Studio Investment, UCH Sales, INDIE Live Expo, and more!

Whew! What a month it has been for video games.

If you were hoping for news on the Ultimate Chicken Horse update or about our next title, sorry!! We’re still working on both, video games just take a long time to make.

With that said, here’s a summary of this month’s updates:

• Investing in Kitten Cup Studio

• Nintendo Switch and PlayStation sales

• Musical performance during INDIE Expo 2021

• Our donations for the month

Introducing: Kitten Cup Studio!

One of the things that helped get Clever Endeavour Games get off the ground was the incredibly generous investments from our friends and family.

And now that we’re in the privileged place to do so, and as we promised last year, we’re paying it forward by investing in the wonderful new game from fellow Canadian Kitten Cup Studio!

Kitten Cup Studio is working on their first studio title, Pekoe. Check out this trailer from the Wholesome Games Direct that happened over E3 weekend:

Game Description: Pekoe is a cute cat-filled tea-making simulation game about taking the time for self-care and connecting with the things that make you happy. As the newest resident and teahouse owner in town, you’ll learn over 12 unique rituals and tea-making styles to make an endless combination of recipes. Meet and build relationships with 16 unique characters in town, and visit the many teahouses to purchase exclusive teaware and ingredients.

Wishlist and follow the game on Steam: https://s.team/a/1626350

Here’s how you can learn more about Kitten Cup Studio and their upcoming came, Pekoe:

• Website

• Discord

• Twitter

With all of this in mind, we’re not becoming publishers just yet! Kitten Cup Studio gets to choose how they spend the money, keep their creative control, keep their IP, and we’re around if they have any questions about game development or need industry advice.

And before we get hundreds of pitches and inquiries, we’re not actively looking to invest in additional studios at the moment, but we plan to use any profits made from this investment to help other game studios get off the ground sometime in the future.

Ultimate Chicken Horse Sales

Looking for games to tide you over until the next big Nintendo release? Or maybe you’ve been trying to get your friend to join your farm hijinks?

Whatever the case, Ultimate Chicken Horse is 50% off in the following regions:

Americas: Until June 21

Europe: Until June 27

Head on over to the Nintendo eShop to grab the discount while you can!

For PlayStation users in Asia, Ultimate Chicken Horse is 50% off until June 23!

INDIE Live Expo 2021

Here’s something quite fun! The folks over at INDIE Expo asked us if their musical guests could perform the Ultimate Chicken Horse theme on the show this year.

Obviously, we said yes!

Check it out at 1:14:30 here:

Donation Corner

The employee initiative for May was led by Kyler who decided to split the donation between Palestine Children's Relief Fund and the International Red Cross.

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And that’s about it! Oh, and we can’t take off without wishing our LGBTQ+ community members a very happy pride month!!

<3

The Clever Endeavour Team

Looking for Our Next Team Member, Industry Event Sponsorships and More!

While we don’t have any exciting updates on the Ultimate Chicken Horse update or for our new working title, here are some things that we want to highlight for the month:

• We’re hiring!

• Industry Activities (Game Devs of Color, GameLoop)

• Donation Corner

Looking for the next ClevEnDev!

We’re looking for someone to join our small team!

This person will help us out around the studio with various tasks which will range from business administration to testing out our games.

The role is perfect for people who are looking to break into the gaming industry but maybe don’t have the education or experience to know what they want to specialize in.

If you’re interested, or know someone who would be, check out all the details and apply here:

https://www.workwithindies.com/careers/clever-endeavour-games-studio-assistant-qa

Industry Events and Sponsorships

 Game Devs of Color

Amplifying diverse voices is so incredibly important, so we’re so happy to be sponsors of this year’s Game Devs of Color Expo!

This fantastic event is open to everyone, so whether you’re a game developer or interested in game development, you can grab a ticket here and attend virtually September 23-27!

GameLoop

Speaking of event sponsorships, we’re also sponsoring GameLoop 2021!

We’ve participated in and sponsored GameLoop before, and it’s one of our favourite game developer events every year. While it looks a little different this year since it’s virtual, we’re excited to see what GameLoop Boston and Montreal have in store.

Grab a ticket here and attend the fun on July 17th. 

Donation Corner

Back in April we donated $30,000 to various charities for the critical COVID-19 situation in India. We wrote a bit about it here, and encourage you to donate too if you can as they continue to battle record high casualties.

On behalf of Asian Heritage Month and the rising number of hate crimes against Asians (you can read more about this here and here for Canada), we are donating $5,000 each to the Asian Canadian Benevolent Association, the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and Elimin8Hate.

As for our monthly employee-led charity of the month, in April Steph chose for us to donate to Food Banks Canada, which helps provide food to those in need and has been facing more demand than ever due to various COVID-19 factors.

What We're Working On, Humble Bundle and More!

If April showers bring May flowers? What does April snow bring? 🤔 (Yes, it snowed here in Eastern Canada this week 😥)

Here's a summary of this month's post:

• Studio update - what we're working on

• New Couch Classics Humble Bundle

• Twitch ANZ Event + Twitch Channel Update

• Charity Corner

Studio Updates

It's been a while since we've explicitly talked about what we're working on. We're still focusing primarily on our next game. We can't wait to share it with you, but there's still a ton of decisions and development to be done until we're ready to announce it.

We're also still working with our 3rd party partner to change up the server architecture for Ultimate Chicken Horse, which we mentioned back in February. Typical of game development, this has hit all sorts of bumps and snags, but it's making steady progress. As soon as we're confident about the release timing, we'll share the details on what else is coming with this update.

If only game development was as easy as hitting a "git'r'done" button!

Humble Bundle

Ultimate Chicken Horse is in the New Couch Classics Humble Bundle which is available until May 5!

If you haven't used Humble Bundle before, different games are available at different purchase points. For Ultimate Chicken Horse, if you pay above the bundle average listed on the page, you'll get Ultimate Chicken Horse, Nine Parchments, 20XX AND Door Kickers: Action Squad. At the time of writing, it costs ~$10 CDN for all of the games listed! If spend >$12.60 CDN on the bundle you'll also get Wargroove, Lethal League Blaze and biped.

After purchasing a bundle, you can keep as many games as you want for yourself and gift the remainder or you can purchase a whole bundle for a friend!

The best thing about Humble Bundle is you can choose how much of the purchase goes towards charity. While Humble Bundle has the incredible Stop AAPI Hate charity as the default option, you can swap it out for a list of other charities on the platform.

Grab the bundle here: http://bit.ly/UCHCouchClassics

Twitch ANZ Event + Twitch Channel Updates

Earlier this month Twitch ANZ hosted a streamer battle between 16 Australian and Kiwi partners.

Check out the VOD here and see how many Ultimate Chicken Horse easter eggs they placed in the host room! Thank you to Twitch ANZ for organizing the event and to all the streamers who participated.

Since we're talking about Twitch, we've gotten affiliate status on our channel! 🎉

This means you can now collect channel points by watching and redeem them for different things during livestreams. If you subscribe to our channel, you'll also get our PogChimp emote.

Any revenue from our streams will be donated to a charity of our choosing.

Charity Corner

Fabio led our employee-led charity donation in March and he chose to donate to Le PAS de la rue, an organization that helps homeless folks 55+ and older in Montreal with housing and support.

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And that’s it for this month! Stay safe and healthy, everyone!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Team