Online Updates and Features!

This week I'd like to talk about the new stuff that we've put in Ultimate Chicken Horse, which should help make the online experience much smoother.

The first big improvement is that when a player leaves the game, it no longer kicks everyone out. Previously, even if someone (who wasn't the host) left, the game would end and you wouldn't necessarily know what happened to kick you out. 

Next, we've added the ability to mute players, and to kick them from the Treehouse lobby or from the game. This mute feature is something that people have been asking for because, as we know, online players can sometimes get a little inappropriate. 

We've also re-made sure that the animal outfits are working in the online play, which had some issues previously. Oh and we fixed the networked audio bug so that all of the character and item sounds should be properly synced. 

Beyond that, just some bug fixes that you won't necessarily notice but were definitely in need of fixing. Then, the next step is to finish fixing all of the bugs and bring the online Beta out of Beta! Looks like it's coming soon, then we can start working on some more game content. Yay!

4-Pack for Ultimate Chicken Horse NOW AVAILABLE!

It's finally here! Go go go! 4 copies of Ultimate Chicken Horse for the price of 3!

Unfortunately, Steam no longer lets people do 4-packs of games. "But what about that other cool game that just came out and has a 4-pack?? Lies!" you cry out in anger. Well, apparently, the games that were in early access or already had Steam pages before a certain time (before ours) were able to keep their bundle packs. 

But that's alright! We have the solution, and it comes in the form of the Humble Bundle store. While it's not bundled like a monthly deal, they also have a storefront where we can put our product, and they've worked with us to make a custom deal which allows us to sell 4 for the price of 3. 

So, all that to say thanks to the Humble folks and their awesome team, and now you can enjoy UCH with friends and not worry about paying full price for 4 copies!

That's all for this week, we're continuing hard work to get the Beta out of Beta and into awesome. Expect updates soon!

May Game Development Update

We’re back! Well, we never left. But we have another update.

It’s been a year (and three days, fine…) since our Kickstarter for Ultimate Chicken Horse was funded! First of all, a huge thanks again all of our backers for their support. And thanks to you non-backers who have stayed interested regardless of Kickstarter. Without these backers and this community support, this game wouldn’t be what it is today and wouldn’t have a community of wonderful creative people making crazy stuff like this:

So what’s new in the last month, in terms of game development?

• Wider search regions (so that more games will show up)
• Bigger buffer in disconnect time so that it’s less likely you’ll get booted if someone’s internet slows down
• Public games in progress will show up in the lobby list, so that you can see if there’s a game that will soon be joinable
• Networked sudden death: in case of a tie, the game no longer freaks out
• Networked outfits: still a bit buggy but you should be able to see your friends’ outfits in online play
• Controller bug fixes
• Emotes and chat! Info in our blog post here. 

…and much more. For the list of changes, see the Steam forum Update Log here.

As you can see, almost all of the changes are bug fixes and improvements to the online mode. We’re working now toward bringing the online Beta out of beta and making sure that the game is as bug free as possible before adding more content (which we’re super excited for) and starting on console ports.

We were also at PAX East since the last update, which was another great show. It’s awesome to meet fans (or future fans) and to meet content creators and press, and see how much fun everyone has with the game. See more about PAX on our blog. 

Lastly, but not leastly, we came out on NVIDIA SHIELD! Their marketing folks were super helpful and now, if you have a SHIELD, you can play in your living room with their Android.TV box. Very cool stuff!

Alright actually lastly, we have an update about the YouTube hype we’ve been getting. We just got a video from Pewdiepie! If you don’t know who he is, you should. He basically owns YouTube.

We’re now up to over 23 MILLION VIEWS on YouTube of people watching other people play the game. That’s freaking awesome.

Till next time!