Star Stable November Blog: Winter Festival & Hollow Woods

Winter Festival

By Anne Bullock (Lead Writer) & Emma Jerlin (Junior Designer)

Hello, dear Jorvegian equestrians! Anne and Em are here to drop some BTS info about Winter Festival 2023! 

For many years, the brief for the Winter Festival has been that it should feel magical but be grounded in realism. I know, I know–you probably already assumed this due to the completely believable Yeti quest and all the people riding around on the backs of wild animals last year. This year, however, we decided to lean into magic–the kind of magic that transforms places, experiences, and maybe even creatures. We hope you find it enchanting.

Another focus this year was replayability. Rather than putting all of our eggs in a single quest-chain basket, we aimed to build the Winter Festival using a handful of smaller (but just as magical!) building blocks. Not only does this make for a safer and smoother development, it gives you a larger variety of content! Tying all of the magical activities together is the narrative of helping dear Fumble restore the magic to the Winter Crystal, which he totally had no part in breaking, by the way. At all.

A few of these gameplay activities are inspired by the backstories of our beautiful magical horses. This is unusual because as the horses rotate, related gameplay could be rendered irrelevant. To mitigate this problem, we ensured that the gameplay met other themes, such as winter activities and magical activities, so it will always be relevant for the Winter Village.

As the weeks progress, more magical creatures and activities will appear in the village, and as you move through the Winter Magic progression for some epic rewards, the village will look more magical, too! The team implemented a system of tools such as filters and material- and mesh changes that will be triggered as you work to restore magic to the Village. These changes will impact the environment and feeling in the area.

Whether you pop by for a quick visit or a five-hour Winter Magic collect-a-thon, we hope that you enjoy the activities this year!

Before we sign off, we want to thank all of our team members who created the gameplay, environment art, art assets, creatures and features, and the technical tools that make this game work!

Hollow Woods pt.2

By Bretton Hamilton (Lead Game Designer)

Make sure to check out the previous Hollow Woods deep dive in the October blog.

Hello my fellow druids! My name is Bretton Hamilton, Game Master Bee, and I’m the Archdruid Design Director here at Star Stable. I hope you all are enjoying your first steps on the journey to joining the druids and keeping harmony with the Hollow Woods! Today, I want to take you on the journey of how we approached Hollow Woods as Game Designers!

First, I want to start with a question I’ve heard from many of our players over the years.

“What even IS a Game Designer?”

A designer is a problem solver! Graphic designers solve problems with graphics, interior designers solve problems with furniture, paint, and lights, and game designers solve problems with game mechanics!

That’s a great starting point, but I want to take you through the creative process for game designers! Where do we get our ideas? Why do we make the choices we make? How can YOU become the kind of game designer Star Stable will want in the future?

“What problems were we trying to solve with Hollow Woods?”

Over recent years, Star Stable has put more effort into making our festival content as fun and enjoyable as possible, and players generally really love our holidays! However, after a festival ends, we see a LOT of players take a break and stop playing. Our long-time players have gradually started playing primarily on Wednesdays, and only to try out the newest content. So to solve this, we decided that we should release a permanent update that brings thrilling and replayable gameplay to the game, while also breathing new life into our fan favorite forest! With this, the concept for Hollow Woods as an art AND gameplay revamp was born. What if we can give players something exciting and meaningful to do between festivals! Can we get players to enjoy the game so much they want to log in on a random Tuesday regardless of that week’s release to run around Hollow Woods?

As with all great problems, solving this raised countless other challenges! How do we make this fun for people? What kinds of rewards can we offer? How frequently should players get rewards? We don’t have time to make brand new horses for this release, what can we do to shine a spotlight on some classic magic horses from past releases? How do we create content that new players AND high level players are excited to play? How can we invite players back to the Hollow Woods even after they complete all the Paths?

See if you can spot our solutions to these challenges while you play!

“This is great, but there are still problems with the Hollow Woods!?”

Haha, I’m sure there are! This is the first time we’ve attempted something so ambitious for a permanent release! Hollow Woods contains two brand new puzzle features, the new Paths system, and so much more! These initial releases for Hollow Woods are still missing a few things we originally planned for this project. Gardening and crafting was postponed until January so the team could confidently release something of quality. 

Each Path was designed to target different players and solve different problems.

• The Path of Whimsy is focused on making sure the moment to moment gameplay is exciting, reactive, and surprising!

• The Path of Runology focuses on offering challenge, mystery, and mastery.

• The Path of Terra is designed to bring players back to the Hollow Woods! Plants found around the world have renewed value through this path, and the garden rewards players for logging in with rare plants to craft items that are useful to players of all levels!

The first two paths contain the core experience of Hollow Woods. So, we decided it makes perfect sense to release the Path of Terra after the Winter Festival to remind players that there is much to see, explore, and unlock in the Hollow Woods!

“Well that makes sense… When you say it that way, I think I could be a pretty good game designer, too!”

That’s the spirit! Some of our most inspiring designers started their journey with us as players! Each year, we periodically look for opportunities to recruit game design interns from game schools! Our studio is based in Stockholm, Sweden, so if you ever find yourself up here with a game degree, you should come say hello!

The future is bright for Star Stable, and we always need more brilliant creatives to help us solve hard and exciting challenges! What problems would you most like to see us solve? 

I hope you can feel all the love we poured into Hollow Woods.
We will be releasing minor rebalancing updates for our Path system to tweak numbers, so expect some tweaks over the coming months as we listen to our data and player feedback!

Thank you all for joining us on this journey! We are eager to listen to what you think about Hollow Woods. Your feedback and trust helps us make Star Stable the best it can be!