- Devlog #62: August 2026 - 2 September 2026
Trail rides, map and organizingBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistI have gone the next step with the map and started on a slightly more designed version of it. It will not be completely polished until the 3D part is ready and I can match the 3D world to the map, the visuals may also change. But this will highly act as a guideline for the world. With this I have looked at maps around Norway to see if there is something I can take from it. Usually this has been the dividing between fields and forests, building placements at farms etc. Very helpful to avoid everything to be too quadratic. I got a pretty good idea for multiple locations like Erika’s family farm, Rosenlund, the riding school and of course your stable. But we need to have the 3D version to see if my ideas will actually work well enough. Here is a small part of the map around the Riding School (WIP). I created an overview of all the…
- Devlog #61: June 2026 - 2 July 2026
Stories & Concept ArtBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistJust like May, June has been filled with writing for both stories and quests. I’ve been focusing especially on what will be the “main story”. It’s a big task, but I’m making progress. I’m not finished with writing it yet, but most of it is planned out. Now, it’s about making all the different elements fit together. Like writing the dialogue and connecting everything to gameplay and progression. I also have to think about the map and the places where things are happening. It can quickly become confusing. But, if it’s written messy at first, I'll just go over and clean it up afterwards. I’m looking forward to the summer vacation, even though writing is very fun, it can be mentally exhausting. Especially when writing multiple stories at once. For the story (or stories), I’ve done quite a bit of research to make certain elements of the story…
- Devlog #60: May 2026 - 4 June 2026
Quests & System-PlanningBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistHi! Maja here. Me and Marius have worked on a quest system for the game loop this past month. Note that this is NOT programming, but pre-production for it. Which means we have to first divide the different categories of quests, which as of now is 1. Breeding, 2. Training (Stats and disciplines) and 3. Behavior training (Spooking, bolting, etc.). The next step was to define how to change the difficulty within each category, and that may include for example; tiers. We want these quests to have a formula that lasts forever and never stops giving new quests. Kind of like a randomizer. The hardest one to work on was breeding, since there are so many factors that can play into this category. Breed, size, gender, coat color, markings and so on. All of the genetics. Some clients are pickier than others. An example can be this for an easy ques…
- Devlog #59: April 2026 - 6 May 2026
World Design, Music & ArtBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistWorld design: Music and map April was filled with variation for my tasks, involving drawing, writing and research. Marius has been making great progress on the map design, and I‘ve helped him place properties as well as naming locations, some even got renamed to become more fitting to its placement. Alongside the map work, I created a music document matching it up to places on the map. This will help define both the music we need and how it should be. Of course I’ve added some brackets for other parts of the game like training, shows and breeding that will need their own unique tunes. The white horse painting The painting is coming along, but I was somewhat unsure about the background since the one I drew was just a quick sketch to set a scene. I asked Tirna to sketch a background based on my plans for the setting, and send it back t…
- Devlog #58: March 2026 - 9 April 2026
Wall-art and StoriesBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistArt on the wall Finishing one art piece to start on another. During March, I finished one of the illustrations (“paintings”) for the stable, which was exciting. The feel that comes when you complete something you\\ve worked on is unmatched. I already had plans and an old sketch ready for the next piece. The first one feels sunny and warm, while this new one I want to make a little bit colder, to create a warm and cold contrast on each side of the stable. I was inspired by Theodor Kittelsen illustrations for Nøkken when I was viewing older Norwegian paintings. I wanted to draw a double cream Nordland horse for this piece, which has been the plan ever since the first unfinished drawing. Now, the thing with Nordland horses is that they have a very compact build to them. Their neck is usually quite short compared to an Icelandic horse, which…
- Devlog #57: February 2026 - 2 March 2026
Lore & ArtBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistLore for EldheimI’ve been continuing the story of Eldheim and some of its locations together with Marius. Of course, with all this lore we have done a lot of research so that our fiction has grasps and traits of the story of Norway. But of course, not one to one. I’ve been talking with people who have studied history and taught history, and that gave some great tips and pointers for what we needed. We make sure that the story fits the map and the location too. Parts of the lore are the NPCs, and most of them have their stories already written, but it’s never too late to revisit these stories, do adjustments or expand on some parts. Personalities have also been more defined for the NPC’s. The joy of artI’ve here and there continued on the “painting” for the stable that I shared at the WIP of the last month. It’s such a joy to draw this and it’s comi…
- Patch 0.4.0.16 - Hotfix - 6 February 2026
A new hotfix for Astride is now available. Here are the changes/fixes that have been made. You may have to restart your Steam client if the hotfix is not immediately available. Fixes & adjustmentsFixed a bug that left some players stuck on a black screen at startup. This fix is only for a specific issue related to missing save data and there might be other bugs resulting in getting stuck on the black screen. Please file a bug report if this happens.
