Interview: How Wild Blue Skies Modernizes Classic On-Rails Shooters
The Wild Blue Skies developers discuss modernizing classic on-rails shooters, embracing creative limitations, building custom systems in Unity, and creating the game's cel-shaded, Japanese animation-inspired world.
For a genre once synonymous with console gaming, the on-rails shooter has become surprisingly uncommon. Wild Blue Skies wants to bring some of that magic back, combining arcade-style aerial combat with animal pilots, squad banter, handcrafted encounters, and the kind of spectacle that defined classics of the genre.
That connection runs deeper than simple inspiration, too: Chuhai Labs' Giles Goddard previously worked as a programmer on the original Star Fox for the SNES.
But recreating that experience with modern technology presented an interesting design challenge. We spoke with the Chuhai Labs team about finding that balance between nostalgia and modernization, all while designing the game's outlined cel-shaded aesthetic inspired by classic Japanese animation.
Wild Blue Skies releases on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation today, with a Switch 2 version coming later this year.
Wild Blue Skies is clearly connected to the legacy of classic on-rails shooters, and your own history with the original Star Fox gives that connection real weight. What made this the right time to return to this style of game?
Francis Pétrin, Game Director: A lot of us at Chuhai Labs grew up playing on-rail shooters and are huge fans of the genre, and with Giles at the helm, it felt almost inevitable for us to try our hands at making something in that space!
When revisiting the on-rails shooter genre in 2026, how do you decide which old-school design principles still work and which need to be modernized for today’s players?
Francis Pétrin: When making Wild Blue Skies, we realized just how much of the feel of on-rail shooters was driven by the limitations of the time, and that we shouldn't be afraid to embrace them.
One of our big "ah-ah!" moments was realizing just how much view distance impacted gameplay. We spent a lot of time in development being able to see far off in the distance, which made enemies feel like they were spawning out of thin air and made players want to shoot farther than they could.
One day, we reduced the view distance significantly, and everything clicked. Players were focusing on what was happening now, enemies felt more natural, and missions were immediately more exciting. It was certainly a controversial change at the time, but everyone felt its impact when picking up the controller.
Movement and aiming are everything in this kind of game. How did the team approach controls, camera behavior, enemy patterns, hit feedback, and accessibility so Wild Blue Skies feels easy to pick up but still satisfying to master?
Francis Pétrin: Camera and controls were a huge focus early on in development and something we spent a lot of time on. We wanted the plane to immediately feel good and give players the means to fly and fight around our world without feeling overwhelmed.
The framing of the plane in on-rails missions was an especially key topic! We wanted the player to feel like they were flying around the frame to keep a strong focus on the world while being careful not to obstruct their view. We used a dithering technique on the plane in conjunction with our tuning to help with this.
How did the team define the art direction, and what were the main visual pillars for the characters, aircraft, environments, UI, and cinematic presentation?
Michael Molinari, Art Director: Our main source for visual inspiration came from classic Japanese animated movies, like those from Studio Ghibli. We loved how you can see yourself in the characters and get lost in the painted backgrounds. The team crafted an outlined cel-shaded look to make our characters, enemies, and planes really pop off the screen.
The environments were treated from a painterly angle, so there were lots of softer details with light, shadow, and fog to make the world appear vibrant and full of life. Since we were modernizing the gameplay, the UI was also brought up to speed, using clean and simple shapes to make it easy for players to gather their needed info at a glance.
Have you played the new Star Fox remake? What did you think of it?
Francis Pétrin: We haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but it's an exciting time to be a fan of on-rail shooters, that's for sure!
Can you walk us through the production pipeline for creating a level in Wild Blue Skies, from early route planning and enemy placement to environmental art, dogfight pacing, boss encounters, polish, and final tuning?
Francis Pétrin: We wanted our missions to feel like bite-sized episodes in a grander story, and that meant building a world first. We started out by concepting environments and built out a high-level world map to begin making missions.
Each started out with an environment and high-level narrative pitch. From there, we blocked out the geometry, breaking up each mission into sections and creating exciting set pieces for the player to fly through. We'd then stub in placeholders for encounters and dialogue.
At this point, we'd be flying through grayboxed environments with floating text to describe what you were going to be seeing. We would playtest this and go through a lot of iterations, and when the pacing felt right, we would move on to implementing encounters, adding art, dialogue, and sounds, continuously playtesting and tuning everything along the way.
Animal pilots, squad banter, and larger-than-life villains are a big part of this genre’s charm. How did you approach character design and writing in a way that feels nostalgic without simply imitating the games that inspired it?
Francis Pétrin: We wanted Wild Blue Skies to feel like you've just been thrown into a 90's action movie and Saturday morning cartoon all at once. We had a lot of fun concepting characters that would fit in that era of cheesy one-liners and strong personalities.
We were super lucky to work with amazing voice actors to bring them to life and really can't wait for players to have their favourites.
On-rails shooters rely heavily on pacing because the player is always being pushed forward. How do you structure a mission so it has a strong rhythm of quiet moments, spectacle, enemy waves, hazards, and climactic encounters?
Francis Pétrin: Through a lot of iteration and playtesting! The blockout stages of our mission production were key in nailing this down. Even with very placeholder work, it was easy to know when things felt right, and to make changes when they didn’t.
What engine and tools are you using to build Wild Blue Skies, and were there any custom systems needed for the rail pathing, camera control, targeting, enemy spawning, boss logic, or cinematic transitions?
Zach Aikman, Technical Director: Wild Blue Skies was built in Unity 6 and required multiple custom systems and tools that we created over the course of development. All of our cinematic sequences were developed in Cinemachine while all of the gameplay cameras utilized custom body and aim components that only rode on the Cinemachine layer for convenience (transitions, blending, etc.).
Our most complicated system and accompanying tooling was the Enemy Encounter system, which allowed us to compose orchestrated waves of enemy patterns by combining multiple layers of simple, discrete behaviors. In the spirit of the other on-rails shooters that Wild Blue Skies is inspired by, all of the Boss behaviors and attack patterns were lovingly crafted by hand via code.
For 80 Level’s audience of artists and developers, what has been the biggest lesson in taking a genre strongly associated with a specific era of console gaming and making it feel fresh, polished, and emotionally appealing today?
Francis Pétrin: Limitations can be your biggest ally when creating something. In an era where the sky is the limit, we found it important to set clear pillars and to embrace working with constraints, whether they're driven by hardware, resources, or the type of game you're making.
