We come sharing news! We are all excited about the early access release of Astride. As we announced before, our deadline with NFI was the 28th of May. This was true at the moment of writing that announcement but when we received the documentation of the postponement, they gave us another date. June the 12th.
But what does this mean for the release? Well, let us assure you that we've been firm about having May as our launch month, and we're sticking to our word. However, we do have more time for writing our reports to the state, and we want to use the few extra days to continue working on the early access and polishing for the release. Considering these circumstances, we can finally give an official release date for Astride.
Mark your calendars because Astride will be available as an early access title starting Wednesday, May 31st!
Regarding the state of Astride upon early access, we are at a pre-alpha or proof-of-concept stage. Astride is still very early in the development process and does not have near the number of features that a full game will. But don’t worry, we are working hard on creating more content, features, and gameplay for you during the early access period.
We sadly did not have enough time to prioritize the human character as we intended to. But we will be working on future updates as soon as we launch and the character is one of the features we want to implement sooner rather than later. The horse creator works as intended and you will be able to spawn in with the horse you create. Your horse won’t be set in stone yet, so you can go back and make changes at any time.
The prototype of show jumping is ready to be tested where you can jump obstacles as a bare minimum. You will be able to toggle between different show jumping courses and the dressage rails which can be utilized both indoors and outdoors. The multiplayer feature works as intended, and you can create servers to invite your friends to.
For our Kickstarter and Patreon supporters who are eligible for early access keys, the keys will be given out just like we have done with the playtester game keys. There will be a bot on Discord where you can send a message and it will give you your key(s). We will give out more information about this as soon as the bot is ready.
We are thrilled to see how many of you are eagerly anticipating the release of Astride. It's been quite a journey, and we know it's only just beginning. We're excited for many more years of development, updates, and being an active part of this incredible community that has formed around Astride. Your support and kind words mean the world to us, and we are truly grateful for each and every one of you.