Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori News

Welcome back to another developer diary for Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori! Or shall we say WELCOME in general, because oooooh boy are there many new people watching this game now than ever before! 😱

If you’ve been following our game for a while, you may have missed that it got a whole lot of new attention recently, mostly thanks to a viral post on Twitter a.k.a. X, which got over 15 Million views and exposed our game to a ton of new eyes and ears, and led to notable additional coverage from content creators on TikTok and Instagram.

All that social media attention has also significantly impacted the game’s Wishlist numbers on Steam, which are super important for us as developers to measure people’s interest in the game. It’s been absolutely amazing to get so many new interested potential players and a ton of valuable feedback and feature wishes!

For this dev diary, let’s therefore dive into some big picture questions about our intentions for this game, and what the explosion of attention and followers means for us.



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[h2]The Basics[/h2]

Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori is going to be an open world adventure game about being a courier rider in 13th century Mongolia.

Windstorm is a franchise of movies, books and games that’s mainly popular in Germany (“Ostwind”) as well as the rest of central Europe. There have been two previous games in this series, developed by Aesir Interactive. While The Legend of Khiimori is making some key changes to its predecessors - its historical setting being the most obvious – we can still very much recommend checking out the two previous titles to get familiar with Windstorm, Mika and Ari. We’ve even released a remastered version of Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship earlier this year, so that is a perfect starting point!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2829790

In addition, we have announced the Winter Wonderland DLC for Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship - Remastered. Gallop into the next chapter on November 7th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3145870

Like its predecessors, Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori will explore themes like the connection between horse and rider and the treatment of horses and their needs, even as the gameplay and setting will be quite different. Fun fact: the connection to Mongolian mythology isn’t new for The Legend of Khiimori! Fans of the series will note that both Mika and Ari have had connections to Mongolian horse and rider legends in their respective games and movies.

If your interest in Khiimori motivates you to check out the earlier games for the first time though, please remember however that we are shifting gears quite drastically in terms of scope, target audience, gameplay focus and more with the upcoming game. We’re proud of where we came from, but The Legend of Khiimori is by far the most ambitious project in this series, and broadening who we want it to appeal to means that in turn, not everyone with an interest in Khiimori will love the earlier games.

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[h2]Frequently Asked Questions[/h2]

There are a handful of topics that have gotten particular attention in the discussions surrounding the game, and we’d like to take a moment here to address them:

Q: A non-violent game in the Mongol Empire of all places?

A: Our game is set during the reign of one of Genghis Khan’s successors. We’re not committing to a specific year, but we’re using the 1230s as our main inspiration. This was actually a comparatively peaceful, prosperous and safe period within Mongolia itself, with conquest and war focusing outwards. It was also the time when the Yam system of courier riders was used and greatly expanded.

We’re actually pretty excited to show the Mongolian people from a perspective that focuses on nomad life and culture, rather than on warfare, for a change. In order to do this time period, culture and people justice, we are in touch with historians, ambassadors as well as community members from today’s Mongolia. If you have a similarly relevant background or insight and would like to contribute to to this effort, please do join our Discord! We’re always happy to receive constructive feedback and additional inspirations.

Q: So there’s no combat, but will there be hunting in the game?

A: We’ve revealed in our Dev talk video that archery will make a comeback! Hunting animals for survival and resources wasn’t initially planned: we set out to make a family friendly game, and killing animals will impact age ratings, meaning that certain younger sections of the audience wouldn’t be able to play the game. That being said, Hunting has become such a common feature request that we are reevaluating if and how such a feature could fit in. Note that this is not a confirmation! We’re simply saying we heard you, and we’re looking into it.

Q: Why are there Warmblood horses in your dev talk video? That’s a modern horse breed that didn’t exist yet!

A: Yes, we’re well aware! Our main horse in the game is going to be the Mongol horse, that’s the model you’ve been mostly seeing in our video and image footage so far. So why is there a warmblood horse model? The titular character of the Windstorm games and movies is himself a warmblood horse (technically, he’s half warmblood, half Andalusian), so it made sense for him to be our second model in the game. The warmblood breed has therefore also been used in the WIP game while our tech team is working on horse breeding, user interface and more, which is why it was visible in the dev talk footage.

Does that mean modern Windstorm will make an appearance in historical Mongolia? Well, not quite, but the real answer is “it’s complicated and involves spoilers”. What we can say is that Modern Windstorm will appear in the game and that players will have some options regarding horse breeds in Mongolia. And of course, that we’ll share more details when they’re ready!

Q: Will the game be coming to consoles?

A: For the Early Access release, we will definitely focus on PC only. This streamlines our processes and makes regular iteration a lot more feasible. As for whether the game will come to consoles later (and to which ones), that depends on a number of factors, including the PC game’s performance and reception. We currently cannot promise ports to any specific console(s).

Q: Can we get a roadmap for when which feature is coming?

A: Yes, we’re planning to have some way for the community to not only see what is planned, but also to voice their preferences and priorities! For our game Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, we’ve made good experiences with a Trello board that serves this purpose. We have similar plans for Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori!