- Devlog #56: January 2026 - 4 February 2026
Hair, paintings & loreBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistMane and tail: revisit There has been a while since I last did anything with the horse’s hair cards. But now I got the chance to take a look at them again. I had to do some adjustments to the short mane, long mane and redid the forelock for many horses. Since last time, I’ve gotten a better grasp of blender. The most fun part this time was to fix the forelocks. Since the ones we have are mostly suited for the warmblood, breeds with thicker manes often looked a bit strange. I made sure to look at forelock images of each breed, even though I believe I have a good grasp of how each breed’s forelock tends to look. This resulted in me redoing the Alter Real/Lusitano forelock entirely, as well as the more draft horses like Jutland and Percheron. Mostly all breeds at adjustments. Examples for edited short forelock: Jutland, Alter Real/Lusitano…
- Astride's focus in 2026 - 19 January 2026
Hello, everyone and Happy New Year! Here are some words about Astride’s progress in 2025 and what our focus will be in 2026.One year ago, we shared our development goals for 2025. These included horse breeds, foals and breeding, tutorials, horse AI, more tack, client quests, environments updates, and improvements to the horse controller and player character. Now that we have entered a new year, we would like to look back on what we achieved in 2025, before sharing our plans going forward. While all the updates included bug fixes and general improvements, we will focus on the new additions each update introduced.We started the year strong by releasing an update with horse breeds, updated UI, improved horse creator, a stable, lead change, stirrups, and more color variations for saddle pads. This was a big update where we really nailed down the horse genetics, both for breeds and coat colo…
- Devlog #55: Nov/Dec 2025 - 20 December 2025
Read, Update, and RewriteBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistFor the last months of the year I’ve been focusing on going through the entire game design document for Astride. The GDD is a living document that is constantly changing and being added to throughout the development. This is an important task where I’ve gone into the depth of different systems, evaluating whether they needed more detail, rewriting due to new/change of ideas, clarification or if they are already in a good place. And I’ve restructured the entire document on where all systems and subjects are written and what comes after the other. Some time has also gone to writing about some parts that have not been completely designed yet due to it not being worked on yet.In some parts the content itself didn’t need to change, just the structure. Reshaping how information is presented makes it easier to read and understand for everyo…
- Build 0.4.0.15 - Hotfix - 26 November 2025
A new hotfix for Astride is now available. Here are the changes/fixes that have been made. You may have to restart your Steam client if the hotfix is not immediately available. Fixes & adjustmentsFixed a bug where foals didn't inherit full face markings Improved the logic behind inheritance of face- and leg markings to make it less random
- Devlog #54: October 2025 - 8 November 2025
The horses are getting a hair cut and I’m the hairstylistBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistSpooky season is here and I’ve been continuing my work on the horse’s mane and tail. Note that I’m still learning Blender and how to work with hair cards, but I felt I got a better grasp around it this month. Last devlog I focused mainly on the long mane and the roots. This time I worked on the short mane, which proved to be a bit more challenging to work with than the long mane. I also worked on the forelocks, so that they were fitted to each horse and adjusted. A few hours was spent on the tail, testing out ways to make it more interesting and dynamic. Some adjustments were maybe too much. However, I keep having to do adjustments, because after testing it we found some issues causing some hair cards to be invisible. And I learned quickly that the texture doesn’t follow the hair card exactly, so even…
- Astride Patch 0.4.0.14 - 27 October 2025
A new patch for Astride is now available. Here are the new features and changes/fixes that have been made. More patches and updates will come soon. You may have to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available. WARNING: Existing save files will not work with this or any newer build. The current save files will not be deleted and it will still be possible to use them for previous builds of the game. For this build, new save files will have to be created. Patch highlightsAdded content & features A breeding board and a stable management board have been added to the stable A breeding feature using realistic genetics has been implemented in its first stages Foal models for the offspring that turns into the horse model after one in-game year Foal grows gradually over time The Percheron horse breed has been added Tutorials have been added Added cross country courses Stab…
- Devlog #53: September 2025 - 2 October 2025
UI, Tutorials & ManeBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistNew design profileI’ve been adding shadows and other details to the updated UI for a while, and I’ve more or less finished that part. However, the UI did not work right away when testing it. The designs themselves were fine, but the programming and functionality part of it wasn’t successful. Mostly because I had set it up incorrectly. We decided that it would be better for Ourboros to set it up properly, using my designs. Unfortunately, this means you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the UI update.I’m very happy with the designs and I’m excited to finally see it in the game, instead of the old black and boring UI.Image over: Breeding UI panels design. I have prepared space and ideas for stats for when the stat system will be implemented in the future. Preparing for tutorialOn the other hand, I’ve made some tutorial UI images for different…
