Star Stable December Blog: A Year In Review 2024

Another December is upon us, and now that the Star Stable team has checked in all the fun content you’ll see in January, they are ready to take a well-deserved holiday break. Before we sign off on 2024, let’s look back at everything we accomplished.

Grab a cup of warm cider, snuggle up in a cozy blanket, and settle down next to the fire while we reflect on another wonderful year in Jorvik!

Kicking things off: horses! We released some of our favorite horses, which turned out to be yours, too! The Ardennes, Selle Francais, American Saddlebred, and Noriker made a huge impact on Jorvik, as did a wide variety of coat variations and magical horses. The latest iteration of the Friesian showcases the journey from our earliest Generation 1 horses to the present releases. I cannot stress enough the sense of pride and accomplishment our developers feel seeing you all ride around on the breeds they devote months to creating. You bring the horses to life in so many creative and inspiring ways!

This year, the world of Jorvik received dazzling touch-ups, from the smaller adjustments in Fort Pinta and the disco to the massive overhaul at Silverglade Equestrian Center. The Equestrian Center project was filled with unbelievable passion and drive from the team involved, resulting in an area worthy of the upscale “Equestrian Center” name. And to be honest, we don’t even feel we’re done filling the area with more for you to experience while you’re there—we’ve just set up an incredible foundation for more gameplay yet to come.

We implemented a new gameplay feature, jousting, which meant we finally got to have a medieval theme in Jorvik! This is just the first step in a project that will include permanent and festival content in the future—in fact, stay tuned for some fun new activities in the medieval area early next year! 

Speaking of new features... Finally (FINALLY!!!), the wardrobe has more space and functionality. Having played the game for ten years, I’m among the players running out of space and could relate to the pain of organizing my closet. Thanks to your participation in the post-release survey, we have a direction for additional iterations and improvements. 

Another HUGE addition to the game is MyStable Customization, allowing you to design your dream home stable! We’ve attempted to take on this project twice over the years but failed to reach a solution that met our expectations each time. We now have a feature the team is incredibly proud of and can continue to build on. Not only will you see more customization options regularly released, but we also tackled the challenge of giving out customizations as in-game and redeem code rewards. So, there are new ways to collect options coming your way!

The emote tool, another addition this year, is an effort to move the functionality out of the chat and to your fingertips instead. We aim to collect more feedback and usage data to see what the next iteration of emotes can offer.

We highlighted championships this year with the addition of the Champion Ranks! We know that many players enjoy the challenge and competition of these races, and with the ranking system, you can track your progress, earn beautiful ribbons, and revel in the accomplishment that comes with it. 

The Trailblazer Track is our unique spin on a battle pass—and we are glad that you’re having fun with it! By analyzing how you’re engaging, earning points, and which rewards you look forward to most, we can explore the expansion and growth of the feature and the potential addition of new types of rewards.

For devotees of the main story, we assure you that while we are approaching a critical point, it is not the end of the story altogether (just the end of one arc)! We’ve slowed down to ensure our Garnoks are in a row, and honor is paid to all the effort you’ve put in along the way. We’re also interested in returning to existing storylines and boosting the lore through quests throughout the rest of the game.  

Festivals are a major element of our game! Over time, some have changed in theme, content, and frequency. Compromises in our production schedules are needed in order to design other gameplay and features in addition to festivals (like all the other content listed in this blog), but we are working to make it easier for our teams to bring back existing festival content alongside new festival elements. We’re also trying to balance out which festivals (or parts of festivals) players engage with the most, which doesn’t always align with the sentiment we read from players online. It’s a balancing act that we hope to improve in 2025. If you missed my previous blog post about festivals, you can read it here!

Finally, thank you to everyone who participated in our recent surveys, both in-game and in the launcher. They are an excellent way for us to collect your feedback and are important input as we continue developing your favorite content! 

Thank you for hanging out with me for this recap of our 2024 adventure. We have so much to look forward to in 2025 as well! (Hello, we’re finally making a MULE??)