A new character joins the animal party! Meet Hippo in this FREE content update for Ultimate Chicken Horse, coming to you on September 20, 2021 on all supported platforms!

The Hippo-Party-Plus update includes:

• 1 new character: Hippopotamus

• 1 new alternative skin: Triceratops

• 4 new outfits: Floatie (Hippo), Cowboy Boots (Hippo), Balloon (Hippo) Jockey Outfit (Horse)

• 1 new level: Rollercoaster

• Tons of bug fixes

As with previous updates, you’ll be able to unlock the new character, reskin, outfits and level by collecting unlock boxes on all levels with a ? sign. No purchase necessary.

This update also comes pre-installed on the physical Switch edition [link] cartridge!

New Character: Hippopotamus

Alternative Skin: Triceratops

Head all the way back to the Cretaceous period with Hippo’s alternative skin: Triceratops!

This alternative Hippo skin is compatible with all of the regular Hippo accessories. How did Triceratops safely join the rest of the animals? No one really knows, but we heard it had something to do with a very special car...

New Outfits

Once you’ve become acquainted with Hippo, you’ll be able to unlock these nifty accessories for Hippo and Triceratops:

• Cowboy boots: While Hippo usually has dancing shoes on, sometimes they get swapped out for these trusty boots.

• Balloon: Picked up from the fairground, its name is Wilson.

• Floatie: Hippo can’t swim, so they need this device when they go to the pool with the other animals.

Despite being in the game title, Horse has always been one accessory short, compared to the other critters. But fear not, we bought Horse a new outfit! 

Horse loved it so much we made sure to provide 7 different colour variations: blue, orange, green, purple, red, pink and yellow. While Horse is convinced the outfit is streamlined for speed, it doesn’t do much other than look cool. 

New Level: Rollercoaster

The whole cast and crew have ventured off to the local theme park and a certain attraction has caught their eye: this speeding roller coaster!

Once unlocked, this map will have players placing blocks and traps that allow them to safely pass under the tracks and towards the finish line via another piece of totally safety-compliant scaffolding.

Make sure to keep your appendages away from the ride at all times; it will send you right to the grave if you get too close!

Other Additions & Bug Fixes

Minor Features

• Ultimate Chicken Horse has been updated to Unity 2020 - some beta testers have reported a smoother, more optimized feel to the game

• Added a Help and Tips section to the pause menu

• Adjusted some physics for better wall experiences

• Players can no longer spam the pause button, which previously let players exploit level timers and some physics

• Added some new backgrounds for community level creations

• Players can now delete custom levels that they have uploaded

• Level Fullness is always displayed in freeplay build mode

Bug Fixes

• Adjusted some physics for better wall experiences (smoother motion on wall slides and less likely to “bounce” off walls)

  • Fixing these physics problems has had a cascading effect that we believe improves the feel of the game, and makes it slightly more responsive. It does slightly change the fundamental physics of the game, and some previous advanced techniques will have to be rediscovered or adjusted.

• “Follow player” camera fixed after respawns and in Sudden Death

• Punching Flowers punch in the correct direction on flipped treadmills

• Run Time Limit properly ends rounds when players have multiple respawns remaining

• Zombies are able to pick up coins

• Parkour preset properly applies block probabilities and removes trap blocks

• Fixed cursor regions when using controllers on ultra-wide monitors 

• Added collision areas to Ballroom to prevent spawn kills from placing blocks too close

• Bees give trap points

• Fixed various issues with Bees respawning

• Bees now deactivate when player dies and turns into a Zombie

• More consistent platforms in Treehouse

• Fixed some localizations so they properly appear in UI

• Fixed various other localization mistakes

• Zombies should no longer lock up games in certain scenarios

• Twitch chat no longer overrides block probability settings

• Fixed small issues with animal artwork

• Challengeboard scoreboard no longer briefly shows the world record message from a previous attempt

• Fixed non-slippery ice when you crouch immediately while landing

• Fixed Jetpack sound sometimes never ending in the inventory

Changes

• Sudden death will always have a timer

• No longer able to wall jump off ceiling

• Made animal dead colliders more consistent with each other

• Scaffolding now has a consistent rotation speed when attached to rotating blocks for all orientations

• Picked up coins won't slow rotating platforms as you move away from the platform with the coin

• Upblowers are no longer able to blow through the moving platforms that they are attached to

• Slightly increased Canon level fullness cost

A Note About Future Updates

First off, thank you to everyone who has played Ultimate Chicken Horse over the past 5+ years. This game is what it is today thanks to your love and support, and we’re so incredibly grateful that we’ve been able to support it for so many years!

This update took so much longer to come out versus our initial prediction, and we want to share some context as to why. Last year we discovered that the online architecture we use was going to be retired in the next few years so we started looking for alternatives. We have every intention of keeping Ultimate Chicken Horse functional for as long as we can. Unfortunately, what seemed like a simple thing to change ended up being… not so simple at all. The solutions we found weren’t compatible with the Unity version we have used since the game’s conception and upgrading it to the 2020 version caused a bunch of plugins to break, new issues cropped up on various platforms and so much more. This work already would have taken much longer than expected and it was just made significantly worse with COVID. The original work we had set out to do was taking so much longer than planned, that we made the decision to release new content now rather than wait for the more technical backend architecture to be completed.

This update was also undertaken in tandem with our new project at Clever Endeavour Games - something we’re extremely excited to be working on! If we were a larger studio, we could probably continue to update Ultimate Chicken Horse while working on a new IP. The reality is that we’re only 6 people and this update has already significantly impacted the development of our new title.

While we are not saying there won’t ever be new content for Ultimate Chicken Horse, this is the last content update that we have planned for the foreseeable future. We know this will be sad or disappointing for some - there are so many great ideas for new characters, levels, modes and so much more. For us, too, it feels a bit scary as we move into new territory.

To be clear, this does not mean we’re completely shutting down the game. We just spent so much time and energy on making sure this game lasts for as long as it can! We’re still going to finish the online architecture update, continue featuring levels on LevelNET, host events on Discord, and answer support tickets. As long as there’s a community to support it and we’re able to, we want to keep this party going. So keep sending us your Ultimate Chicken Horse fan art, ideas, and concepts - it keeps us inspired for the future!

Thank you all, once again, and we hope you’ll stick around for our next adventure together.

<3

The Clever Endeavour Team