CHKN News

Hey again, everyone.

It's official: CHKN is now free! If you've ever wanted to create your own lovely abominations and survive wild creature attacks with your friends, now's your chance. Please enjoy!

For those of you who have generously supported us by purchasing the game in Early Access before this change, The Art of CHKN digital book should now be available for you in your Steam library as our very humble thanks. To get the book, go to the CHKN page in your Library and scroll down to the DLC box on the right side. Once downloaded, you'll find the PDF in the same folder on your hard drive as the game itself. (Usually in your Steam folder/steamapps/common/CHKN.)



(If you missed our last update about why this is happening, you can check it out here.)

Thanks again for your support.

- Team CHKN

P.S. If you're looking for the old "legacy" version of the game to play or earn old achievements, find it by right-clicking on CHKN in your Steam Library, selecting Properties, and going to the BETAS tab. You can switch back to the latest version at any time. 👍

Hi, friends. We have a sort-of-update for you, which has definitely been a long time coming. We're incredibly sorry (and embarrassed, frankly) that it's taken this long but we'll get to that.

If you read our last update, you know we ran into some big hurdles and were working on solutions. Today's update is that, while we've ruled out a lot of options (which is good), we haven't been able to find that elusive answer on how best to move forward.

We're still absolutely in love with CHKN and this idea of bringing life to the creative building genre, so we're not giving up. We've made mistakes and learned a lot, and we're still hoping to overcome the hurdles but the truth is that we don't know whether we'll be able to fulfill our original 1.0 goal or if we'll need to pivot our approach entirely.

We kept hoping a solution would be right around the corner so we could update you sooner. We can't apologize enough for leaving you in limbo.

So what happens now?

Well, we're going to continue looking into a plan for the future. In the meantime, we hope anyone that wants to can find joy in what we've built so far, warts and all. And we've come to a point where folks continuing to support us monetarily isn't going to help find answers any faster. So, CHKN will be going free by the end of next week (around the 17th or so).

And for those of you who have supported us through thick and thin, we have a small token of our appreciation. After the switch, anyone who purchased the game in Early Access will find a free digital art book available in their Steam library. We hope you enjoy a look at concepts, illustrations, and unreleased work telling the story of the life of CHKN.

We're not sure when we'll have new news but we'll continue our quest and you'll be the first to know.
Thank you so much for your support.

- Team CHKN

Since it's officially SPOOKY SEASON, we wanted to share some special community creations to help celebrate. (It's really just an excuse to look at more of your creatures because we love seeing what you guys make but shhh.)

Real quick though: thank you for your kind words and understanding on our last post. You guys are amazing and we truly appreciate all the support. Thanks for sticking with us. Hope you're all staying safe!

Okay, TIME FOR SPOOKY!!!!!



Flownid by Cohollow
"Some believe that a Flownid swarm is one of the signs of the apocalypse." Yup, sounds legit.


Giant Cartoon Cat by hunterkillerofficial
It's okay. It's just a cat…. right?!


Farm Totem by plantguy760
Put a bunch of these outside your house to scare away those pesky trick-or-treaters.


Primus All Terrain Creature by $teamygreenfart
NOPE.JPG


Creeper by are-bugg
If your friend ventures out at night and doesn't come back, this is probably why.


Chicken Omega Prime by UltraDLee
Winner of "best armor costume" 17 Halloweens in a row.


Flower Flower Dancer by A duck in a tree
VERY good at stealing souls. And hula.


Elder Dog by Paradox
Said to bring bad luck to those who would step on its lawn.


Dog House by Cleistopsis
Okay, it's technically not very scary but had to share it for the pun alone. chef's kiss


Also, if you're not checking out the creatures being shared by the CHKNeers over on Discord, you're missing out.


Sentrey By Markeddeer93. That's a LOT of lasers.


Chair by mana. Yup. It's a chair.


Cockadoodledoombringer by ThatGameGuy103. Perfect name A+ would flee from again.


Gramera by miiko. An absolute unit.

Happy Halloween!

- Team CHKN

“What is happening with progress on the game?” There are some fair questions over on the Discord. We firstly want to say that we love you guys and CHKN! And we're still committed to the game. We're a very small team and we've run into some pretty big issues with some really tough decisions to make. And then 2020 happened, so we've also been a bit distracted by real life to be honest. (We hope you're all doing well!)

Here's where we stand:

We're adjusting our roadmap for a version 1.0 release: adding some key features; more content and creatures; balancing for continual progression; making the abilities system more understandable; among other things.

But, performance and data reliability (solo and multiplayer) are critical for 1.0 release and we’ve run into a big challenge in how to best tackle them. We've been researching engine and system update options and have not yet made a decision. These would be very big, very complex tasks and we currently are not completely sure that they'd fix these issues. As a small team, we can't afford to implement changes with this level of complexity unless we can be sure they'll work for our players. So we've slowed down on other updates to focus on this big research project and determine the best course of action. In the meantime, we've also needed to take on some other non-CHKN work to keep the lights on.

So, please forgive us. We're a bit tortured by this decision of how to best move forward with these options and most of all, we need to make sure we do the right thing for the game (and you guys). As soon as we have news, you'll be the first to know!

Stay safe, friends.

- Team CHKN

(New) CHKN Logo by Tycothepug

We've partnered with Genvid to supercharge the Arena mode for streamers and their audiences. Combined with the Arena mode, the Genvid technology will let you watch your favorite streamer and send item boosts and cheers live on stream as they battle their creatures against epic bosses. (We've been part of the test streams and it's super fun.)



You can join our friends at Genvid and Playcrafting for this year's PlayNYC event! It's a week long from 8/10-8/16.

PlayNYC is 100% online this year and free to attend all week long. There'll be a demo of the interactive Arena so you can see it in action and Genvid has a panel discussion on the future of interactive livestreams. There'll be over 70 games represented from NY & beyond!



Head to play-nyc.com to check out the schedule, see the games and available demos, and reserve your free ticket to join in the festivities!

And please keep sending us feedback on the Arena as we plan for the future! (Our Discord is always open.)

- Team CHKN