvering range). While flying at high speed or in Cruise, players are less maneuverable and shouldn't expect to turn well while maintaining that speed.
For players new to the genre this is a quick visual reference to answer the constant question about what the right speeds are for maneuvering. For experienced players they can have finer energy management with a predictable throttle setting for much fewer rapid throttle adjustments.
This specialized throttle layout is punctuated by quick settings that can be accessed with double button taps. Double tapping throttle increase immediately sets the throttle to maximum engine output. Double tapping throttle decrease drops the throttle to zero and opens air brakes. This is good for situations that call for instant, drastic speed changes. Aircraft that are capable of super maneuvers or post-stall maneuvers can access this ability for short bursts of time during the double tap throttle down configuration.
STORY AND SETTING
As the developer said a while back, the demo from over a year ago is largely not representative for the new direction At Skies' Edge has taken. There are some notable changes to gameplay, mission structure, music and voice acting, but story remains hazy.
Though, there are signs that the story from the early development days may have been retained. Specific terms like "The Great War", "The Silent Age", "Arkasean", "Vostokova", "The Meridian War" and the "Alliance of Nations" matches with information seen in a lore drop from a dev blog on April 13th, 2024.
The material was presented in a style similar to the in-universe magazines created by developer Project Aces for the Ace Combat series. A few pages with some striking imagery and detailed backstory are still available.
Staying focused on story building, the inclusion of flavor text in the descriptions of aircraft liveries is a nice touch. The basic one- or two-line explanations of the liveries seen in other games are expanded and include some decent lore about the world setting on their own.
CONTROL SCHEMES
The control remapping in the demo seems pretty nice. The menu is as straightforward and easy to understand as they come while still maintaining the overall style of the user interface throughout the game.
While the preferred control method of At Skies' Edge is a gamepad (game console style controller) there are controls for Keyboard Mouse and an experimental hands-on throttle and stick setup for Thrustmaster T-Flight series controllers. The ability to setup something like a flight stick this early on in development is still restricted, but indicative of a potential future ability to have much wider device support.
As things are now this control menu does have a few bugs that makes mapping specific controllers harder than it should be, but so far, my experience has shown it to be functional.
MADE BY HUMANS
With the amount of AI software out there these days and the developers that choose to lean heavily on them for just about everything in a project, I feel as though there should be more effort put into acknowledging the work of humans.
In this project in particular, things went from a solo dev "fish" with a game development interest in 2023 to a full-fledged team in 2026. A team that includes 11 voice acting talents of varying experience levels who honestly did a great job maintaining energy and character throughout the missions.
A 3D modeling team who have made original 3D models for the player's aircraft including some unusual variants like an F-4 Phantom that is not an F-4E (imagine that!)
The music was notable with the inclusion of music composer Jose Pavli (Project Wingman, Dawn) and upcoming composer Ernest "Sournetic" Riveria who has made background music for other projects over the years. Listen to some songs from the ASE soundtrack in the YouTube playlist for the game.
GRAND SLAM
The ASE alpha demo has two story missions and one extra game mode for players to try. The Survival game mode which pits players against endless waves of fighters to see how long they can last and how high they can score. The first mission is a classic intro style mission which has player intercepting easy to track targets to ease them into gameplay. In this case it was shooting down reconnaissance drones and eventually enemy fighter aircraft.
That being said the real star of this demo is the Grand Slam mission. An ambitious mission that shows what At Skies' Edge is capable of in its current iteration. Its premise is that a large-scale expeditionary task force has arrived to render assistance to a nation occupied by another nation using overwhelming firepower from air, land and sea to remove the invaders. It is a long mission with dozens of units across a massive area of operations.
Breaking down the mission and its many moving parts into bullet points is the most efficient way to describe everything it has going on:
The Peak Experience: This is an opinion, but the best way to experience everything Grand Slam has to offer is using the F.GR-4. This is mainly because of the next two topics.
Aircraft Carrier Operations: At the start of the mission players using the F.GR-4 will taxi across the deck of an aircraft carrier to a catapult. Players manually steer and manage aircraft throttle to reach catapult one and prepare for takeoff. During the process allied naval forces are bombarding the shoreline providing coverage for landing craft transporting main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers. Friendly fighters fly overhead with some pilots howling for battle with another trying to calm them down. The sequence is punctuated with perhaps one of the most hype flight deck catapult officers announcing that the player is ready for launch. To be "shot" off the aircraft carrier catapult and into combat. All of that without a cutscene is a pretty nice experience. It made me feel the tension and excitement before firing a single shot.
