The Legend of Khiimori News

[p]Gather round, nomads, for we have big news today ✨

Very soon, we’ll launch a first pre-page on Kickstarter for our upcoming crowdfunding campaign 😱

Our Kickstarter pre-campaign page is live NOW. Please show your support by signing up to be notified when the Kickstarter campaign officially launches!

➡️Support The Legend of Khiimori on Kickstarter!⬅️

We’ll be able to explain in more depth why Kickstarter is our best option once the campaign goes live. But to put it simply for now: we want this game to be the best it can possibly be, and for that we want your help, your input and your support.

This also means that we are delaying our Early Access launch further than previously communicated: Our initial intention was to launch the project as soon as possible in 2024 or very early 2025. A variety of factors and developments in the meantime have led us to reconsider what we really need in an Early Access version. Our initial release schedule might have let us release an early version of the game to a small audience of enthusiasts and grow and improve the game in relative obscurity. Following the media attention this fall however, we now have a vastly increased number of eyes on our work and increased pressure to hit the ground running. We’re determined to make the most out of this and take the time we need to make our beloved project live up to these expectations.

Our need to make a very solid first impression with our first playable and buyable version of the game has drastically increased as a result. This is an additional challenge, sure, but we wouldn’t trade it back for the world. We love that our game has this very real chance to break new ground in terms of what a “horse game” can be.

We’re currently refraining from setting a concrete new release date yet, because we’d rather announce it once, when we’re confident about it. Stay tuned!

[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Controls and Playtesting[/h2][p]
To give some additional insight into our development progress in the past months:

Game development is never a straightforward process, and even for an experienced studio such as Aesir Interactive, it’s not always predictable how long certain features will actually take to get right. With The Legend of Khiimori, we’ve found that key aspects of the game that we had a clear vision for from the start ended up taking more iteration and reevaluation, meaning additional development time.

One such example is as fundamental as the horse riding controls: We want to give players enough control over the speed and gait they’re going at to satisfy equestrian enthusiasts, while also keeping the game accessible for more casual, mainstream audiences. We initially wanted to playtest these controls with our alpha testers as early as July, but ended up reworking them entirely, leading to several months of additional work and internal testing. The very first test will be conducted very soon, with a small group of players to ensure basic functionality, but we’ll soon want more input and reach out to additional testers. Make sure you’ve filled out our playtester sign-up if you are interested in participating!

We have clear inspirations and references for The Legend of Khiimori, but by combining the very niche horse game audience with more a mainstream open world game setup, we are making something that hasn’t really been made before. Finding that balance of innovation without constantly reinventing the wheel takes a lot of time and iteration.

🚧Work in Progress🚧
[/p][hr][/hr][h2]The Road Ahead[/h2][p]
All of this has led to some reevaluation and some slight shifts to our vision for the game and what it can become. (Though all previously announced features are here to stay!) Which means that now, the path ahead is clear. But: it’ll need more time and more funds than initially anticipated, and that is where Kickstarter comes in. We’re incredibly grateful to have a publishing partner in Mindscape that’s on board with taking some more time to give this game a chance to really live up to its massive potential, rather than rushing into an early release to capitalize on current attention. Don't forget to stretch your body if you sit at your desk for long periods of time. Even our horses do this from time to time!

[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]🚧Work in Progress🚧

[/p][hr][/hr][p]Thank you all for your trust, your enthusiasm and your unwavering support over the past few months! We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t wholeheartedly believe in the potential of our project, and we’re excited for you to join in helping us make that a reality.

Stay tuned for more info very soon!

[/p][hr][/hr][h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• [p]#02 | An Open World[/p]
• [p]#03 | PC Early Access[/p]
• [p]#04 | Horse Training and Horse Care[/p]
• [p]#05 | All Eyes on Khiimori[/p]

[p][/p]

[hr][/hr][h2]Join the Community[/h2][p]Bluesky Facebook Instagram Threads TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch YouTube Website[/p]

[p]Welcome back to another developer diary for The Legend of Khiimori! Or shall we say WELCOME in general, because oooooh boy are there many new people watching this game now than ever before! 😱

If you’ve been following our game for a while, you may have missed that it got a whole lot of new attention recently, mostly thanks to a viral post on Twitter a.k.a. X, which got over 15 Million views and exposed our game to a ton of new eyes and ears, and led to notable additional coverage from content creators on TikTok and Instagram.

