The search for a new Community Manager, and industry events

Howdy, Ultimate Chicken Horse fans and other friends of Clever Endeavour!

It’s time for another monthly round-up of what we’ve been up to. Here’s the short version:

• Ultimate Chicken Horse is in a gift box of 100% Québec indies

• The final articles of the A-cobra-tic behind-the-scenes series are out

• We’re reviewing applications for a new Community Manager

• The Pixelles Creator Fund we sponsored has selected recipients

• We’re sharing a simple Unity 2D animation pipeline for beginners

• GAMERella took place this past weekend

• Our whole studio attended an anti-oppression workshop

• This month’s charity pick is Les Petits Frères

Phew! Get ready to read about all this — or scroll down to the bits you want to read. We’ll never know.

Ultimate Chicken Horse news

As we’re approaching the season of Winter Holidays, some of you might be looking for a good way to give the gift of Ultimate Chicken Horse and/or other such indie games to loved ones. If so, you might want to check out the new Prestige Giftbox, which offers a selection of games made independently in Québec, including UCH!

This past month, we published the final 2 articles in our 7-part series of behind-the-scenes exposés on the development of the A-cobra-tic Update. These last articles covered the making of The Ballroom and the beehive.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this series and give us your feedback!

Clever Endeavour news

As it turns out, the A-cobra-tic behind-the-scenes blog series may very well have been Eve’s last big project as our Community Manager. Indeed, as we mentioned way back in April, she’s going to be transitioning to a Producer and Marketing Manager role, and the time has finally come for us to onboard a new person to take on the community management duties.

We started looking for applicants in late October, and now that the submission period is over, we are in the process of reviewing the many applications we received. If you applied, rest assured that you will hear back from us in due time! Lots of you expressed interest, so it’ll just take us a bit of time to move on to the next step and arrange interviews.

Also in late October, Pixelles announced their selections for the Pixelles Creator Fund 2020. As sponsors for the fund, we are super excited to see what these game projects will become! Go check them out, and give the devs a follow!

We’ve also been involved in this year’s Pixelles Game Incubator program, with two of our team members (Kyler and Alexis) making themselves available as mentors for the 2020 cohort of first-time game-makers. To this effect, Kyler wrote up scripts and instructions for a simple 2D animation workflow in the Unity game engine, which you can find here. Check it out if you’re interested in learning how to animate 2D sprites in Unity, and let us know what you think!

While we’re still on the mentoring train, this past weekend Rich and Kyler acted as mentors for the Gamerella game jam. As we mentioned last month, this is a super fun weekend of lightning-speed game development where participants make a playable game with new friends in just two days. On the whole, it seemed that people were busy jamming away, but we both got to help in a meaningful way to guide some teams who were stuck part way through.

Finally, everyone at Clever Endeavour and our friend studio Artifact 5 got together yesterday to virtually attend an anti-oppression workshop directed by the wonderful Malek Yalaoui, an educator and advocate. It was an unconventional reunion for our studios after being out of our shared working space for 8 months (and counting), but an important one. Malek facilitated great discussions among us, and gave us lots to think about as we all continue trying to be a force for good in the games industry and in the world.

The charity corner

As part of our studio’s monthly employee-led donation initiative, for the month of October, Fabio’s chosen charitable organisation was Les Petits Frères. Their mission is to counter the isolation of seniors aged 75 and older, which is a cause we feel is especially important during the pandemic.

That’s all! Thanks for tuning in!
We’ll see you next month!

<3
The Clever Endeavour team

Supporting Developers and Playing Croquet!

Hello friends!

No, unfortunately we did not support game developers by playing croquet, but that would be lovely if we could. Short update this month, as we’re still working on new prototypes and don’t want to share what we’re working on yet.

First off, we’d like to point your attention to this GoFundMe campaign called the Galaxy Fund, a “prototype fund for women, BIPOC, and queer founders of game development studios”. We donated to this fund and we think it’s a great cause, so if you’d like to show your support for marginalized developers, here’s a good place to do that.

Next, the team did a little picnic in the park where we met Alexis in person for the first time! It’s quite strange to meet someone in person after speaking to them every day on video chat since mid-May, but it was great! We can confirm that he is real. So we had a picnic with some food that Kyler picked up, and we played croquet! For many of us, it was our first time. For Kyler, who won twice, it seems it was not his first time.

