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Jonas Manke — the solo developer whose atmospheric adventure Omno won two German game industry awards and earned a 91% Very Positive rating on Steam — debuted his next game, Smoky Sails, on July 20 at the Games Composed in Germany 2026 showcase. The pirate-themed arcade adventure marks a deliberate tonal pivot from the meditative exploration that defined Omno, and Manke has been transparent about why: after years of difficult work on an unreleased follow-up called Kibu, Smoky Sails started as a creative reset — a smaller, more tightly scoped project he could actually finish.
Smoky Sails Trades Alien Serenity for Cannon Fire and Loot
Where Omno asked players to slow down and wander a wordless world of ancient creatures, Smoky Sails asks them to pick a fight with every ship on the horizon. The game is built around a classic arcade loop: fight naval battles against increasingly dangerous enemy vessels, collect loot from defeated ships, sell that loot at port, and spend the gold on better cannons, a sturdier hull, and more cargo capacity. Between engagements, players can explore uncharted islands for buried treasure and shipwrecks. Manke describes it on the Smoky Sails Steam page as "a short, handcrafted pirate adventure about cannons, treasure, and making increasingly poor decisions at sea."
The game is deliberately lean by design. There is no sprawling open world, no crew management system, and no requirement that players know anything about actual sailing. The Steam store listing tags the game under Exploration, Naval Combat, Casual, Sailing, Arcade, Stylized, Loot, and Short, among others — reinforcing the promise: this is a focused experience that does one thing and aims to do it well.
What Does Solo Dev Mean in Engineering Terms?
The "short and handcrafted" framing isn't just marketing — it reflects a set of concrete production decisions. In his Steam Community announcement, Manke described Smoky Sails as a project with "no character animations," a deliberate departure from both Omno and Kibu, where character animation was a major time investment consistent with his professional background as a freelance animator.
Character animation is one of the most labor-intensive components of solo game development. By building Smoky Sails around naval vessels rather than humanoid characters, Manke removes that bottleneck entirely. Coupled with a tight, loop-based design (fight → loot → upgrade → repeat) that limits systemic complexity, the project is engineered to be completable by one person working on a timeline he controls. The minimum PC requirements — Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, DirectX 10 with 1 GB VRAM — are consistent with a stylized, non-photorealistic visual approach that trades graphical fidelity for a distinctive aesthetic identity, as confirmed on the Smoky Sails system requirements page.
This isn't guesswork from a first-time developer. According to an Unreal Engine interview, Manke built Omno without a formal coding background, learning the engine from scratch through documentation and experimentation. The approach works when scope is managed — and Smoky Sails is, by the developer's own description, the most managed scope project he has built.
From Omno Success to Kibu's Long Road: Why This Game Exists Now
Smoky Sails is not Manke's second game. It is his third announced project, and the context around it matters.
Omno, released July 28, 2021, became a genuine solo-developer success story. It earned a 79 average on OpenCritic across 43 critics, won the Deutschen Entwicklerpreis (German Developer Award) and the Deutschen Computerspielpreis (German Computer Game Award), and reached a broad audience through its Xbox Game Pass day-one inclusion. Manke launched the game after a 2018 Kickstarter campaign that raised €97,769 (approximately $107,500 USD) against a €32,000 (approximately $35,000 USD) goal from more than 3,000 backers — nearly tripling its target. (Exchange rate as of July 22, 2026; conversions are approximate.)
That success created pressure. Manke announced Kibu — a more ambitious atmospheric adventure about a monk rebuilding a ruined temple in the wilderness, published by Future Friends Games — at the Wholesome Direct showcase in June 2023. But the game hit obstacles. In a mid-development community update covered by GameGrin, Manke acknowledged that an early demo build had been completed and then set aside after the developer concluded it wasn't what he had envisioned. Kibu remains listed as coming soon on its Steam page with no release date as of this writing.
Smoky Sails, according to Manke's own Steam post, emerged from that period as an intentional creative break: "a compact project with a manageable scope, no character animations, and a simple gameplay loop I could focus on making as satisfying as possible." He adds that it is "a small game, but I have genuinely enjoyed making it — and I'm quietly rather proud of how it is coming together."
That framing matters for prospective buyers. Smoky Sails is not a placeholder or a side project by a developer who has lost their footing — it reads as a deliberate recalibration by someone who understands their own creative process well enough to recognize when they need a change of direction.
Where, When, and How to Follow It
Smoky Sails is listed as coming soon on Steam for PC, with support for Windows 10 and Windows 11. No release date has been announced. The game supports Steam Achievements and Family Sharing, and will ship in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
The announcement trailer, released as part of the Games Composed in Germany 2026 showcase — a Steam sale running through July 27 featuring more than 400 games developed in Germany — is available on YouTube. Readers interested in following the game's progress can wishlist Smoky Sails on Steam or follow Studio Inkyfox on X at @StudioInkyfox.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Smoky Sails and who made it?
Smoky Sails is an upcoming short, handcrafted pirate adventure game for PC, developed solo by Jonas Manke under his Studio Inkyfox label — the same studio behind Omno, the award-winning 2021 atmospheric puzzle adventure. The game features arcade-style naval combat, a loot-and-upgrade loop, and island exploration, and is currently listed as coming soon on Steam with no release date confirmed.
What happened to Kibu, Manke's other game-in-development?
Kibu is a separate, more ambitious atmospheric adventure published by Future Friends Games that Manke announced in 2023 and has continued to develop. It remains unreleased, with no release date announced on its Steam page. Manke has been open about the challenges of developing it: a completed demo build was scrapped after it didn't match his creative vision, as detailed in his Steam Community post. Smoky Sails emerged explicitly as a "creative break" from that process — a smaller, more contained project.
How is Smoky Sails different from Omno?
The two games share almost no design DNA beyond their solo-developer origin. Omno was a wordless, meditative exploration game with an emphasis on environmental storytelling, creature encounters, and gentle puzzle-platforming — no combat at all. Smoky Sails is explicitly arcade in orientation: naval battles, loot collection, ship upgrades, and infamy building. The shift also reflects a production decision: Smoky Sails eliminates character animation entirely, reducing one of solo development's most time-consuming production requirements, as Manke explained in his Steam Community announcement.
When does Smoky Sails come out, and on which platforms?
No release date has been announced. The game is currently confirmed for PC (Windows 10 and 11) only, available through Steam. There is no announced console version. Readers can wishlist it on Steam to be notified when a release date is set.
