Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori News

As we’ve hinted at in our last Dev Diary, our Kickstarter is just around the corner! That means that a lot of work behind the scenes is currently going towards the crowdfunding campaign - not just preparing all relevant materials, but also implementing features and aspects of the game that we want to have ready for when the campaign goes live.

The result of those big preparations is that we don’t have a ton of updates to share right now because we’re saving most of it for this one big beat that’s coming very soon. We do have a bit of insight to share into what’s going on and what to expect though, and the most important part is this:

Sign up here to get notified once our Kickstarter launches so you can snatch up the limited and Early Bird rewards at a reduced price!

What mysterious rewards is the shaman cooking up for you?

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We’re still tweaking the exact contents of our backer rewards and what they entail, but we can already tell you that if if you back the project early, you’ll be able to get a game key including access to our Alpha Playtest, even before the public Early Access launch at a reduced price!

Of course, backing a game on Kickstarter is never quite the same as buying a finished product, even though we’re a bit further along in development. But if you want to play a version of the game as soon as possible – and we know from our comment sections that some of you can’t wait! – then Kickstarter is going to be the best deal for it!

And without revealing too much ahead of time, if you’re someone with an interest in our game’s soundtrack, concept art and cool physical rewards, rest assured that the campaign will have something for you. (side note: this doesn’t really belong in a Steam post, but for the many interested followers eagerly awaiting news about consoles, we can only reiterate that following the campaign is the way to get answers very, very soon!)

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[h3]Facts and Funding[/h3]

We’d also like to take a moment to reiterate why we’re doing this campaign even though we initially had plans to launch sooner: a basic version of the game is fully funded, but we believe we can deliver a much more complete and well-rounded product with your support. With all the additional eyes on our project since last fall, we need to make sure our game hits the ground running and can then grow further from there.

Unfortunately, the immense resonance we’ve found in player communities does not by itself translate to additional time and funding, because even though multiple viral posts have proven a strong interest and large audience for a game like ours, additional project funding is incredibly hard to come by at the moment, even for experienced and established studios.

But the very cool flip side of those circumstances is that this is where you, our players come in!

YOU can help us make this project live up to its full potential, through backing and sharing the crowdfunding campaign, through joining our Alpha Playtest and Early Access period, and through giving us constructive feedback and being patient with us while we implement it.

Closer look on Shaman's living place in the natur.

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[h3]Future Features[/h3]

As for where our development efforts have been going recently: let’s just say for now that bows 'n' arrows and wind conditions were involved, and that there’s going to bee new video footage for all that within the next few weeks. In the meantime, we do have a bunch of cute horse animations to share!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Foal Bounce Animation

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Horse Scratching Animation


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

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access
• #04 | Horse Training and Horse Care
• #05 | All Eyes on Khiimori
• #06 | Cantering towards Crowdfunding
• #07 | Looking Forward to Next Year

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[h3]Join the Community[[/h3]
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Discord Twitch Website

We here at Aesir Interactive would like to wish you all very Happy Holidays and a good end to this exciting year! We’re taking this opportunity for our last Developer Diary of 2024 to give you an outlook for what to expect in 2025:

[h2]Stay Tuned for Kickstarter News![/h2]
As first revealed in last months' Developer Diary, we are super excited to be launching a Kickstarter campaign Soon™. Make sure to follow the campaign over on Kickstarter by clicking the “Notify me on launch” button. That way, you’ll be first to know when the actual campaign goes live, and you’ll be sure to get your pick out of Early Bird backer rewards!

We’ll also be updating that page over time before the campaign goes live, so make sure to check back there occasionally!

We love and appreciate all the excitement we’ve already been seeing for the campaign in our communities, and we can’t wait to show you more. With your support on Kickstarter, Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori can live up to its full potential and get all the time and resources it deserves. 💖



➡️Support Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori on Kickstarter!⬅️

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[h2]Playtests[/h2]
It took a bit longer than initially planned, but we conducted our first playtest this month! In the test, a small group of players were able to give the horse riding and camera controls (or “CCC” for Camera, Controls and Character) a first try and give feedback. We’ve kept this initial testing group very small on purpose, to make sure that there weren’t any major technical hang-ups. We did in fact find a few crucial bugs to be fixed before our next test, so that turned out to be a good choice.



We’ve also gotten a first batch of very valuable feedback for how first time players react to the behaviors of camera and control. Making movement feel good is an incredibly important aspect of making a game where traversal plays such a big role, so even though this iteration took quite a bit more time than we were initially planning for, we’re confident that it was worth it. Overall, the feedback from this first test was very positive, which makes our whole team very happy and is a big motivation booster! The fact that we got very specific and detailed constructive criticism from our testers for aspects of the controls is also an indicator that the overall CCC experience is on the right track.



