- Alpha Playtest - 15 September 2026
Finally, there will be another playtest! The first one was great, generating a lot of useful feedback and now we go again. This time it will be open to everyone, right here on Steam, so no registration is necessary. I look forward to seeing you guys play again and all your feedback!
- Dev-Update 12 - 27 June 2026
Hi everyone, since the temperature inside my room is currently high enough to slowly cook my brain (and therefore prevent any particularly deep programming sessions), I figured this would be the perfect time to give you an update on EQUIRE's development. Lately I've been back at work tackling many of the issues that came up in playtest feedback. Here are some of the biggest problems I've been working on."I don't know how to do anything”This is a big one of course. No game is fun if you don’t know what to do or how to do it. To solve this, I've started creating a proper tutorial that introduces the basics of building, riding controls, and the general gameplay loop. Moreover, the system behind it will also allow me to add goals, hints, and guidance throughout the game whenever they're needed. I'm still deciding whether menu-heavy systems, like horse training, should be explained in the tu…
- Dev-Update 11 - 11 March 2026
Hey everyone,This Dev-Update will be a bit unusual. Last weekend we held the first ever pre-alpha playtest with members of the EQUIRE Discord. In the weeks leading up to the playtest I worked on countless small improvements, fixing bugs and adding little touches throughout the game, so listing every change would not really make sense this time. Instead, I would like to share my personal experience from the playtest and talk about the feedback I received during and after the event.Running an early playtest has been a goal since the beginning of development. I think it is crucial to validate that the core ideas of the game are not only fun in my head but also enjoyable for players. When I got back into development at the start of the year I set myself the goal of announcing the playtest during Horse-Fest and then running it two weeks later. This created a fairly ambitious deadline, but it…
- Register for the first ever playtest! - 22 February 2026
Hi guys, I'm really excited to announce that we will have our first ever playtest!it is finally time to get some real feedback from you on some of EQUIRE's core features. For this, we will have an Alpha Playtest from the 6th–8th of March. This will be exclusive to members of the EQUIRE Discord, so come and join for free to register for the playtest!
- Dev-Update 10 - 25 January 2026
Hey guys, long time no see… hear… read…? Whatever, during the end of last year a lot of things in my personal life prevented me from working on EQUIRE. I started a new job, adopted a dog and was sick more than usual, but since the new year things finally took an upturn. My schedule is finally falling into place and I am working on the game with big motivation 😊 In the last month I worked mainly on some of the management aspects of the game so let’s get into what has changed.Guests: Groups no moreOne of the biggest changes is how guests are handled. The old system with multiple guest groups has been removed. Each group previously needed its own activity schedule, which quickly became tedious with many small groups, and surprisingly shallow with larger groups where preferences averaged out. In the end, schedule building stopped being engaging, so I decided to approach the problem from a…
- Dev-Update 9 - 31 August 2025
Hey everyone, it’s been a while since the last update—time to share what’s new in EQUIRE! This round of progress touches everything from showjumping mechanics to customization options and some of the bigger long-term systems like training and guest schedules.Showjumping: More Skill, More VarietyI’ve reworked the jumping gameplay to add both realism and decision-making:Timing minigame update: The sweetspot has shifted toward the end of the bar. You can still play it safe and hit early for a solid but average jump, or risk pushing for the sweetspot with a higher chance of overshooting into the red zone.Obstacle differentiation: Speed now influences jumps differently. Standard jumps benefit from slowing down and adjusting your stride for height, while length based jumps, like the new water jumps demand speed to cover distance. This makes canter control unique on every parcour and introduce…
- Dev-Update 8 - 4 July 2025
Hey guys, it’s once again time to get you up to speed on EQUIRE’s development. Over the past month, I’ve had quite a bit of time to work on the game and was able to make some big steps forward.Competition SystemI’ve implemented a new menu that shows upcoming competitions. As your in-game year progresses, different levels of competition will become available for your horses: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional, and Elite.To enter higher levels, your horse and rider need to gain eligibility by placing in lower-level events. Keep in mind: entering a competition will block part of your training schedule for that month, so you’ll need to plan carefully. Your horse also needs to be in peak mental and physical condition to deliver the best results.Before competing, you’ll be able to view your competitors and walk the parkour to get a feel for what to expect. Then, you’ll start the f…
- Dev-Update 7 - 7 May 2025
Hey everyone, After a long break without a full-length update, it’s finally time to get you back up to speed on EQUIRE’s development! Let’s start with some exciting recent events. The new teaser for EQUIRE was just released, and I’m incredibly grateful for all the positive feedback I’ve received. It’s been my most successful post so far, and I’m thrilled to see so many new people discovering the game. Comparing the original announcement trailer to the recent teaser, I think the progress from the past year really shows. Your enthusiasm and passion for this project are what keep me going—especially after a stretch where I, frustratingly, couldn’t dedicate as much time to development. So, thank you! Now, on to what’s new in the game. Horse Coats & Genetics Horses now have coats! And I’d love to give you a quick look into how the system behind them works. The key to coat colors is genetics.…
- Dev-Update 6.5 - 6 March 2025
Hey, sadly no full length Dev-Update this month, because my schedule was full with non-gamedev stuff for the last month. Happily, I have a first glimpse of the basics of the newly implemented coat system for you (work in progress). The Coat is controlled by a realistic genetic system that I can later easily access when I develop breeding. Furthermore, seeded randomness allows for unlimited coat variations, so every Horse will have a coat with unique details! In the next weeks my schedule gets lighter and I look forward to expand this system and create the building video I promised in the previous Update!