And of course, after our hard work at playing croquet, we had celebratory ice cream. I think everyone appreciated the outing! Pics below 👇

Lastly, a quick reminder that every Friday we put up new featured levels for you to try out. To keep up to date with our goings-on, follow us on Twitter.

Simply launch the game, go into the underground area, and go to the ‘Featured’ tab in the computer to try them out!

That’s all we’ve got for today folks. Keep in touch!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Crew

Welcoming Alexis, Black Lives Matter Donations and More!

Well helloooooo there!

First off, welcome to our newest employee, Alexis! I think his words put it best—his job is to “fill in the cracks where needed and generally act as a jack-of-all-trades with an emphasis on prototyping.” There were some excellent candidates who applied, but his technical knowledge and experience with tool-building in Unity made him a perfect fit for our search.

As you probably know, we’ve been prototyping new game ideas and it’s been amazing to see how quickly the prototypes can move forward with his help. We’re psyched! It’s also interesting to note that he’s been with the team for three weeks now and we’ve never met in person, and probably won’t for a little while despite us all being in Montreal together.

Here’s one of my favourite things from his portfolio, a foliage tool that lets you plant seeds and procedurally see them flourish in your scene:

Also, our Ultimate Chicken Horse vinyl records are shipping now. If you haven’t gotten one yet (and you like records), here it is!

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Next up, we wanted to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and our commitment to helping to fight against racism and prejudice in the games industry and beyond. You may have seen our statement on social media right when the protests were starting in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. In that statement, we promised that we were dedicating time to thinking about how we can help moving forward, and our plan is drafted and currently being reviewed. We will share it as soon as we can.

First off, we’re making a one-time donation of $40,500 to help support the Black Lives Matter movement through a number of organizations that help support black youth, fight hate groups, give scholarships, and more. We split this donation among the organizations below:

Canadian Race Relations Foundation: The CRRF contributes to the elimination of racism and racial discrimination in Canadian society through research, distribution of information, resources, consultation, training, promotion of policies and programs, and more.

Canadian Anti-Hate Network: Monitors, exposes, and counters hate groups in Canada.

Black Youth Helpline: Multicultural helpline and services for children, youth, families, school boards, and other youth serving organizations.

DESTA Black Youth Network: Supports Black youth aged 18 to 35 in reaching their educational, employability, and entrepreneurial goals.

This shows how massive the Montreal protest in support of Black Lives Matter was. We’re proud! Video by Renzel

Black Business and Professional Association: The BBPA aims to advance Black communities in Canada by delivering programs that support business and professional excellence, education, and economic development.

Marsha P Johnson Institute: The MPJI protects and defends the human rights of Black transgender people by organizing, advocating, creating a healing community, and developing transformative leadership.

Center for Research Action on Race Relations: Promotes racial equality and combats racism in Canada through advocacy and legal defense, charter research and litigation, research-action projects, conferences and seminars, consultations and training, and more.

Black Health Alliance: Working to improve the health and well-being of Black Communities in Canada through research, public policy, fundraising, and more.

Standing Committee for the Support of Demonstrators: The SCSD aims at supporting individuals facing repression in the context of demonstrations and street protests.

Clinique Juridique de Saint-Michel: The CJSM promotes access to justice though legal consultation services, conferences and workshops.

Protégeons Montréal-Nord Ensemble: A Hoodstock initiative to distribute protective equipment and sanitation kits to one of Canada's poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods, which has been hit extremely hard by COVID-19.

But we recognize that a one-time donation, while helpful, isn’t a long-term solution to racism or a long-term commitment to anti-racism. For that reason, we’ve formalized our commitment to help all groups that are underrepresented in the games industry in a number of ways. It starts with learning, and continues with varying levels of financial commitment including long-term sponsorships of important organizations in the industry, donations, funding for investments into teams led by members of marginalized communities, and more. We’re still finalizing that page and will share it on our social media as soon as it’s ready. It will also be included in next month’s blog post.

None of these donations would be possible without the amazing community around Ultimate Chicken Horse, so we have you to thank most of all for the opportunity to help fight this cause. It’s amazing to me that through a cartoony party game, we can potentially help people in a significant way and try to fight for lasting change in our industry. Thank you again!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Team