New Feature Sneak Peek!

As you may or may not know, we've been working on a new feature for Ultimate Chicken Horse here at Clever Endeavour Games. This is a feature that people have been asking for for a while, and we think that it might help bring the community engagement to the next level.

As you can see in the gif above, we show a player placing several blocks at once. But what does this all mean??? Well, it means that we're working on a free play mode where you can build as much as you'd like, play around, attach stuff, blow stuff up, and generally make the wacky creations you've always dreamed of making. 

In free play, one or more players can move between running and placing at their own pace, without game rules or scores or restrictions. We've already seen people make some crazy stuff (like the pic below, from Kenshi9000) even though the tools were really not there for it... we're hoping that these new tools will bring the game to a point where it encourages this creativity and allows friends to enjoy the full ultimateness of the creation side of Ultimate Chicken Horse. 

Online is out of Beta, Twitch Votes and New Content!

Hi UCHers! This week's update comes in the form of a video, which will help describe all of the new things we've tweaked and added to Ultimate Chicken Horse. To make sure you have the newest stuff, make sure you Verify your Game Cache the next time you play. Take a look at the new things:

Grab the 4-pack of UCH (on sale until September 26th!) and play online with friends or join the vibrant community; there are always several matches available online for you to join, and the new updated lobby shows you the best matches possible based on skill, connection quality, and other factors.

We've also added Twitch integration, where Twitch streamers can have their audience vote on which blocks will appear in the Party Box. Once the chosen platform is placed, the names of the people who voted will pop out of it.

Next up is a new level, the Pier!

This level features a giant wave that the players need to run away from... don't get caught underneath! The level makes for an interesting dynamic when players have to place obstacles on the path with the added pressure of constantly needing to move forward quickly.

Our newest block added to the game is a punching plant which gets angry when you come near it, then punches out in a fit of flowery rage a second later. If you get caught in its range, you may regret it.

We're pretty excited to have these updates out, and we're still working hard on the game. Next up is a big new feature, please follow us on your favourite social media site to stay informed!

What are you most excited about? What would you like to see next? Be sure to Tweet at us and let us know :) We're going to start working on Sandbox mode shortly, which we'll talk more about in future updates. Stay posted!

For the full list of changes in this newest update, you can see the patch notes here. 

Self-Skill-Balancing With our New Handicap Feature

Hello internet! This week we wanted to introduce to you our new handicap feature, which will be coming out in the next release. A handicap is a game balancing feature that some games implement to allow certain players to score more points, take more damage, or somehow align themselves when playing against players of a vastly different skill level.

In our game, we've run into some issues where players will feel mismatched, and the game doesn't do anything to help that. This is a common problem in competitive games, like Smash Bros (from where the screenshot above is taken). The answer in Smash Bros (a cartoony fighting game) is to give players a percentage which increases the damage that they take, and thus makes it harder for them to win. In our case, we've decided to do a similar thing, but where players have a score multiplier that reduces their score by a percentage:

Of course, players can't add some amount of points to their score, because that would end up with a race to increase the handicap and would lead to a stalemate. Here we count on the players themselves to realize that they're much better, and use the handicap to even things out. This will be easy to do from the Treehouse lobby, and should be simple enough to agree on when playing locally.

We're not entirely sure how the handicap will be used online, and if players will realize that they're better and / or be willing to reduce their score to make a more fun match, but we'll find out soon enough! This feature and a whole bunch of other stuff will be coming in our next major update :)