Hey there everyone!

We've got a jam-packed blog for you today, so here's the TL;DR:

We have a new team member, Steph!
Changes are coming to the Ultimate Chicken Horse server architecture
We're doing Twitch streams again
Sharing the community survey results
New Valentine's Day feature levels are now live
Nintendo Switch promo results in ~125k first-time players
Code Coven’s Modern Magicks conference
Charity donations: Ocean Conservancy and ChocoBowl

New Team Addition

Steph here, writing my first ever blog post! I joined the Clever Endeavour team back in January as the new community manager since Eve, the previous community manager, is moving on to do more production work within the studio.

I came from agency life where I worked on a whole bunch of gaming titles that ranged from indies to AAA, and I'm super excited to bring my experience to the team! While the rest of Clever Endeavour is in Montreal, I'm currently located in Toronto so it'll be a little while until I can meet them all in person and eventually move over there myself.

I'm already having a blast with the team and am working on a bunch of new community initiatives, so I look forward to communicating with you all.

Upcoming Server Update

Some time ago we vaguely alluded to having a small Ultimate Chicken Horse update in the works, and with the game’s 5th anniversary approaching fast, some of you must be wondering if those two events will line up.

Because we have gotten some questions about this already, we feel the need to disclose that the update will unfortunately not come out in March. In fact, we still don’t know when it will come out, but we can say that it’s still a few months away.

This is because, in addition to the content that we are planning to add to the game, one major change is in the works: online server migration. We’ve known for a little while now that the Unity Relay Servers that we use will be deprecated at some point in the coming years. In order to future-proof the game, we need to move away from those servers.

We’re currently working with an outsourcing company that has started work on this server migration. Changing the whole server architecture is no small task, and they have already hit roadblocks, causing delays in our initial plans. For example, they’re going to need to upgrade the version of Unity the game is built in, a process that will also force them to update external plugins we use, as well as all console-related development tools, and will almost certainly break some things in the game.

To put it succinctly: There is an Ultimate Chicken Horse content update in the works, it will come out sometime this year, but we still don’t know when.

Twitch Streams

Come join us for weekly streams over on Twitch!

Every week I (Steph) will be playing community challenge levels and answering questions in chat. I'm also planning to do a monthly #AskClevEndeav stream with our other team members so you should see the #AskClevEndeav stream a little more regularly.

We stream every week on Friday 3-4 pm EST except for tomorrow (Feb 19) as we have the day off!

Join us: twitch.tv/cleverendeavourgames

Community Survey

A few weeks ago we asked for community feedback on multiple social platforms. Here are the main findings:

The top 3 social platforms used are: YouTube, Discord, Twitch
Platforms participants play on (in order): PC, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation
Most loved current initiatives: Fan Art Gallery, AskClevEndeav, Discord
Most wanted future initiatives: In-game stats, community contests, tournaments

The survey also highlighted some confusion as to how we pick art pieces for the Fan Art Gallery or levels for Feature Friday so we have clarified about art pieces here and Eve shared some insight for how we pick levels for Feature Friday.

Thank you to the 120+ people who participated in the survey, it's given us a lot to think about and consider.

Valentine's Levels

We have a whole bunch of sweet Valentine's levels now featured on the LevelNET in Ultimate Chicken Horse. Go check them out while they're available!

Nintendo Promo in Asia

As we mentioned in last month’s blog post, in late January we had a free trial of Ultimate Chicken Horse in several Asian regions, including Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. For one week players in these regions could play the full game for free if they had a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. For those who wanted to continue playing past the trial period, there was a sale so they could buy their own copy of the game.

This trial resulted in the busiest times we've ever seen in Ultimate Chicken Horse! We estimate that the trial brought in 125k first-time players over a week, and we saw almost 10k concurrent players on January 30th! A total of 85k people played UCH at some point on that same day, another all-time record.

Code Coven’s Modern Magicks

For those who’d like to check in on the Code Coven Elevate 2020 cohort and the teams we mentored, we thought we’d point you towards the Modern Magicks conference, which will take place on February 20th. This streamed event will highlight some of Elevate’s projects and developers, including a talk by Caldera Interactive about building an ethical game studio.

Charity Corner

Rich led this month's employee-led donation and he chose Ocean Conservancy. This organization advocates for various solutions to the multiple challenges facing our oceans and the wildlife within them. This includes protecting the Arctic, fighting climate change, creating sustainable fisheries and creating trash-free seas.

We also donated $400 to the ChocoBowl, a yearly stream where game developers play a classic RPG for charity. This year they were raising money for The Bail Project.

That's it for now! Looking forward to seeing you next month, or in our Twitch streams before that!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Team