It’s time to put a wrap on 2021 and gallop on into 2022! We have many achievements from 2021 and although our plans changed slightly (Spoiler, it was actually a lot), we managed to make the best of it!

 

January

January brought us the Breeding Clinic with straw, eggs, and embryos. We also added in changes to account freezing and featured our first road map. We also welcomed the Tennessee Walking Horse!

 

February

February marked the addition of our first special tack sets, Red Velvet and Strawberries N’ Cream, to celebrate Valentine’s day. Alongside these tack sets the Cherry Petals background item was also added. The generic stock horse image was also added to give generic stock breeds a beautiful new look!

 

February marked the addition of some surprising new features, Grade Horses, and crossbreed campaigns. Creating your own breed was now possible as well as breeding any color into any breed.

 

March

In March, we celebrated St. Patrick’s day with the release of two new saddle pads, Shamrock Green and Festive Orange, and a few forum contests. We also welcomed the Knabstrupper breed with all of its wonderful spots.

 

March began our expansion of horses to have personalities, careers, and foal training! Horses now had personalities and could be entered into careers to earn bits. Horse energy was also added which determines the number of horse actions per day. Horse energy removed breeding fail wait times and gave basic and upgraded players the same number of shows per day. 

 

April

After a wild March, we took it slower in April to make some changes to halter shows and catch up on bugs. That didn’t stop us from adding in a new wiggly companion. Earthworms were added as a companion along with more April Fools pranks around the site. 

 

We also welcomed the generic pony base which gave all generic pony crossbreeds a cute new look! Alongside the pony release, we also made our first community tack sets, Fire and Ice and enchanted Lake sets.

 

May

May marked a big month for us as we were preparing to reset the entire game economy. We scaled down the number of bits in-game and made short-term adjustments to help level out the economy. The breeding planner, foal predictor, and mass actions were added to help with QoL. Up to this point, we had followed our 2021 roadmap fairly well! We aren’t known to let things go fairly well for long, are we?

 

Percherons joined us in late May 2021 and marked our 2nd draft breed and encouraged us to add a new discipline, Pulling. 

 

June

June was a slow month as we were working on our behind-the-scenes plans for HoFa launch and the announcement for our branding change. However, we did add in the rainbow saddle pad and welcomed the Quarter Horse art re-do!

 

July

July was a month full of art and changes. We welcomed the Ahkal-Teke as a rare breed and also completed all somatic mutations. Our first few grade horses were bred including Lp in Andalusians, Cr, and Lp in Arabians!

 

July brought discipline show tiers which expanded discipline showing for those who had topped out in the show system. This also introduced discipline tier benefits which work just like halter title benefits.

 

August

We vastly changed our plans in August and announced a rebrand and change to the site. We announced HoFa branding and launch on August 7th which was being worked on in the background of all our updates. We also welcomed the draft cross base so all draft crosses had beautiful new art.

 

With the announcement, we were able to give some details as to what we were doing and the game plan for the rest of 2021. Our plans were laid out in the background for us to add in NPCs, quests, and exploring all of which would take plenty of dev time and even more art costs.

 

September

We kept September light on the game updates so we could focus on all things HoFa and ensure the site was moved over to a new layout and all new code. The game was being built from the ground up in just a few short months so all our energy and efforts had to be directed to that for launch.

 

This is around the time we realized we had so much more to do than expected. However, that has never stopped us before. On top of the change to HoFa we managed to add in both light draft art and re-do the Shetland Pony art!

 

October

On October 16th, we internally launched HoFa to all current players for testing. This was not without a few bumps and even more crazy bugs. During this time, we were also plowing along with quest writing and NPC making. In total we had 13, 14 if you want to count Crowley, unique NPCs to design, write, and send off for art.

 

We also were preparing for our explore feature with 18 new items for art as well as a map. Oh yes, a map. ;)

 

November

In November, we welcomed a whole town full of local NPCs and opened the doors to the public! November was a crazy month full of bugs, new additions, and so much more we have actually lost count of everything. November was also a wild month for both Bedouin and me as real-life became exponentially more complicated thus hindering some of our plans. 

 

We released the American Saddlebred as our first new breed for HoFa alongside the new dirt layers for ungroomed horses! Quests were live but quite bugged as we spent several weeks convincing the locals they don’t have to talk in circles. Also added in November was our second community-colored tack set, the Light Tan. We also updated our German shepherd and turkey companions, added a new career, and added player level and traits.

 

December

We took a step back in December and decided to focus on bug fixes over adding in the exploration update. This allowed us to knock out many bugs and prioritize bug fixes in December on into January. We did however manage to add in a new breed, Morgans, and not one but SIX new markings, two new tack sets, and update the reindeer calf and great horned owl to end our year with a bang!

 

The Numbers

In 2021 we…

  - Welcomed 5 new breeds, 2 art re-dos, and 4 new generic cross bases.

  - Added in 10 new saddle pads, 7 saddles, and 7 bridles for a grand total of 5,327 tack image layers.

  - Completed gemstone tack totaling 1,932 image layers.

  - Completed Western Tack, a highly requested tack set! Adding in 1,748 more tack images.

  - Completed several marking variations totaling over 1,200 unique marking layers with quadrillions of coat color options.

  - Grew to 9,200+ accounts with more added daily.

  - Posted two end-of-year polls with over 200+ responses.

  - Welcomed 14 new locals with quests for 11 of them!

  - Added 12 quests to try our hand at quest input with several more awaiting being added. ;)

  - Had one public launch and we released HoFa to the world!

 

Wrapping Up

We are amazed how far we managed to come in 2021 even with many on-the-fly adjustments, changes, bug fixes, crazy ideas, and even rough days. As a community, we always manage to make it through all of our changes be they exciting, not very popular, or even some that are unexpected. We are often motivated to keep going thanks to the encouragement of our player base which often in tough times helps Bedouin and me through even the worst of days.

 

2022 holds fantastic features that are the beginning of polishing HoFa to be what we like to call “the future of horse sim gaming.” We tend to try not to boast or pat ourselves on the back publicly, but given how tough 2020 and 2021 have been for us both, we are pretty proud of what we have accomplished. We would never have gotten this far without our player base there to help guide us to what kind of game you all want. We believe HoFa is great and will be even better, thanks to listening to all our players have to say. So, thanks for being such a wonderful support system and giving wonderful feedback.

 

Be on the lookout on January 8th for a rough draft of our 2022 road map. There is plenty in store for our next year and we are excited to have you all along for the ride.

 

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly