"Astride" Kickstarter Announcement & Developer Interview – A Scandinavian Horse Game with Big Ambitions

Astride is a horse game inspired by Scandinavian environments and horse breeds. It is the debut project of newly formed studio Raidho Games, themselves based in Hamar, Norway. Its Kickstarter campaign launched on March 11th and is already three quarters funded.  

Raidho’s Co-Founder and Lead 3D-Artist Mathilde Kvernland has been a member of the TMQ Discord Community for a while, and has occasionally posted about her growing plans for the horse game she’d like to make. Those plans have become a lot more concrete a few months ago: Raidho was founded as a company in August 2021, and with the beginning of 2022, the team has started working full time on Astride. An Early Access release is planned for later in 2022. 

I’ve been watching the project with both excitement and a bit of scepticism throughout, so the crowdfunding launch is the perfect opportunity to take a closer look – and to have a chat with Mathilde about it. 

What is Astride

Astride bills itself as a “horse game” through and through, promising stable customization, horse training, competitions in different disciplines and trail rides through an open word. 

“Solve and reveal the mysteries and secrets surrounding you, help out the townspeople and unlock new training possibilities, special tack, equipment, clothes and more,” the Kickstarter page says additionally, hinting at its narrative component. In addition to horses with personalized traits, seasonal competitions and genetically-based horse breeding, Astride also promises multiplayer functionality such as visiting other players’ farms and accompanying them on rides. 

The feature list is impressive enough that the producer in me immediately wonders if the recently assembled team can pull this off. I voiced that concern to Mathilde, who assures me that her team has the experience and support they need. 

“We have the support of Hamar Game Collective to help guide us forward,” Mathilde explains, “a cluster of game companies including Sarepta Studio, Encircle Games, Perfectly Paranormal and more. There is a lot of knowledge and help that we can access. We also just acquired an experienced programmer who’s previously worked on games like Among the Sleep and Mosaic. He has extensive knowledge in Unity and he has created his own multiplayer networking package that will be used in Astride.”

Mathilde Kvernland is Raidho’s Co-Founder, Community Manager and Lead 3D-Artist - and a long-time member of the TMQ Community

Raidho games’ strategy to convince players is one of transparency “Our daily work in progress, weekly updates and announcements and our general connection with the community has earned Astride and the team a lot of trust. Trust that we do not take lightly. We know how it feels to find the perfect game in progress - and to then have it cancelled or disappear without a trace” 

There’s another, more excitable portion of the growing fan base who already hopes that Astride will be the horse game for them and everything they’ve ever dreamed of: “We are trying our best to not promise too much with Astride, as we know how high expectations can get. A lot of our community members already mention titles like Red Dead Redemption 2. To be frank, it’s exciting, but also terrifying to be compared with AAA studios. We are a very small team and the high expectations do not exactly calm us down. But no matter what, we will do whatever we can to see Astride succeed.

While the horse game niche has been filled almost exclusively by kids’ games publishers with dubious quality targets, Astride is not alone these days in the “indie” horse game space on PC. Between Tales of Rein Ravine, That Horse Game and The Ranch of Rivershine, we’re seeing a bit of a trend for the general sentiment of “fine, I’ll make my own horse game” from horse fans unsatisfied with what the industry offers and taking matters into their own hands. The team at Raidho games is aware of these “competitors”. 

“These are all wonderful titles and we are so excited to be working alongside them and watching each other grow!”, Mathilde tells me. But what will differentiate Astride from those similar projects? 

Drifandi and Baldur, the two Iceys owned by Raidho team members.

“Our game is set in a Nordic/Scandinavian environment with the main focus on the horse breeds from this region. Two of our developers – myself included – own Icelandic horses and that is why gaited riding will also be introduced in Astride.” 

For most game developers, implementing the three or four standard gaits is already more than enough, as shown time and time again by games dropping the walk or trot completely. Including special gaits like tölt, pace or other ambling gaits are an additional can of worms that most game creators have no interest in opening. Even a game that pays as much attention to detail as the aforementioned Red Dead Redemption 2 decided to include Tennessee Walking Horses without their eponymous Running Walk. 

While all of us in the horse game niche share the general feeling of our hobby being underrepresented, fans of gaited breeds and their unique movements have even less opportunity to see their passion portrayed in games. 

“We have the knowledge and experience in gaited riding and gaited breeds to do this justice,” adds Mathilde. 