The roadmap will be released around the Early Access launch, so stay tuned!

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[h2]Reception, Reactions and Impact[/h2]
The game going viral and provoking countless reactions along the lines of “Oh my god, finally a game made for me 😍” has been incredibly validating: We wouldn’t be making this game if we didn’t strongly believe in a market for it, but the literally thousands of comments we’ve gotten from eager potential players these past few weeks are excellent proof of that fact.

Behind the scenes, our specific plans for this game’s vision are evolving: we’ve deliberately announced the game very early in its dev process, and concrete plans for features are shifting as we try things out and as we see what works well.

The myriad comments, questions and feature wishes have further motivated us to reevaluate what the game will and won’t have. Don’t worry, what we’ve already revealed and discussed in these dev diaries is here to stay! Our devs and artists continue to work on features like horse care, courier missions and more. At the same time though, our game designers and producers are rethinking which additional features and mechanics add the most value to our product, and how precisely we will put them all together to create a game that is truly worthy of all this attention – a game that has the capacity to be a “horse game” for the mainstream.

In short: things are happening, the increased attention has been incredibly promising for our project overall, and we’re looking forward to sharing more of our detailed plans with you soon!


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access
• #04 | Horse Training and Horse Care
  
  

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[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
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Discord Twitch Website

Welcome back to another Developer Diary for Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori! Previously, we’ve written quite a bit about our setting, why we chose it and how we’re designing our game world.

Today, however, we want to focus on the reason many of you are here to begin with: Horses and what you can do with them! Specifically, we’re going to have a closer look at Horse Training and Horse Care today—two crucial core features that are meant to make the horses in our game feel like living, individual creatures rather than simply speed upgrades in different colors.

In Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, you will be able to own several horses, choosing different ones for missions and exploration based on their abilities and individual strengths. What exactly that means for the game’s story about the titular black stallion and his connection to his one chosen rider is a topic we’ll explore on another day, but we can already tell you that there will be a variety of horses to ride in the game.


🚧Work in Progress🚧


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[h2]Horses as Individuals[/h2]

We want horses in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori to have a certain mechanical weight to them, metaphorically speaking. While horses can be bought and sold, we don’t want taming and breeding to turn into a factory process where players have to acquire and load off dozens of horses until they get a perfect one. It’s about quality, not quantity!

This intention has an impact on our horse breeding mechanics—the player will be able to influence which genetic traits will be passed on, to avoid breeding the same pair again and again until getting the desired results—but it also informed our design choices in all related horse mechanics. Taming, Breeding, Training, Trust, Traits, and Care are all intertwined systems that need to work well with each other and come together for interesting gameplay, especially where they intersect with our other major gameplay elements, such as Courier Missions and Exploration.

We’re designing these systems—from stats and potential to learnable traits—so that there are a lot of axes for horses to differ from one another, in order to make them feel alive and distinct. Equine Realism is a core design pillar for the project, and one that deeply influences the way we’re tackling these features. We want our horses to have mechanical depth even as we keep the riding very accessible to young and casual players, and we want there to be additional challenge and significance in the exploration on horseback itself.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h2]Stats and Potential[/h2]

With Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, we’re building upon the successes and learnings from previous Windstorm games and those from our latest horse riding game, Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch. With our stats and horse training system however, we’re taking a step in a new direction: Rather than being born with a fixed set of stats and traits, horses can be trained and taught throughout the game.

Every horse will have five stat values that influence their handling: Strength, Agility, Speed, Endurance, and Balance. These values affect how the horse’s movement works as well as how well it can carry the cargo from courier missions. In addition, every horse is born, bought or tamed with a certain “Potential”, which can then be invested—through training—into the aforementioned stats.

Now, what does that training look like?

Two of our core design principles come into play here: Equine Realism and Satisfying Exploration. While sending a horse off to a trainer might have been a realistic option to add in a modern equestrian setting, Mongolian ponies get their training outdoors. And what better way to make the traversal of steppe, forest and mountainside matter, than to ensure that the movement itself is what trains your horses.

Meaning: you ride around, and your horse gets better at riding around. Seems simple, right? Well, there’s a bit more complexity than that: When getting from A to B, you, the player, can make various choices regarding how to get there, from the path you chose, to the gait and speed you ride at. Those choices will then determine which attributes are trained.

For example, riding tight turns or winding around obstacles at a canter will train your horse’s agility, while moving through knee-high water or over deep, muddy ground will increase its strength. This can also mean that you might choose to stay on the road and preserve your horse’s potential for future speed training, rather than moving over ground that will train something else.

Horses in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori won’t grow old and die, but the Potential stat effectively shows you how much more training any horse is up for. A foal you’ve bred yourself will have high potential and none of it allocated to specific stats yet, while an adult horse you buy from a merchant or tame from a wild herd might already come with a set of skills that you can’t influence as freely.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h2]Care and Consequences[/h2]

In Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, every horse has Hunger, Thirst, Health and Stamina values that can get drained and filled through gameplay. Together, these values make up the horse’s overall Condition, which in turn influences how fast the horse gains trust or gets its attributes trained.

