Hi everyone!
We had a lovely time meeting up at Gamescom. After working on this game for the last five years, meeting each other in real life for the first time was awesome!
We had a great time exploring both upcoming games and some old favorites, and giving away pins and T-shirts was a lot of fun too.
But now, we are happy to be home and back to working on Unbridled!
(Jonna and Amon at Gamescom)
The Playtest!
First of all, we are so grateful to everyone who played the playtest and took the time to give us feedback.
Over the last two weeks, we have been going through everything we received, deciding what we want to take with us moving forward and figuring out how we can make those changes happen.
One of the first things we want to talk about is the controls.
It became very clear from your feedback that the majority of you preferred the old control scheme, so we will be reverting back to it.
The reason we changed the controls in the first place was to free up keys for all the future abilities horses will be able to have. There are a lot more abilities planned, so we need a control system that gives us room to expand.
This is the new solution we have been working on:
As you can see in the images, there are many more abilities planned for the game. We are trying to prepare for this as much as possible, and we think we have found a way to make it work while keeping the controls comfortable.
Our main goal is to keep the gameplay fluid and give you more freedom over when and where you perform specific actions.
For example, instead of dressage being locked to a specific location or turned into a separate minigame, we want these abilities to be part of the normal gameplay and available for you to use when you want them.
You will be able to test the new inputs in the playtest before the update.
The Horses
We received so many lovely comments about the horses, and it really warms our hearts to hear how much you like them. This part of the game is incredibly important to us.
Of course, there are still things we want to improve to make them even better.
Animations
One of the main areas we have been working on is animation.
A common piece of feedback was that the hind legs during the trot needed some work, so we have been making changes to the trot animation.
Animating horse movement is definitely a challenge, and there is always a point where we feel we cannot take an animation much further. Still, we think these changes are an improvement, and you will be able to see and feel the new trot animation in the update.
We have also made some smaller adjustments to the canter and gallop.
We will also be adjusting some of the animation speeds. Many of you felt that the trot was too slow while the gallop was too fast, so we will be tweaking both.
Halts will also return in the next playtest update.
Another thing the playtest helped us with was spotting some strange interactions between DNA combinations, mane colors displaying incorrectly, and other similar issues.
With so many of you generating horses, we got much better coverage of how different combinations behave together. That has been extremely helpful, so thank you again!
Jumping
Jumping is going through some bigger changes.
One of the biggest changes is that you will be able to prepare your turn while you are still over an obstacle.
If you give the horse a turning input during the jump, it will prepare for that direction, land on the correct lead, and begin the turn after landing. This should give you much more control over your path through a course.
You will also be able to decide which speed you want the horse to land in.
For example, if you approach a jump in extended canter, you could choose to land in canter or collected canter instead. Changing your intended landing speed will not affect the horse's speed while it is actually over the obstacle.
The goal is to give you more time to plan and adjust your next move, even while you are jumping.
Jumping Fails
We are also making changes to failed jumps.
We want to add more animations that show what actually went wrong. The horse might become unbalanced after taking off too far away or too close to the obstacle, or it might have a bad landing.
This should add more variety and make failed jumps feel more natural. And, of course, whether a jump succeeds or fails will not simply be down to luck.
We also want you to be able to jump again sooner after landing. One stride should be enough for the horse to regain its balance and prepare for another jump.
And we definitely heard you about the trot jumps.
They are not going away. Trot jumps will be coming back!
New Stuff!
Paddocks
In this update, we will be temporarily removing the Property Manager.
This is not a permanent change. The current Property Manager does not quite fill the role we want it to, and we would like to completely rework it so that it fits the game better.
Because of this, the sheds in the large pastures will also be removed for now. However, you will still be able to own up to eight horses.
We have also noticed how much many of you enjoy using the small paddocks behind the stables. At the moment, these paddocks do not have much of a function, but we want to change that.
With the pasture sheds being removed, and with us wanting to expand on something you already enjoy using, we decided to give these smaller paddocks a new purpose.
You will now be able to keep one horse per small paddock.
The horse can be given hay and water while staying in the paddock. In the future, we also plan to add the ability to provide water in the larger pastures.
The horse will also be able to use the shed in the paddock.
And, for now at least, the horse will not immediately run away as soon as you open the gate. Maybe escaping through an open gate is something you would like to see as a possibility in the future, though?
The image above is, of course, still a work in progress. As you can see, we have added a new hay feeder specifically for horses staying in these smaller paddocks.
What's Next?
For now, we are continuing to work through fixes, improvements, and your feedback so that we can move forward with the update.
The playtest has already been incredibly useful for us. Having so many people playing, experimenting with the horses, and telling us what feels good and what does not has helped us spot things we would otherwise have had a much harder time finding.
Thank you so much for all of your support, feedback, and patience.
We are very grateful to have you with us, and we are excited to let you test these changes!
Closing remarks
If you'd like to stay up to date and be the first to hear all the latest news, we highly recommend joining our Discord server, that's where we share updates first!
Follow our progress live on our public roadmap: