Heyoooooo~

This may come as quite a surprise to you, but it’s the summer right! Let me tell you, here, where our little team is located, it means things are getting warm! It’s hot, it’s sunny, and things are moving over here at Clever Endeavour. We’ve got lots of exciting updates to bring your way. Here’s a quick summary:

A new community manager appears: Syd!
We’re on Tiktok!
Big ‘ol Summer sales!
New initiative: Barnyard bMonday
UCH Summer Feature Levels on LevelNET
Charity donations
Things we’re looking forward to

New Community Manager Alert: Say Hello to Syd

Howdy! It’s me, Syd (they/them), writing my first blog post!

Here’s the scoop on me:

When I’m not community managing the Ultimate Chicken Horse community I’m over at Casa Rara Studio working on our new game Mini Maker: Make A Thing. When I’m not doing either of those, I’m squeezing in time for my Master’s in Creative Writing, because for some reason I love video games AND poetry the same amount. I also clearly love to suffer, because I have so much on my plate!

Some fun facts about me include:

I have a hairless cat named Ursula
I have to have three different “kinds” of drinks every morning (i.e: sparkling water, matcha, kombucha, tea, etc). They all have to have different textures and ~purposes~.
I can play the banjo

A pleasure to meet you, and a pleasure to be joining such a wonderful team and community. Can’t wait to get to know you all and bring some of my weird little self to the community. Come chat with me on our Discord to get to know me better!

Tiktokkin’ Time

For those of you who are as hooked on this platform as I am, or for those of you who love a good meme, follow our UCH TikTok for bizarrities. Or, check it out to get some wholesome content, like this TikTok on our community member and mod Terry:

Summer Sails Sales

It’s the summertime, which means fun, right? Or, it should, in my belief. Well, let us help you out! Throughout the summer we’ve organized a bunch of 50% off sales for Ultimate Chicken Horse–so keep an eye on our Twitter and on your system of choice to see when we’re on sale. If you already have the game…consider convincing a friend to join in on your obsession by flashing them this absolutely irresistible price!

UCH Lore???

If you’ve been on socials, you may have noticed this odd Monday occurrence as of the past few weeks: Barnyard bMonday. It includes a horribly photoshopped UCH animal alongside a very accurate and real piece of information about said animal. The folks on the UCH discord have asked whether it is the true lore of the game, to which I would like to reply the following:

Ultimate Chicken Horse is a fictional video game, whereas the facts I have been posting and inventing on the spot are 100% true and scientifically accurate and thoroughly tested. Be assured, that the money you spend on our game goes directly to the pursuit of this knowledge and of course, the betterment of animal kind. Here is the photo of the top scientists in our field working away at Barnyard bMonday:

If you have any suggestions for upcoming studies, feel free to message us on our Discord, Twitter, or by carrier pigeon.

Summer Feature Levels to Quench Your Thirst

If you’ve gotten this far and are still reading, here is where I admit to you that I loathe summer, the very concept of sweating disturbs me. However, I do like video games. That’s why the idea of interacting with summer from the safety of my computer sounds positively divine. With this in mind, please enjoy these wonderful community-made Summer-themed Levels!

A massive thank you to everyone who submitted a level, and to the levels council who helped choose which levels should be featured for this!

Charitable Donations

It’s been a while since our last blog post, so let me quickly catch you up to speed with all the different causes we’ve been supporting.

For Pride Month, we donated to a campaign run by game devs across the world to raise money for akt–a UK charity that supports lgbtq+ youth ages 16-25 by helping them find safe homes, employment, education and training.
We donated to Stop the Red Sea Spill, a UN campaign to remove a FSO Safer from Yemen's Red Sea coast to prevent further disparity or damage to surrounding reefs and sea life.
We updated and donated to several causes in support of Ukraine. Check out further information here if you’re looking for some guidance to help Ukrainians who are still in need of our support.
We ran a giveaway of this awesome Queer Games Bundle for our discord community. We figured the best way to support LGBTQ+ Devs was to put the money straight in their hands and to share their work!

Things We’re Looking Forward To…

If there are two things that are beloved to us at Clever Endeavour it is tea and cats. You can imagine how the game Pekoe has affected us once it landed on our radar. In this adorable cat-filled, tea cafe simulator you’re learning new techniques and tea-making styles, building relationships with townsfolk, and purchasing tea supplies and tools at other teahouses.

Aside from the adorable appearance, in these chaotic times, it’s been illuminating how important and necessary games are to keep us afloat. Pekoe’s focus on self-care and pursuing what makes one happy is a necessary breath of fresh air. Check out the trailer here:

Wishlist Pekoe here!

What else? Well, Community Manager Syd was extremely pumped to attend the online Disco MTL Summit last week. Disco MTL is a Game Discoverability Summit where one gets to attend talks and roundtables all centered around games, gaming communities, marketing, you name it! It was jam-packed with some incredible guests, including our pals at KO_OP Marcela Huerta and Jacob Blommestein, the hilarious and bright Victoria Tran of Innersloth, the exceptional Chris Zukowski, and the talented Philomena Schwab of Stray Fawn Studio. Extremely, extremely exciting! Aside from the huge chunk of knowledge dispersed throughout the week, Syd’s favourite part was attending a cocktail party and realizing these were the cups everyone was drinking from.

A few of us here at the studio are taking little vacations, so that’s pretty fun. It’s important to mix up hard work with some play, brains aren’t meant to always be working. So I hope you get a moment this summer to play a game or two (or two hundred) of UCH and relax–you’ve earned it.

Sorry, no donkey updates in UCH, but one of our co-founders Rich did go on vacation and spotted this cute little guy Morocco, near Moulay Idriss.

Hope you have a splendid Summer!

- The Clever Endeavour Team