Ultimate Chicken Horse Winter Levels and Games to Play for the Holidays
/Hello, Ultimate Animals!
This is the very last Clever Endeavour monthly round-up of 2020! It hasn’t been easy, but we made it through the year.
Here’s what’s in store:
We’re looking for YOUR Winter-themed levels to feature in Ultimate Chicken Horse
Damage Labs has announced its first cohort of game studios
The Queerness and Games Conference 2020 talks are available online
You can pre-order the Slice of Life: Songs from Wholesome Games vinyl to benefit the Galaxy Fund for game prototypes
We made you a list of our favorite online multiplayer games and video chat platforms for the Holidays
Our latest charity picks are Chez Doris and The Gazette Christmas Fund
Let’s go!
Ultimate Chicken Horse call for levels
Everyone at Clever Endeavour will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so the regular Feature Friday event – where we add 4 new user-made levels to the featured tab in Ultimate Chicken Horse at the end of every week – will be on a short hiatus.
To make up for it though, we’re going to feature 15 wintery and festive levels this Friday, December 18th for you to enjoy over the Holidays! Read the details in the Steam event, and make sure to send us your Winter-themed levels today or tomorrow for a chance to be selected.
Our other clever endeavours
As usual, the studio has been involved in a few initiatives in the games industry that we’d like to share with you this month.
First off, Damage Labs, a studio startup program we sponsor, has announced its first cohort of selected founders and studios. We’re super excited to learn more about these teams and their projects in the coming weeks! If you’d also like to help 10 innovative game studios by giving them the opportunity to thrive, you can still donate to the Damage Labs Founder Support Fund, which has raised 75% of its goal so far.
Next, the 2020 online edition of the Queerness and Games Conference, which took part gradually over the months of October to December, has now come to an end. We sponsored QGCon early in the year, when it was slated to happen at Concordia University in Montréal in the month of May, but life clearly had other plans for all of us. Nevertheless, the organizers managed to move the whole event to YouTube, where you can now find all recordings. (Note that some mature subject matters are discussed!)
Last but not least, you might recall that we sponsored the Galaxy Fund back in July. There’s a new cool way to contribute to this game prototype fund: by pre-ordering Slice of Life: Songs From Wholesome Games, a vinyl compilation of soundtracks from 21 different indie games! You get great music and a gorgeous album, and a diverse group of studio founders get the proceeds. Win-win!
Things to do over the Holidays
This Holiday season, most people will rely on the power of the Internet to celebrate with loved ones. Because of that, we thought we might as well share some of our favorite games and tools that make online get-togethers more fun! Of course you can always play Ultimate Chicken Horse, but you know that already, so we’ll focus on other things this time. ;)
Here’s a short list of games that we have been playing as a team all year for our Friday game time:
An oldie but a goodie! It’s very simple: you get plopped down somewhere on Earth via Google Street View, and have a limited amount of time to deduce your location on the world map. You’ll only need one paid account to generate and share Challenges with an unlimited number of players.
Skribbl is a free multiplayer drawing and guessing game, like Pictionary, where scoring is based on how quickly you can guess the word (or others guess your word). You can join random lobbies or create private rooms for up to 12 players.
In the same vein, we’ve been playing a lot of Drawful 2 by Jackbox Games. In this one, the drawing prompts are a little bit wackier, and once everyone has written their guess, you have to try and find out which one was correct. You get points for fooling people into thinking your caption was the initial prompt!
There’s nothing quite like mini-putt, and this is a very fun and well made online version of that. The levels start off simple enough, but progressively become more and more ridiculous, and incorporate things you’d never get to see in a real-life course, like cannons and jetpacks.
If you’re just looking to hang out with people virtually, you might find that Zoom isn’t the best for large group gatherings – or maybe you’re just tired of it, on account of having spent so many (school)work hours on there this year. For something more dynamic for your Holiday parties, where you can quickly create separate sub-rooms for people to break off into, we suggest that you check out these two alternatives:
Walk around a virtual pixel art space, and automatically get into voice / video chats with the people who are nearest to you. Tables and rooms act as semi-private chat bubbles.
With a simple interface, turn a larger conference call into a collection of dynamic groups and circles of conversation.
The charity corner
In November, as part of the Clever Endeavour employee-led donation initiative, Alexis chose to make a charitable contribution to Chez Doris, a Montréal-based shelter for homeless women whose mission is to give women in need a safe and nonjudgmental environment where confidentiality is assured.
For December, the whole team decided to give our monthly donation budget to the Gazette Christmas Fund, which gets distributed to some of the neediest families in the Montréal community.
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That’s all for this last update of 2020!
Take care of yourself and others over this challenging Holiday season. We’re wishing you all the best, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all again in January!
Happy Holidays, and happy New Year!
<3
The Clever Endeavour team