In the coming weeks, we’ll be able to reach out to more people on our tester waitlist and test again with a slightly bigger group, to ensure that the feedback we’re getting is more representative and diverse. Make sure you’re signed up here if you would like to participate too! Note that while we ask for which specific expertise you have in the sign-up, that does not mean we’ll only pick testers who know about all those topics! We want the game to be accessible to more people than die-hard horse fans in the end, so we’ll make sure to test with players from different backgrounds.



➡️Sign up for future Playtest waves here!⬅️

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[h2]Gameplay Systems[/h2]
Now that we have a solid basis in CCC, it’s time to tackle other crucial gameplay systems that we’ve been outlining and designing over the past few months. Some of these systems have been implemented in a basic first iteration already and need extra work to function as we want them to, while others are getting the team’s full attention for the first time:

🌬️ Wind, Weather and their impact on the ground you ride on: The plan is that depending on where you ride and which paths you choose, your horse may have an easier or harder time traversing that ground depending on its own traits and preferences, or may train different attributes, giving you a relevant strategic choice for whether you want your horse to (for example) become stronger or faster.

🐎 Horse Care, Traits and Trust: For a bit more insight into our plans for this topic, have a look at our Dev Diary from September!

📜 Missions: While “ride around and explore” is fun enough for some players on its own, the main character in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori has an actual job (courier rider) that you’ll be doing as part of the gameplay! This means managing your inventory to not overload your horse and getting to specific parts of the game world despite difficult terrain along the way.

As always, note that game development is a very iterative process and that the specifics can change along the way.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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[h2]Community [/h2]
Building up a following and community for this game has been a very new experience for Aesir Interactive. In the past, this work was mostly done by our publishers for different projects. But we LOVE to be able to communicate directly, more openly and more regularly to you, our players.

While a big part of this activity is of course getting the word out about our project, we also want community to be a two-way street. Meaning: please do join our Discord or leave comments here if you have specific questions, hopes, requests or even concerns about Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori! We will do our best to answer what we can and give insight into our dev process wherever possible.

So we’re ending this year and this Developer Diary with a handful of questions to you, the community:

• What feature are you most looking forward to in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori?
• Which topic(s) would you like to see us tackle in upcoming Developer Diaries?
  
• Are you planning on backing the project on Kickstarter?
  
  • What could we include to make an even more convincing campaign?
    
  • What sort of backer reward would you love to have?
• Which existing game has your favorite horse(s) and why?
  

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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!

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

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access
• #04 | Horse Training and Horse Care
• #05 | All Eyes on Khiimori
• #06 | Cantering towards Crowdfunding

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[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
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Discord Twitch Website

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 Windstorm: 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!




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[h2]Controls and Playtesting[/h2]

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 Windstorm: 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 Windstorm: 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🚧
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[h2]The Road Ahead[/h2]

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!

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

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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!

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

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access
• #04 | Horse Training and Horse Care
• #05 | All Eyes on Khiimori
  
  

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[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
Facebook Instagram TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch Website

Welcome back to another developer diary for Windstorm: 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.



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[h2]The Basics[/h2]

Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori is going to be an open world adventure game about being a courier rider in 13th century Mongolia.

Windstorm is a franchise of movies, books and games that’s mainly popular in Germany (“Ostwind”) as well as the rest of central Europe. There have been two previous games in this series, developed by Aesir Interactive. While The Legend of Khiimori is making some key changes to its predecessors - its historical setting being the most obvious – we can still very much recommend checking out the two previous titles to get familiar with Windstorm, Mika and Ari. We’ve even released a remastered version of Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship earlier this year, so that is a perfect starting point!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2829790

In addition, we have announced the Winter Wonderland DLC for Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship - Remastered. Gallop into the next chapter on November 7th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3145870

Like its predecessors, Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori will explore themes like the connection between horse and rider and the treatment of horses and their needs, even as the gameplay and setting will be quite different. Fun fact: the connection to Mongolian mythology isn’t new for The Legend of Khiimori! Fans of the series will note that both Mika and Ari have had connections to Mongolian horse and rider legends in their respective games and movies.

If your interest in Khiimori motivates you to check out the earlier 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 the upcoming game. We’re proud of where we came from, but The Legend of Khiimori is by far the most ambitious project in this series, and broadening who we want it to appeal to means that in turn, not everyone with an interest in Khiimori will love the earlier games.

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[h2]Frequently Asked Questions[/h2]

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 titular character of the Windstorm games and movies is himself a warmblood horse (technically, he’s half warmblood, half Andalusian), so it made sense for him to be our second model in the game. 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.

Does that mean modern Windstorm will make an appearance in historical Mongolia? Well, not quite, but the real answer is “it’s complicated and involves spoilers”. What we can say is that Modern Windstorm will appear in the game and that players will have some options regarding horse breeds in Mongolia. And of course, that we’ll share more details when they’re ready!

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 Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori!

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

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[h2]Reception, Reactions and Impact[/h2]
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🚧

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

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

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[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
Facebook Instagram TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch Website