Sky: Children of the Light’s Hottest Hangouts Are Off the Edge of the Map

I’m standing on top of a golden spire, staring out at a sea of stars in a dusk purple sky. Beneath me, the Coliseum is quiet and dark, and other enigmatic buildings hang silhouetted in the sky. Players come here to relax, unwind, to plink out tunes on their in-game instruments. It’s one of the most beautiful locations in the game, but it was never meant to be visited by players. Welcome to Sky: Children of the Light’s out of bounds (OOB).

“The out of bounds. Yes. Okay. That's a very interesting one,” said Thatgamecompany founder and Sky’s director Jenova Chen. “As a director, a storyteller, once the game launched, I wanted to make sure the game was in perfect shape and I didn't want anybody to break it. But once the game is out and people start living in it...they find a glitch. Then they start to tell their friends about the glitch and they're proud to be the person who found the glitch, right? They're like, 'look at the secret place I found, only I know, you gotta come with me.'”

Even though they were never meant to access these areas, the fans quickly became attached to them, whether attracted by the prestige of knowing the game’s deepest secrets or simply because they enjoyed the scenery. “Any time we fix these bugs, they riot,” Jenova explained. “Most of the time we have to go back to reverse a fix.”

Design manager Atlas Chen recounted one of the most memorable times an OOB glitch was accidentally fixed. “I remember when we were still in the office before Covid, we had this bug fix that accidentally shut off the boundary going to the Coliseum out-of-bounds place, which is like, super amazing,” Atlas said. He’s referring to the star-studded location I described above, which is known by fans as Starfield Memorial and remains one of the most popular OOB locations in the game.

“It gets shut off. And then there's outrage, and Jenova himself personally undoes that fix. And he undoes that in a way that is not just reverting the fix, it was like reverting it, and then he puts a glass wall around [the area], and leaves a small crack,” Atlas continues. “So it feels like fixing, un-fixing, but it makes it more like an easter egg. So, if our CEO is doing this for the fans, then that probably says a lot about the culture.”

Jenova adds that maintaining player access to the out-of-bounds is “actually quite troublesome” for the team. “We have to tell every new QA person that this is not a bug, this is a feature. Every year we have a couple of bugs that we left for the player getting fixed because new guys come in and they’re like, ‘this is broken, let me fix that.’”

“So it feels like fixing, un-fixing, but it makes it more like an easter egg. So, if our CEO is doing this for the fans, then that probably says a lot about the culture.”

Atlas Chen
DESIGN MANAGER

While TGC generally aims to keep the harmless glitches in the game, community manager Denise Schlickbernd warns that sometimes bugs do have to be fixed, something she often has to communicate to angry fans in Sky’s official Discord. “We're very sorry but we can't let the game break to keep this bug. I think people are pretty creative with finding other bugs and other out-of-bounds places anyway.”

The history of boundary-breaking in Sky goes back a long way, and can even be traced back to TGC’s earlier titles. “The out-of-bounds culture was in pre-release beta,” said Denise. “And I think that was from the original Journey community, too. [Journey players were] super active with out of bounds, and then a lot of them began playing Sky when that was in beta.”

Early on, before the game had the benefit of five years of polish and updates, it was easier to stumble upon a glitch by accident. “When we first shipped, some of the levels like Dawn and the end of the Rain Forest were all unfinished art when you looked back at it,” Atlas noted. 

When I first started playing, the windows that led to the Coliseum weren’t yet blocked off, meaning players only needed a little curiosity to start an OOB adventure. The unique nature of this location even became the inspiration for enterprising boundary breakers to discover other OOB areas.  You see, the Coliseum is beautiful for a reason – it’s actually the staging for the Valley of Triumph’s final cutscene, in which the player relives a memory of the level’s twin Elders. When players realised that Sky stored the assets for its cutscenes somewhere close to their trigger point, out-of-bounders started intentionally searching them out.

The Elders, remnants of a culture that has long since perished, only appear in the game as spirits or memories, unless you can find their models out of bounds. A glitching session often takes the form of a pilgrimage, visiting each of the Elders in their quiet voids. The final stop is the Vault of Triumph’s Elder Room, which contains all six levels’ Elders in one spot – the perfect opportunity to pose for a family photo.

I haven’t personally been back to the Elder Room in some time, mainly because the location requires the cooperation of another player to visit. It makes use of a popular out-of-bounding glitch dubbed the “piggyback rocket,” where two players who accept an offered piggyback at the exact same time are sent rocketing up into the sky.

"The out-of-bounds culture was in pre-release beta. And I think that was from the original Journey community, too. [Journey players were] super active with out-of-bounds, and then a lot of them began playing Sky when that was in beta."

Denise Schlickbernd
COMMUNITY MANAGER

In a perfect mirror of the core game’s themes of friendship and cooperation, many of the game’s OOB locations are difficult or even impossible to visit without help, whether you’re actively participating in a two-player glitch, or just holding the hand of someone who is more experienced in getting places they shouldn’t.

“There's a culture of the more seasoned players taking newer people to experience these really cool places,” Denise explains. “When I first started playing the game, some of my most memorable times were when somebody took me by the hand and showed me the out-of-bounds for the Valley, or the Rainbow Road in Isle of Dawn.”

It’s no surprise that many of those who work on the game are taken by its OOB areas too, and are happy to see the culture continue. “We are players ourselves, we know what players love, so we won't just take it away,” Atlas said. “We actually have some intentional easter eggs [in out-of-bounds areas] as well, like Nick put his penguin,” he added, teasing an area that is notoriously difficult to access. “I still cannot reach that place. I need someone to take me.”

“I feel like a lot of this is like, it's so hard to get there, the way that you found this is so impressive that you kind of deserve to be able to get there,” said 3D artist Natalie Nichols. “It's like those house inspectors that tap on all the wood until they find something soft.”

Atlas feels that the out-of-bounds culture in Sky resonates with the game’s heart, being both a social and creative undertaking. “What is the code of Sky?” he pondered. “I feel it is a chaotic form. And I call it creativity.”

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