Good day, friends of Clever Endeavour!

Here’s what we’d like to share with you this month:

A new behind-the-scenes series about the A-cobra-tic update for Ultimate Chicken Horse
Damage Labs, a Canadian studio startup program we will mentor
IndieCade Anywhere and Everywhere, an upcoming games event you can back now on Kickstarter
This month’s selected charity: the Climate Emergency Fund

Let’s dive in!

Behind the scenes of A-cobra-tic

Earlier this week, we published the first article in a brand new behind-the-scenes series that will illuminate how we develop updates for Ultimate Chicken Horse. We tend to be extremely secretive with new content before its release, so this series will hopefully help you get a better understanding of our process, and of why we don’t like to share too much, too early.

In these articles, we will explain the many steps and iterations it took to make every major feature in the A-cobra-tic Update, which was released earlier this year. You’ll learn about the kinds of design decisions we make when we add new characters, levels, and blocks to the game, and see images we’ve never shared before of the various concepts we refined or abandoned along the way.

The first feature we have written about is the flamethrower block. Here’s a sneak peek:

Read the article to find out why we scrapped this adorable concept in favor of the one we ended up putting in the game!

This behind-the-scenes series will have 7 weekly installments including this one. The next one, which will be posted next Tuesday, will reveal the origins of the Snake character and its Cobra reskin. Keep an eye out for it on our blog or on social media!

The Damage Labs studio startup

In late August, Clever Endeavour became a mentor for the new Damage Labs studio startup program, an initiative from DMG Toronto for new and aspiring Canadian founders.

Damage Labs is “a free program for founders from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds ready to start a game studio” that will guide its cohort to build game studios that are sustainable, inclusive, and ethical.

Applications are open until October 14th, and the program will run from October 26th to April 20th, demanding 15 hours per week. If you are in a new independent game studio in Canada led by a person who belongs to an underrepresented identity group, we highly recommend that you consider applying!

IndieCade Anywhere and Everywhere

IndieCade has been organizing festivals and events to support, showcase and celebrate independent games internationally since 2005. They have had to make significant changes to their operations this year to bring us their yearly festival and awards ceremony online, and are now raising funds on Kickstarter to scale their digital platform to be a sustainable, year-round space for the celebration of independent games.

We were happy to back their campaign to help them create this digital space, and we invite fans of the indie landscape to join us and help IndieCade reach their funding goal!

If you’re interested in attending this year’s online festival, it will take place online on October 16-24. Fifty nominated games will be showcased and livestreamed. The streams, virtual booths, nominee gallery, and Discord community hub will be free for everybody to access. Other perks like private Zoom sessions and Discord channels, priority registration in tournaments, and industry networking opportunities will require a paid ticket.

Tickets will be on sale Monday, September 28th. You can follow IndieCade’s Twitter account for the latest festival news.

The charity corner

Finally, as part of our monthly employee-led donation program, Kyler chose to make a charitable contribution to the Climate Emergency Fund for the month of August. This donation will go towards supporting organizations and activists who bring awareness to the public about the threat of climate change, and who demand urgent action from leaders.

Thank you for reading, and keep being awesome!

<3
The Clever Endeavour team