- Dev-Update 6 - 2 February 2025
Hi, I’m back with another Dev-Update. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and got into the new year well. For EQUIRE, it was 2 divided months. I took a break from development over Christmas and New Year's and then got right back into the depth of the building system. I worked on options that might not look spectacular and were a lot of work programming but will be crucial for a smooth building process. Walls can now have set start and end structures, which is great for fence posts. Door and window frames can have different sizes, allowing for bigger wall elements and more precise placing options for doors and windows. Besides, I added a grid placement option for the top-down building mode that can be toggled at will. In the past month, you had the chance to vote for a new building preview style, and I expanded the building options by adding a menu that lets you customize objects to you…
- Dev-Update 5 - 7 December 2024
December has arrived, and with it this last Dev-Update for 2024. In the past month I prepared a presentation about the game for some application that took up a lot of time but also led me to nail down some of the vaguer aspects of EQUIRE's planning. One major part that I put a lot of thought into is the setting/story of the game. From the beginning it was clear that EQUIRE wasn’t going to be a story-driven game and would be focused instead on engaging gameplay loops, simulation, and deep mechanics. However, an interesting setting is necessary to create immersion and hook the player. EQUIRE will put you in a role that might sound familiar to a lot of you. Someone who wants to spend their time with horses, care for them, and ride them, but their life situation doesn’t allow them to live out this dream. Too much space and money would be necessary. This is where a once-in-a-lifetime opportu…
- Dev-Update 4 - 3 November 2024
While gameplay mechanics and loops are often more critical than graphics, a visually appealing game can make a big difference, especially for first impressions. Over the past few months, I’ve dedicated time to enhancing EQUIRE’s core visuals to reflect the quality I envision for the finished game. First, I upgraded the horse model itself. Alice from The Mane Quest highlighted a model she described as “the best game-ready horse model I’ve seen to date,” and her praise wasn’t misplaced—it brings a new level of realism to the game, even though there’s still room for improvement. In addition, I’ve created new English tack and refined rider animations, both of which are a big step up thanks to your feedback. I’ll showcase these improvements in greater detail soon, especially as I continue to implement more refined movement types. Having multiple different models and a variety of breeds in th…
- Dev-Update 3 - 14 October 2024
Hey guys, another month, another update. Continuing down the path I laid out in the last update, implementing guests was my top priority. I started by enabling you to open and close the ranch. If it is open, guests will come to your ranch based on your ranch's reputation and limited by the amount of guest rooms and horses you have available. You can then assign specific horses to each guest and put guests in groups that share an activity schedule. It will be beneficial to group guests with similar profiles because it will make it easier for you to create a schedule that fits the guests’ preferences. The guest profile consists of age, riding experience and three stats that describe the guests preferences on a scale from 1 to 10. They are playful-competitive, calm-energetic and theorist-practicalist. Furthermore, I took the opportunity to expand on the schedule mechanic of horse training…
- Dev-Update 2 - 21 August 2024
There are bad months and there are good months. The past month has been amazing. A great video about the game has been published, the numbers on Steam and Discord are good, but most importantly, I have made a lot of progress. First thing on my agenda this month was a system that lets you save and load your progress in the game. This might sound trivial, but especially in a game where every player has a wildly different experience with unique ranches, horses, progress, etc. the game needs to replicate the saved game accurately every time. This means whenever you load a game the game takes the information you saved and then rebuilds your ranch piece by piece (probably a little faster than you could do it 😉). Since this is finished, the game has felt a lot more like a real game and no longer like a prototype and when designing future systems, I can easily integrate them. Next, I created a…
- Dev-Update 1 - 16 July 2024
After we got the basics out of the way, we can now move on to the game. To start this off, I want to recap the first few months of development and give you some insights about what parts of the game have gotten most of my attention In general, I would say that I'm still deep in the prototyping/framework-building phase of the development process. Many of the gameplay elements and systems do need quite a lot of programming before any content or depth can be added. This also means that progress at this time is less visual, and if visuals are part of the progress, they are often not final, so they won't be shared. When this changes, I will also give you some more visuals so that you can see what is being added. So far, most of my time and energy have gone towards the building system. This is because: 1. It is the gameplay aspect that needs the most framework programming; and 2. It is the ba…
- Dev-Update 0 - 2 July 2024
Hi, my name is Jonas, or, as you can find me here, NobleCourt. I’m the developer of the game EQUIRE which has probably brought you here. In this channel, I want to keep you up to date about the state of the game and my plans. But first, let’s start with the basics: Who am I, what on earth is an EQUIRE and why am I making that? I’m not some kind of industry professional, nor do I have a big programming background. I’m a 23-year-old student living in Germany. I got into game development about a year ago and started developing some small projects just to learn the basics. There were small prototypes about robots swinging on ropes and an American football management game that never got to the point where you could play a game, let alone actually finish a season. These projects were neither well planned well nor did I have the know-how to finish them, but what they did was teach me a whole l…