All that social media attention has also significantly impacted the game’s Wishlist numbers on Steam, which are super important for us as developers to measure people’s interest in the game. It’s been absolutely amazing to get so many new interested potential players and a ton of valuable feedback and feature wishes!

For this dev diary, let’s therefore dive into some big picture questions about our intentions for this game, and what the explosion of attention and followers means for us.


[/p][hr][/hr][h2]The Basics[/h2][p]
The Legend of Khiimori is going to be an open world adventure game about being a courier rider in 13th century Mongolia. Explore themes like the connection between horse and rider and the treatment of horses and their needs![/p][p][/p][p]If your interest in Khiimori motivates you to check out our earlier horse games for the first time though, please remember however that we are shifting gears quite drastically in terms of scope, target audience, gameplay focus and more with this upcoming game. We’re proud of where we came from, but The Legend of Khiimori is by far the most ambitious project we've developed, and broadening who we want it to appeal to means that in turn, not everyone with an interest in Khiimori will love our earlier games. [/p][hr][/hr][h2]Frequently Asked Questions[/h2][p]
There are a handful of topics that have gotten particular attention in the discussions surrounding the game, and we’d like to take a moment here to address them:

Q: A non-violent game in the Mongol Empire of all places?

A: Our game is set during the reign of one of Genghis Khan’s successors. We’re not committing to a specific year, but we’re using the 1230s as our main inspiration. This was actually a comparatively peaceful, prosperous and safe period within Mongolia itself, with conquest and war focusing outwards. It was also the time when the Yam system of courier riders was used and greatly expanded.

We’re actually pretty excited to show the Mongolian people from a perspective that focuses on nomad life and culture, rather than on warfare, for a change. In order to do this time period, culture and people justice, we are in touch with historians, ambassadors as well as community members from today’s Mongolia. If you have a similarly relevant background or insight and would like to contribute to to this effort, please do join our Discord! We’re always happy to receive constructive feedback and additional inspirations.

Q: So there’s no combat, but will there be hunting in the game?

A: We’ve revealed in our Dev talk video that archery will make a comeback! Hunting animals for survival and resources wasn’t initially planned: we set out to make a family friendly game, and killing animals will impact age ratings, meaning that certain younger sections of the audience wouldn’t be able to play the game. That being said, Hunting has become such a common feature request that we are reevaluating if and how such a feature could fit in. Note that this is not a confirmation! We’re simply saying we heard you, and we’re looking into it.

Q: Why are there Warmblood horses in your dev talk video? That’s a modern horse breed that didn’t exist yet!

A: Yes, we’re well aware! Our main horse in the game is going to be the Mongol horse, that’s the model you’ve been mostly seeing in our video and image footage so far. So why is there a warmblood horse model? The warmblood breed has therefore also been used in the WIP game while our tech team is working on horse breeding, user interface and more, which is why it was visible in the dev talk footage.

Q: Will the game be coming to consoles?

A: For the Early Access release, we will definitely focus on PC only. This streamlines our processes and makes regular iteration a lot more feasible. As for whether the game will come to consoles later (and to which ones), that depends on a number of factors, including the PC game’s performance and reception. We currently cannot promise ports to any specific console(s).

Q: Can we get a roadmap for when which feature is coming?

A: Yes, we’re planning to have some way for the community to not only see what is planned, but also to voice their preferences and priorities! For our game Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, we’ve made good experiences with a Trello board that serves this purpose. We have similar plans for The Legend of Khiimori!

The roadmap will be released around the Early Access launch, so stay tuned!

