5 Years of Ultimate Chicken Horse
/It’s hard to believe we’re already 3 weeks into March. Does anyone really understand the passage of time anymore?
Here’s what to expect in today’s blog:
Celebrating Ultimate Chicken Horse’s 5th Anniversary
Industry Events
IGF Judging
Our Charity Donations of the Month
5-Year Anniversary
It may be hard to believe, but March 4th marked 5 years since Ultimate Chicken Horse launched on Steam! 🎉
Since this year’s update wasn’t ready, we celebrated with a special anniversary stream where we tested our memory of various community moments and even played a bit of an early Alpha to see how far the game has progressed since then. Check out the VOD here on YouTube.
If you’re looking for some more Ultimate Chicken Horse news and updates, check out our #AskClevEndeav stream from February 26th and come join us live on Twitch for the next one on March 26th!
Industry Events
This year we’re proudly sponsoring Comics x Games, a partnership of The Hand Eye Society and the Toronto Comics Arts Festival to showcase unique gaming content from a variety of indie studios. Keep an eye on their website for more news on the games and microtalks that will be featured May 8-12, 2021!
Our friends at Pixelles recently announced the recipients of their BIPOC Creator Program which will provide grants to several Canadian game creators. Check out the games and creators here.
We were also happy to hear that the Founder Support Fund at Damage Labs was fully funded this month! This fund will provide equity-free grants to help support marginalized game developers.
Ever wondered what a community manager does? Our own community manager, Steph, wrote a personal blog that breaks down the various roles and responsibilities that this very fluid role tends to have as well as the various different external factors that have huge impacts on how community managers work.
IGF Judging
Every year, the Independent Games Festival (IGF) celebrates the incredible variety of indie games created by our global community of talented creators. (As some of you might recall, Ultimate Chicken Horse was an IGF nominee in 2017 for the Excellence in Design award!)
For the 2021 edition, a grand total of 504 games have been submitted and collectively judged for nomination in 6 categories. For a second year, Eve and Rich heeded the call to be part of the small army of IGF judges, and they’d like to shine the spotlight on a few of the entries they were assigned.
The IGF category winners will be announced at the IGF Awards Ceremony on July 21st.
Eve
I love the IGF Judging season, because it gets me to play games I might not have picked up otherwise - or even heard of! It’s always a pleasure to witness the sheer creativity of indie developers and to stumble upon the gems that are worthy of nomination. This year, two games particularly caught my attention.
The first is Ikenfell, an old-school turn-based tactical RPG in a fresh modern packaging. It’s about a group of magic students uncovering dark secrets, fighting for the greater good, and forging friendships along the way.
I had heard a lot of good things about Ikenfell, and after playing it for a few hours, I can see why. The pixel art aesthetic is quite lovely, the writing is super wholesome, and the music is absolutely banging. The turn-based combat works very well, and it has a timing mechanic that spices it up. None of these individual characteristics would normally sell me on a game, but Ikenfell ends up being greater than the sum of its parts, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s into the genre.
The second entry I want to mention has a completely different vibe. Booth: A Dystopian Adventure is a retro-futuristic game by a solo developer, Guanpeng Chen. In this game, you are a food inspector in a world where environmental collapse has given rise to famine and food-centric authoritarian governments.
The gameplay is very reminiscent of Papers, Please, where tedium and micro-decisions under strict authority are tools for world-building and storytelling. Booth is a little long, and more than a little bleak, but it kept me coming back to learn more about this dystopian world and the conflicting interests at play. If you’re into that kind of experience, it’s worth checking out.
Rich
I always love judging for the Indie Games Festival because it lets me have a look at a very wide variety of games ranging from single-person hobby projects to 12-person games with AAA-level polish. I want to point to two games that I played this year that really stood out to me.
The first is The Signifier, which you can find on Steam here. It’s a trippy detective game where you delve into a murder victim's subconscious and see the world through different perspectives—what their memory reports to have seen in the physical world and what their emotions report seeing. The visuals are stunning, the story is intriguing, and the audio ties it all together to really give a feel of creepiness and mystery without being scary.
The second is a student game called Vessels, which you can find here. I can't tell you too much about the game without ruining the story, but you're some sort of astronaut who is in the airlock of your ship, and your crew asks you questions to try to make sure you're safe to come back on board. I really liked how the narrative is done, and I really felt myself fighting back against what other characters said and did—but *as* the character in the game, not as myself. This was a cool feeling and really got me immersed. Would recommend!
Charity Corner
As a continuation of our employee-led charity initiative, Gen got to pick the charity for February and chose the Canadian Civil Liberties Association which fights against rights violations, inequality, discrimination and abuse of police powers in Canada.
Since March is Women’s History Month, check out this list of charities and organizations that help amplify and empower women inside and outside of the games industry.
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As the days become longer and the weather warmer, we hope that you all stay safe and healthy!
<3
The Clever Endeavour Team
