Astride: Early Access Release announced for mid May 2023

Astride is an upcoming adventure roleplaying game featuring horse riding in a Scandinavian-inspired environment. It is the debut and passion project of Raidho Games, based in Hamar, Norway. If you have not heard of the game yet, I recommend checking out my interview with Raidho’s Co-Founder Mathilde from last year:

The game’s Early Access release on Steam was initially planned for late 2022, then delayed to Spring 2023. In a recent update on Steam, the Raidho team confirms that a first version Astride will be released in mid May 2023. In the announcement, the team provides further info for what features will and won’t be part of the initial release, but also admits worry about the reception by the player base.

We are incredibly excited about the early access release, and we can’t wait to let you all play. We are definitely worried about complaints about the lack of features in the game at the start, but we hope to solve this by being open and transparent with you concerning the game’s development and our plan forward.

The tone of the post is almost apologetic in its attempt to curb expectations. I find that somewhat understandable: In the horse game communities on Facebook, I’ve seen an unfortunate trend for people to project all sorts of impossible hopes onto this particular project – including some players telling each other that Astride will be “just like Red Dead Redemption 2”. It’s a statement that lacks any basic awareness for scope or developer resources. While we don’t know the exact total development budget of either game, an educated guess puts them about a factor of 200 apart.

There’s this tendency in our niche to expect one upcoming project to be “the one” rather than just enjoying new games for what they are and looking at their strengths and weaknesses with any sort of nuance. I’ve discussed that topic with Éloise in reference to her upcoming horse game The Ranch of Rivershine as well, find that interview here.

Greying horse textures - from Astride’s March 2023 dev log

Riding clothing and character model from the March 2023 devlog

The Steam page will get an overhaul as we get closer to the finished build. We will switch out all of the screenshots and provide a new gameplay trailer that matches the current state of the game. The description will also be updated to list the current features and what will be worked on during early access. We want the Steam page to be truthful to the current state of the game to avoid any confusion or upset. It is important for our team to stay transparent with you and the rest of the community about Astride.

My own enthusiasm for Astride remains somewhat guarded – I’m excited to see what actual gameplay the first version will offer, since the promotional material so far has been limited to beauty shots, concept art and animation clips, with not a lot of insight into what the user experience might look like. As per the quote above though, we can expect to learn more of that within the next few weeks.

In any case, I am convinced the game will be a worthy addition to our genre and offer fresh takes on various horsie mechanics.

Remember to add Astride to your Steam Wishlist if you have not yet done so! Not only will you be notified once the game is available, you’ll also help the game’s release gain visibility in Steam’s promotional algorithms.