[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Reception, Reactions and Impact[/h2][p]The game going viral and provoking countless reactions along the lines of “Oh my god, finally a game made for me 😍” has been incredibly validating: We wouldn’t be making this game if we didn’t strongly believe in a market for it, but the literally thousands of comments we’ve gotten from eager potential players these past few weeks are excellent proof of that fact.

Behind the scenes, our specific plans for this game’s vision are evolving: we’ve deliberately announced the game very early in its dev process, and concrete plans for features are shifting as we try things out and as we see what works well.

The myriad comments, questions and feature wishes have further motivated us to reevaluate what the game will and won’t have. Don’t worry, what we’ve already revealed and discussed in these dev diaries is here to stay! Our devs and artists continue to work on features like horse care, courier missions and more. At the same time though, our game designers and producers are rethinking which additional features and mechanics add the most value to our product, and how precisely we will put them all together to create a game that is truly worthy of all this attention – a game that has the capacity to be a “horse game” for the mainstream.

In short: things are happening, the increased attention has been incredibly promising for our project overall, and we’re looking forward to sharing more of our detailed plans with you soon!

🚧Work in Progress🚧

[hr][/hr]
[h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access
• #04 | Horse Training and Horse Care

[hr][/hr][h2]Join the Community[/h2][p]Bluesky Facebook Instagram Threads TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch YouTube Website[/p]

[p]Welcome back to another Developer Diary for The Legend of Khiimori! Previously, we’ve written quite a bit about our setting, why we chose it and how we’re designing our game world.

Today, however, we want to focus on the reason many of you are here to begin with: Horses and what you can do with them! Specifically, we’re going to have a closer look at Horse Training and Horse Care today—two crucial core features that are meant to make the horses in our game feel like living, individual creatures rather than simply speed upgrades in different colors.

In The Legend of Khiimori, you will be able to own several horses, choosing different ones for missions and exploration based on their abilities and individual strengths. What exactly that means for the game’s story about the titular black stallion and his connection to his one chosen rider is a topic we’ll explore on another day, but we can already tell you that there will be a variety of horses to ride in the game.

🚧Work in Progress🚧


[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Horses as Individuals[/h2][p]
We want horses in The Legend of Khiimori to have a certain mechanical weight to them, metaphorically speaking. While horses can be bought and sold, we don’t want taming and breeding to turn into a factory process where players have to acquire and load off dozens of horses until they get a perfect one. It’s about quality, not quantity!

This intention has an impact on our horse breeding mechanics—the player will be able to influence which genetic traits will be passed on, to avoid breeding the same pair again and again until getting the desired results—but it also informed our design choices in all related horse mechanics. Taming, Breeding, Training, Trust, Traits, and Care are all intertwined systems that need to work well with each other and come together for interesting gameplay, especially where they intersect with our other major gameplay elements, such as Courier Missions and Exploration.

We’re designing these systems—from stats and potential to learnable traits—so that there are a lot of axes for horses to differ from one another, in order to make them feel alive and distinct. Equine Realism is a core design pillar for the project, and one that deeply influences the way we’re tackling these features. We want our horses to have mechanical depth even as we keep the riding very accessible to young and casual players, and we want there to be additional challenge and significance in the exploration on horseback itself.

🚧Work in Progress🚧

[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Stats and Potential[/h2][p]
With The Legend of Khiimori, we’re building upon the successes and learnings from our very own horse games, the Windstorm series and Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch. With our stats and horse training system however, we’re taking a step in a new direction: Rather than being born with a fixed set of stats and traits, horses can be trained and taught throughout the game.

Every horse will have five stat values that influence their handling: Strength, Agility, Speed, Endurance, and Balance. These values affect how the horse’s movement works as well as how well it can carry the cargo from courier missions. In addition, every horse is born, bought or tamed with a certain “Potential”, which can then be invested—through training—into the aforementioned stats.

Now, what does that training look like?

Two of our core design principles come into play here: Equine Realism and Satisfying Exploration. While sending a horse off to a trainer might have been a realistic option to add in a modern equestrian setting, Mongolian ponies get their training outdoors. And what better way to make the traversal of steppe, forest and mountainside matter, than to ensure that the movement itself is what trains your horses.

