Skywriter Academy: A Gust of Creativity

Game Jams are magical places where vague concepts need to be distilled to create a working game loop in a short amount of time. They are a mixture of personal challenges for indie developers to better their skills and find motivation, while also having their works submitted for judgment in competitions. From time to time, I love digging through the smallest of the smallest, most niche flight games. There are fewer places better to look than game jams.

This time around I was digging through Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam 2025. Running from July 30th to August 3rd, about 9,614 games were built and entered for competition in just those five days. The developers were given the loose theme of "Loop" to build their games around. The different teams took this theme and interpreted it in literally thousands of different ways. I now have a nice list of death loop games, music/rhythm games and some heart jerking love stories. While sifting through the 40+ pages of games, the image of a sky writing aircraft flashed across my screen.

Skywriter Academy was created by team Trash Pilots (an amazing team name). When asked about how this game fits the Loop theme of the game jam, the team said:

"In Skywriter Academy, you're tasked with writing messages in the sky by using smoky loop-de-loops to pass challenges!"

All controls are done with basic keyboard inputs for maneuvering the aircraft, throttle selection and an interact button to click specific controls in the cockpit. This was a quickly assembled game, so it's fair to not expect full controller support here. I suggest downloading the game to get the best experience.

From the beginning the dev team intentionally designed this 3D flying game to be difficult.

While the flight model is very arcade-y with the aircraft more than capable of performing unbelievably tight turns in just a few seconds with little to no risk of departing from flight, the cockpit is where the game design intentionally overrides aircraft functionality. The cockpit was purposefully designed with a somewhat problematic layout. The aircraft has unusually low visibility and the bare minimum amount of flight instruments. Even the switch activating the smoke generator is placed behind the pilot seat, forcing players to look away from the direction of travel to turn it on or off. The screen in the lower-center console of the cockpit is the game defining flight instrument.

That screen is showing a live camera feed from the hangars of the runway players takeoff from. The shapes or messages players must sky write, as referenced in their document folder, are to be drawn above the runway according to the perspective of that camera.

This creates a pretty wacky dynamic where players both need to look straight down in the cockpit to monitor their progress. Looking forward out of the cockpit while skywriting is actually a detriment. The camera feed is vital for getting the shapes as correct as possible, but it is also the only way players can ensure they will not collide with terrain while flying.

This is probably one of the most awkward ways to attempt flying an aircraft through aerobatics I've seen. Collisions are bound to happen, and squiggly shapes are expected. Though, after a few attempts this odd style of flying becomes easier to understand and the game itself is decently lenient with its grading system. So don't sweat failing a few times.

A key part of the experience is the challenge of trying to succeed in intentionally difficult conditions, rather than revel in the accuracy of how real-world skywriting is done.

The Trash Pilots team made a pretty odd little game in a matter of a few days. While I do not expect this style of game to "take off" anytime soon, I do think that Skywriter Academy could probably get away with a standalone, paid game release if it added more shapes to draw and a consistent grading system and maybe some unlockable aircraft with different flight characteristics. Using these aircraft could also act as a score multiplier for shapes drawn. That is just me thinking out loud though.

If you have a few minutes and a working keyboard and mouse, try something unusual. Take a look at Skywriter Academy.

Connect with 'Skywriter Academy / Trash Pilots'

Game: Itch.io

Art: Ties Groen

Music & Sound: Nik Buchowski

Programming: Bart van Egten

Programming: Victor Ghys.

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About the Writer

Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza

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]