Hello, all! Today we are releasing some information to you in order to keep everyone in the loop of current HoFa progress, plans, and the overall state of the game.

✏️🗒️ A Note from Bedouin

Hello! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything to you all. Even though Curly basically “runs the ship” so to speak, I’ve usually had a hand in what everyone sees and while I’ve tried to fix some bugs here and there, you may have noticed that development has slowed significantly this year and that art has outweighed development. The reason for this is that I have been extremely busy with my job; a lot more so than in past years. 

In 2018, I became a contractor after quitting my full-time job. The freedom in my own scheduling has been what has allowed me to work on Eqcetera and HoFa as much as I have. In the first 3 years, I hadn’t really devoted a lot of time to this job but that’s changed this year. I’ve had so much to do! And that was never really my intention - I always wanted to have time for my passions aka HoFa.

Last week, I put in my notice to this job and will be completely stepping away in January 2023. No longer will I have client work that controls my schedule, and I will be completely free to work on my own business. I’m taking all of next year to be my own client and do my own thing, which includes working on Horse Fable.  

So get excited! Although December may be slow since I have a huge project to finish up and then the holidays, January will start off with a bang. I’ll be working full days on Horse Fable and bug fixes will be posted as soon as they’re fixed. After bug fixes, we hope to get back to our monthly development and art update schedule. 

I appreciate your patience and sticking with Horse Fable. I promise it’ll be worth it! 

🔮 2023 Plans 

Bedouin and I plan to meet at the end of the month to dive into 2023 planning. We anticipate 2023 to be different than any other year because of Bedouin having more dedicated time instead of trying to fit Horse Fable into her work schedule. Horse Fable is also closer than ever to being a completed game! While I will still have a full-time job, we’re both excited to see where 2023 takes the studio with consistently increased development time. Horse Fable will be the priority for the first quarter starting with knocking out all bugs in the game and finishing up our existing plans for the game. 

After our planning session, we’ll reveal a roadmap for 2023 with more details for the first quarter. Beyond Horse Fable, we have many plans for Laughing Dog Studio as a whole, including a company website, a regularly posted blog for behind-the-scenes development, and even other games! Keep an eye out for future announcements after our bug-squashing extravaganza in January.

🐴 Breed & Item Art Releases

We also want to keep everyone in the loop on current breed and item art releases. As some may have noticed, new breed and updated breed art releases have not occurred for a few months. We have had to slow down releases to give some time to myself and Solo since we both have run into the busy season. While we have been slowing releases, we have also been seeking to expand our artist team to include someone who can help Solo and me with breed bases and coloring. We currently have someone in training and on board to help.

As you may have also noticed, we are able to consistently keep introducing new item content such as tack, background overlays, and decor. This is because of pre-planning with months of coloring, image saving, and long-term item adjustment sprints. Do expect plenty of this content to keep coming out seasonally as we currently have a backlog of items prepared! I want to give a very big thank you to our moderators Shokubeni and Roze for hanging in there with me as I tasked them with helping me.

🐎 Grade Images

I expect to release a new set of Grade Horse images sometime this weekend or early next week. I have run into quite a bit of real-life hold-ups with classes and work but have almost finished current layer requests. As mentioned above, with our new artist we expect color layers to be done on a more frequent basis. A special thank you to those waiting on grade images for being so patient with us!

🤩 Live Stream

Join me as I work on item images for an upcoming update! I will be going through the process of creating a new game item that will be released this month and you’re invited to watch. Join me on our Discord on Monday, December 12th from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM EST/game time! I will be going through the process of adjusting images, saving, uploading, and creating the item.

As you can see, 2022 has been a really busy year for the whole team. Although it’ll still be busy for most in 2023, we’re hoping to really make progress on Horse Fable and help it reach its potential.

We hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly