Staff Changes, Q&A Vlog, Vinyl Record and more!

Hola!

We’ve got a packed blog post for you this month! Staff changes, a Q&A vlog from the team, an Ultimate Chicken Horse patch, a vinyl soundtrack and piano score, and COVID-19 updates and donations. Let’s dive in.

The studio

First off, we’ve had some important staff changes here at the studio. Our programmer Ben announced his resignation at the end of March, deciding to move on from Clever Endeavour to explore new opportunities. His departure was smooth and there were no hard feelings, it was just time to move on and we wanted to share this news with our loving community. 

The team had decided to put out a job posting for a Unity 3D/2D artist at the start of April, which was going to take place regardless of Ben’s departure. We went ahead with this, and the applications for the job closed yesterday. We’re reviewing the applications and will be starting the interview process soon… exciting stuff!

In other staff change news, Geneviève will be slowly transitioning from Community Manager / QA into more of a production role. The timing of this transition is dependent on a few things like figuring out which project we will focus on next, and that little detail of a global pandemic stopping us from working together at the office. Once we have a clearer picture of what’s in store for us, we will look into hiring a community manager who will be trained by her. More to come on this front! 

ICYMI: Last week, the Clever Endeavour team did a live AskClevEndeav on Twitch, with the team on video conference answering questions from fans. We talked about our favourite things in Ultimate Chicken Horse and answered questions that came up in chat as we recorded. You can catch the recorded video here. (We’ve previously done a bunch of videos called AskClevEndeav which you can find on our YouTube channel.)

Ultimate Chicken Horse

After last month’s A·cobra·tic Update we needed to patch a few strange and elusive bugs. Make sure your game is updated to version 1.7.028 to get the fixes to those bugs, including a PS4 save data issue, our game making too many calls to the GameSparks servers (which we use for online play), and some performance stutters in the Treehouse and the Space level. You can see the full patch notes here.

In more Ultimate Chicken Horse news, the soundtrack is now on vinyl! Our partner Debug Records has made this two-vinyl record available on their store, so if you love Ultimate Chicken Horse and you love vinyl, you can grab it now. (For EU orders see this store).

Continuing on the music train, we’ve commissioned Laurence Manning to create a piano score for the main title music for Ultimate Chicken Horse (composed by Vibe Avenue). She’s got a great YouTube channel with piano covers of game music and some original compositions as well. You can download the piano score from our website here.

COVID-19

We want to thank you all again for how well the A·cobra·tic Update was received. This happened right at the time when COVID was starting to force people to stay inside, and we wanted to help some of the people who need it most in this crazy situation. For that reason, Clever Endeavour Games donated $50,000 CAD to a number of different charities including direct relief funds, food banks, and organizations that help with mental health—especially in times of crisis. 

We wanted to share the list of charities we gave to, because we believe they’re extremely worthy causes and it’s a good list to look at if people want to help out—especially in the Montreal area.

WHO Google Matching Fund: Google will match donations to the World Health Organization (WHO)

Food Banks

Moisson Montreal: Food bank in Montreal which distributes to smaller food banks as well

MultiCaf: Food bank in Montreal 

Sun Youth Food Assistance: Food bank in Montreal centered around emergencies

Shelters

La Rue Des Femmes (women’s shelter): Relational health centre that helps homeless women rebuild their lives and reintegrate into society

Chez Doris (women’s shelter): Shelter providing meals, respite, clothing, socio-recreational activities as well as practical assistance

Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal (women’s shelter): Frontline services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis (Aboriginal) women and children

Dans la Rue (youth shelter): Care for the immediate needs of homeless youth and help acquiring skills and resources to rebuild their lives

Health

St Mary’s Hospital with matching fund by Manulife: For medical equipment such as incubators, masks, and more

Head & Hands: Holistic approach to physical and mental health of youth (and they honestly do everything)

Revivre: Mental health organization devoted to those affected by anxiety, depressive or bipolar disorders

Suicide Action Montreal: Organization to prevent suicide and help survivors cope with its serious repercussions

Canadian Mental Health Association: Wide-ranging association which supports many smaller organizations to promote mental health

Portage: Addiction and rehab center helping people relating from substance-abuse related issues

If you made it this far, congrats. That’s a lot of Clever Endeavour news! We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and responsible with their social distancing! 

<3 
The Clever Endeavour Team