Meaning: you ride around, and your horse gets better at riding around. Seems simple, right? Well, there’s a bit more complexity than that: When getting from A to B, you, the player, can make various choices regarding how to get there, from the path you chose, to the gait and speed you ride at. Those choices will then determine which attributes are trained.

For example, riding tight turns or winding around obstacles at a canter will train your horse’s agility, while moving through knee-high water or over deep, muddy ground will increase its strength. This can also mean that you might choose to stay on the road and preserve your horse’s potential for future speed training, rather than moving over ground that will train something else.

Horses in The Legend of Khiimori won’t grow old and die, but the Potential stat effectively shows you how much more training any horse is up for. A foal you’ve bred yourself will have high potential and none of it allocated to specific stats yet, while an adult horse you buy from a merchant or tame from a wild herd might already come with a set of skills that you can’t influence as freely.

🚧Work in Progress🚧

[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Care and Consequences[/h2][p]
In The Legend of Khiimori, every horse has Hunger, Thirst, Health and Stamina values that can get drained and filled through gameplay. Together, these values make up the horse’s overall Condition, which in turn influences how fast the horse gains trust or gets its attributes trained.

We want there to be more than one way to satisfy a horse’s hunger and thirst: A horse left alone near water or grass will simply begin to graze and drink by itself, whereas the player may have to carry food items such as hay or grain to feed by hand when crossing more barren terrain. Horses left at home in camp will be fed, so that the player needn’t worry about them starving when going on long journeys through the world.

One horse game staple feature that we’re very consciously avoiding with The Legend of Khiimori is the sort of care minigame that takes the player out of regular gameplay and has to be repeated for every owned horse. Our goal is that horse care interactions should add to making the horses feel alive, but not become overly tedious.

That doesn’t mean that horses can be neglected without consequence however: reckless riding or encounters with environmental hazards may have a negative impact on your horse’s health. This then needs to be taken care of through rest or medicine, or you’ll risk worsening the horse’s condition to the point where it becomes unrideable. Here too, our intention is to keep the gameplay accessible and fun, for health conditions to add a bit of complexity to the player’s exploration and traversal, but not make it punishing.

🚧Work in Progress🚧

[/p][hr][/hr][p]
Intentions are well and good, but whether these conditions and care interactions are fun is something we’ll then of course evaluate with our early playtesters!

What do you think of our plans? What would YOU like to see in horse care and training in this game? Which mechanics do you not particularly care for? Let us know in the discussion below!

🚧Work in Progress🚧

[/p][hr][/hr][p]
Thank you for reading! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡

If you too want to be part of future playtests, make sure to sign up right here!

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][hr][/hr][h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• [p]#02 | An Open World[/p]
• [p]#03 | PC Early Access[/p]

[p][/p]

[hr][/hr][h2]Join the Community[/h2][p]Bluesky Facebook Instagram Threads TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch YouTube Website[/p]

[p]Howdy, Couriers!

In the spirit of our commitment to transparency and collaborative development, we have new information to share with you regarding The Legend of Khiimori. This month, we have prepared something very special: Our first Developer Talk Video![/p][p][/p][p]Since you've been curious for more detailed information and gameplay scenes for a while now, we've put together a video to discuss the art, the gameplay, and Early Access.

Looking ahead to next month, we are already whipping up the next Developer Diary for you! In September's dev diary, we'll give you a bit more insight into some of the enjoyable mechanics. As always, we will be sure to include early concept art and content for you to feast your eyes on, so definitely look forward to later this month!

Join us on the ride in Early Access next year!

[/p][hr][/hr][p]We had a ton of fun making this video and hope you had a ton of fun watching it! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡

If you too want to be part of future playtests, make sure to sign up right here!

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][hr][/hr][h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• [p]#02 | An Open World[/p]

[p][/p]

[hr][/hr][h2]Join the Community[/h2][p]Bluesky Facebook Instagram Threads TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch YouTube Website[/p]