- Devlog #52: August 2025 - 4 September 2025
UI changesBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistUI with personalityI have been working on a few concepts of UI parts that are currently missing for future features. One of these is the competition UI. I wanted it to look a bit more fancy and royal in terms of design. So I started looking at old Norwegian royal colors combined with Norwegian rose painting. The result? We all loved it way too much. Our current design has always been clean and simple, but it’s truly lacking personality and uniqueness. I’ve felt that for a while. The UI could be in any game. So when I created that concept art everyone agreed that I should change the entire UI profile into the new one. It wouldn’t take too much time, but the changes are enough for Astride to get its true flavor.I used some colors here and there from the old UI, like the white, however the profile got a whole new color palette. The brown background ha…
- Devlog #51: June 2025 - 5 July 2025
Tweaking, workshops and eventsBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistTweaks This month has been filled with tons of work and events. I’ve made a few adjustments to the post-processing to make the visuals pop even more than before. We still need to tweak some of the white colors on objects like fences and jumps, as they currently appear overly bright in direct sunlight.Workshops and eventsJune has been packed with local game and film industry workshops and the hosted by Østnorsk Filmsenter. I have spent a few days attending these workshops. I learned a lot and met some great people during these days.Every year we travel to Spillkonventet, where game developers from across Norway gather to network, showcase their games, test each other's games, attend presentations and join workshops. This year’s program had many useful and inspiring topics. I took many notes!Nearly everyone I spoke with this year…
- Devlog #50: May 2025 - 7 June 2025
Planning to upgrade the UIBy Maja - CEO, Concept ArtistLooking to lift the UII am working on doing a few visual changes to the UI, like changing the background shape to be smoother and softer, as well as its color. The background color has been black with transparency. This has caused one issue that I’m aiming to fix, and that is the black coat color icons are disappearing and are hard to see.At first I wanted to keep the transparent background, but make it blurred. We got an asset that made this possible, so I tested it. It did not work at all, until we discovered that it only worked on a light/white background, which is not suitable for our UI (it was my original idea, but it looked not that good). So then I went over to look for a solid background color instead. This color needs to complement the text color and icons. The text is as many of you know a shade of white, + we have this t…
- Astride Patch 0.3.24.9 - 15 May 2025
A new patch for Astride is now available. Here are the new features and changes/fixes that have been made. More patches and updates will come soon. You may have to restart your Steam client if the update is not immediately available. Patch highlights Added content & features The Arabian horse has been added to the horse breed roster The Rabicano gene is now available for the Arabian horse Third-person and first-person view while riding or grounded have been added and can be toggled with Tab Added saving and loading of the camera mode Horse refusals have been implemented Updated and added more leg markings variations Added lead changes while turning Added four more show jumping courses and updated show jumping course 3 with a new course Added a new dressage course and a new dressage training course Added lead change for slow canter Added idle and halt animation with transitions from diff…
- Devlog #49: April 2025 - 6 May 2025
Colorful month for art and UI By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist Preparing for testing As many of you know we are currently preparing an update for Astride. With that comes the need for testing with our Patreons. In this update, testers got to experience the first of my post-processing work. The feedback has been very positive this far, so now I know we are on the right path for Astride’s look. Testing is still ongoing, and we have received a lot of helpful feedback on other areas we are working on and improving. I also had to prepare a new control scheme for the updated horse controller. It is likely already a little outdated and needs further adjustments before we are ready for the update for Steam. Since there are now a lot more controls, I had to divide the controls into two pages: One for horse controls and one for character controls plus other features like camera. In the game, players…
- Devlog #48: March 2025 - 2 April 2025
Becoming friends with post-processing By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist Last month I wrote about fighting with different post-processing parts like the light and skybox. Then I finally got something that looked ok. However, when we actually tested to merge the post-processing branch with the rest, we discovered that the sky box and system we used was way too heavy for the game. Which means your computer would struggle a lot to run the game. So I had to learn a new skybox and cloud system, which was surprisingly easy to use. Yay! That was a relief. So now we have another sky, which actually had better color options that matched the idea in my head. The idea was to have a colder blue color, and without so much yellow in the horizon. There were also new clouds that were easier to control without making the sky overcast. I also continued to explore new post processing adjustments. I got a bette…