Apart from tackling the subject of gaited horses, the Astride team also plans to place focus on Dressage. A discipline that the edutainment horse games of the early 00s often included, but frequently struggled to translate into game mechanics. Using mouse gestures and timed arrow inputs à la Dance Dance Revolution were common methods. Astride plans a different approach: 

The Norwegian Fjord Horse is one of Astride’s poster children.

“One of our developers has been a trainer in dressage and we will be squeezing all her knowledge into the game,” Mathilde explains. “We’ve already showcased piaffe and passage, but there’s more to come. The dressage competitions won’t be anything like DDR where one taps arrow keys in time to music. There will be a program which needs to be followed with the correct dressage exercise. Timing, collection, pathing and more will affect the scoring in the end.” 

Not every horse will be exactly the same to ride, Mathilde adds. “Horses will also have personalities and hidden perks. These are revealed to the rider over time and can be trained away – or not.”
Of the five person team behind Astride, Mathilde describes three – including herself – as “overly passionate about horses,” adding that they all owned or own horses and have grown up loving these animals. “We have excessive knowledge inside the team and are more than sure that we can create a game that is accurate when it comes to horses, riding and caretaking.”

Crowdfunding and Other Plans

As my readers know, I have quite some faith in the profitability of this target audience. Even so, constructing a successful crowdfunding is still a science by itself. The golden days of game crowdfunding where players would throw money at a concept alone are mostly past, and indie game these days often need a free demo or at least a bunch of meaningful and conclusive gameplay footage. Astride has taken a certain risk in launching their campaign before being able to share any of that. 

The Kickstarter page and trailer shows in-engine beauty shots but no real gameplay footage yet.

The turning behavior of the horse still looks fairly stiff to my eyes at this stage, the horse turning straight on its vertical axis without bending along a curve.

“The community was growing every day and word travelled, so we thought that we’d strike while the iron was hot,” explains Mathilde when I ask for their reasoning behind the timing of their campaign. “We’ve grown even more after launching the Kickstarter, and are hoping to be able continue working full time on Astride with this.”

With 20 days left in the campaign and already 74% of the target funds reached at the time of posting, I have no doubt that the Astride Kickstarter will succeed. That the pledges slow down a bit after the initial launch high is completely normal for crowdfunding campaigns, and Astride will likely see another uptick in pledges as the final stretch begins. 

Their 30K € funding goal is not overly ambitious, but in decent company with successful campaigns such as Calico or Niche. Generally speaking, even successful and stretch-goal-reaching Kickstarters very rarely cover the actual development cost, but they are an important step in many games’ creation processes both as financial aid and as promotional tools. 

Fortunately then, this campaign is not the only strategy Raidho is exploring for funds. Aside from a Patreon for early adopters, the team has also received a grant from Østnorsk Filmsenter, a regional film and game fund financed through the Norwegian Ministry of Culture Affairs. 

“The panel were impressed with what we had so far, as well as the community we already had back when we applied,” explains Mathilde. That the Raidho team was able to convince a government funding agency lends not only financial support, but additional legitimacy in the claim that they can deliver what they promise. 

The team aims for an Early Access release in late 2022, and for the development to continue thereafter. The basic riding system, dressage, show jumping and cross country disciplines as well as horse care and stable customization are all planned to be part of this first version. 

“But what we are most excited about is the multiplayer function,” adds Mathilde. “As it looks right now, we will be able to at least have a testable multiplayer function for the early access release.”

Outlook

I’ll admit that I was initially a bit sceptical of Astride. My games industry experience makes me inherently wary of ambitious projects from inexperienced teams. While writing and researching this article however, I ended up adding my own pledge to Raidho’s kickstarter nonetheless. I want projects like this one to succeed after all.

Traditionally funded and published horse games are experiencing a bit of a renaissance with projects like Horse Club Adventures and Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure, but some passionate Indie competition is exactly what this genre needs in order to grow beyond the outdated perception that only children would play a game about riding and caring for horses. And those with indie horse game dreams of their own can intently watch projects like Astride and not only profit from their success, but also learn from their potential flaws. 

These are no doubt exciting times to be following the horse game niche – it’s more than ripe to be mixed up a bit, and I’m absolutely stoked to see what impact Indie projects like Astride will have on the competition. 

If you too are interested, make sure to check out the Astride Kickstarter and the project’s social media accounts. If you can’t pledge or aren’t quite convinced yet, you can always support the game by adding it to your Steam Wishlist or telling other people about it. “Spreading information about Astride and the development could potentially get more people interested in following the process,” Mathilde adds. “The more people we have interested in the project, the bigger are the chances of Astride receiving more government funding and reach.”

I’m happy to add my own voice of support to the game with this article – and I will definitely keep my eyes on its progress.