Mid-Mission Resupply: Grand Slam is a massive mission. There is genuinely not enough ammunition on the player's aircraft to destroy every hostile unit on the map or in later phases of the mission. Players resupply their aircraft by flying off the edge of the map into a return line style resupply area that instantly resupplies their weapons and returns them to combat in seconds. Otherwise, the F.GR-4 can return to the carrier it launched from and land to rearm before being catapult launched again. A third method of resupplying relies on the player's actions in combat, but mid-mission resupply without breaking the flow of combat is a great part of the experience. I felt as though I was never truly taken out of the action of the mission. Few flight arcade games have done this in many years. I was very happy to see this game mechanic appear again.
Multi-Operation Mission: ASE seems to have adopted the multi-operation format that the console exclusive Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (2007) somewhat staked its identity on. Grand Slam is a mission that has three active operations from the start of the mission. While players focus on one operation the other two are still active with radio chatter informing the player what is happening elsewhere. While one operation is being completed it is possible that another may fail without the player's direct assistance. Though, completing an operation may unlock certain types of allied support. For example, successfully defending the fleet from air attack will unlock artillery fire support controlled by the player. Successfully supporting the amphibious landing of armored units will result in the capture of an airfield which the player can use to quickly rearm without having to fly across the map toward the return line or aircraft carrier. Completing two objectives leads to a final stand of opposing forces. As far as large-scale missions go, the multi-operation system proves to be a wonderful addition to manage the action and reward players for focusing their attention.
Radar map of large mission (left), KF.21 using indirect fire allied support (right).
It is a lot to take in. Depending on the combination of operations players attempt to complete there are times where you may complete objectives within minutes to spare. This can be further complicated as of now there are some bugs that occasionally make completing the mission harder. Or not possible at all. My kneejerk reaction with demos like these is to breakout a list of corrections and pointed commentary, but it seems like the many people that have tried the demo are well on top of this.
DEVELOPER OBSERVATIONS AND ADJUSTMENTS
Things like public demos are a vital part of the game development process that garners a substantial amount of feedback from outside of the dev team. Feedback comes in from social media, YouTube comments, Discord servers, Reddit threads and other sources, but ASE also has a rather detailed survey available in the game demo as well.
I certainly will be giving my detailed feedback in the survey. I genuinely enjoyed the demo as it gave a lot more content than I thought it would. With a lot more ambition in it as well. Though, I fully acknowledge that like in any alpha there is a decent number of things to be fixed and refined. I have some sharp opinions on the quality of the standard missile's ability to track aerial targets and gush about my new favorite secondary weapon being a semi-active air-to-ground missile. I'd like to give my ratings on the finer points about game sound effects and visuals while doubling down on a few bug reports to further push up their priority.
All of this can be a good way to gain a lot of constructive feedback and pointed criticism fast. The trick of the developer is to take this information and action upon it in a timely manner while the public has access to the demo or remove the demo from public access after a certain amount of time to apply the changes and bug fixing reports they received.
Within the first 24 hours of the demo being published, developer Mackerel Sky was already working on a list of what he considered bug fixes and game balancing. Further critical bug fixing and critical game balancing adjustments were identified over the days since the release. The developer pushed a demo update on April 2nd, 2026, before they were unavailable for work related reasons.
Such is the life of an indie dev!
THOUGHTS ON PROGRESS
When I think on the path At Skies' Edge has been on since it appeared out of thin air back in 2023, I see the development arc of this project proceeding forward at a steady pace. It has been over 530 days since the old demo was last updated. That seems like it would be a sign that the developer may have abandoned the project.
For anyone not closely watching dev blogs and social media activity, Mackerel Sky once again suddenly returns. The current alpha demo compared to the demo from 2024 is a substantial leap. It is clear that the true reason for this gap is the reality of a solo developer refining their development knowledge, gathering a team of skilled individuals and revamping their game with the intention to create a full product in the future.
The developer has mentioned that there may be a Steam demo sometime in the future. We'll be looking for that for sure!
Connect with At Skies' Edge by Mackerel Sky
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. [Read Staff Profile]
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