We want there to be more than one way to satisfy a horse’s hunger and thirst: A horse left alone near water or grass will simply begin to graze and drink by itself, whereas the player may have to carry food items such as hay or grain to feed by hand when crossing more barren terrain. Horses left at home in camp will be fed, so that the player needn’t worry about them starving when going on long journeys through the world.

One horse game staple feature that we’re very consciously avoiding with Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori is the sort of care minigame that takes the player out of regular gameplay and has to be repeated for every owned horse. Our goal is that horse care interactions should add to making the horses feel alive, but not become overly tedious.

That doesn’t mean that horses can be neglected without consequence however: reckless riding or encounters with environmental hazards may have a negative impact on your horse’s health. This then needs to be taken care of through rest or medicine, or you’ll risk worsening the horse’s condition to the point where it becomes unrideable. Here too, our intention is to keep the gameplay accessible and fun, for health conditions to add a bit of complexity to the player’s exploration and traversal, but not make it punishing.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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Intentions are well and good, but whether these conditions and care interactions are fun is something we’ll then of course evaluate with our early playtesters! If you want to be one of those testers, make sure to sign up using our tester registration form.

What do you think of our plans? What would YOU like to see in horse care and training in this game? Which mechanics do you not particularly care for? Let us know in the discussion below!


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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Thank you for reading! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡

If you too want to be part of future playtests, make sure to sign up right here!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2697000/

[h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World
• #03 | PC Early Access

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[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
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Discord Twitch Website

Howdy, Couriers!

In the spirit of our commitment to transparency and collaborative development, we have new information to share with you regarding Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori. This month, we have prepared something very special: Our first Developer Talk video!

Since you've been curious for more detailed information and gameplay scenes for a while now, we've put together this video to discuss the art, the gameplay, and Early Access.

We published the full video on YouTube, so be sure to show your support with comments and likes so we can keep delivering awesome behind the scenes content like this!

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Looking ahead to next month, we are already whipping up the next Developer Diary for you! In September's dev diary, we'll give you a bit more insight into some of the enjoyable mechanics. As always, we will be sure to include early concept art and content for you to feast your eyes on, so definitely look forward to later this month!

Join us on the ride in Early Access next year!

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We had a ton of fun making this video and hope you had a ton of fun watching it! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡

If you too want to be part of future playtests, make sure to sign up right here!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2697000/

[h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• #01 | To the Steppes
• #02 | An Open World

[hr][/hr]
[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
Facebook Instagram TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch Website

Welcome back to another Developer Diary for Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori! Last time, we talked about how and why we chose historical Mongolia as our setting for the game, and today we want to go more in depth about what that choice means for our open world.

Designing an Open World for a game is a matter of balances: players want game worlds to feel large and expansive, but not so much that exploring them becomes tedious. Empty worlds quickly become boring, but at the same time, a Mongolian steppe setting should not feel overly busy and crowded. Read on to find out how we’re working on achieving that balance.


🚧Work in Progress🚧


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[h2]Steppe, Forests, Mountains, Rivers[/h2]

Vast, flat, treeless grasslands are as crucial a characteristic of nomadic life in Mongolia as the short stocky horses and round white tents called ger, the Mongolian word for Yurt. That doesn’t mean however, that steppes are the only type of environment the country has to offer. That’s great for us, because a game world made up solely from flat, grassy terrain wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting place to explore. Not only would it be rather monotonous, but flat, treeless terrain has the additional disadvantage that there’s no parallax effect, meaning no objects or environments passing by at different speeds due to their distance. As such, moving over a featureless plane would feel quite unsatisfying, since the player has little or no sense of covering any distance.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

Early on in our development process, we researched the diversity of Mongolian landscapes, ensuring that we were not dooming our game to monotonous environments by picking this setting. Fortunately, that environmental diversity is quickly evident: The country is large and made up of various ecological zones, from the sand dunes of the Gobi Desert in the South, to the snowy Altai Mountain ranges in the West, to the forested wilderness of Khentii in the North, to the myriad rivers and lakes spotting and splitting the grasslands throughout.

Taking inspiration from a real country and representing it in in a video game is a process of weighing realism and gameplay fun against each other, and finding a compromise that captures the essence of the real place while taking the creative liberty to scale and tweak the environments into something that is fun and intuitive to traverse. What that means is that the ratio of grasslands to mountains to desert that we have in the game is likely not going to match that of a real map of Mongolia, but that we’re shaping those in-game biomes based on their real life counterparts in terms of flora and fauna and environmental characteristics.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h2]Scale and Sensation[/h2]

In designing the open world, our level designers emphasize the importance of the vista: entering a new area or hard to reach peak can of course reward the player with concrete gameplay achievements such as quest progress, treasure chests or other types of unlocks, but in a well-designed game world, the environment itself is part of said reward. To this end, trees, rocks, rivers and buildings are placed in conscious composition with consideration for how the player is most likely to see them for the first time. The strategic placement of paths and props defines whether players run up against a cliff wall or see the world open up before them.

For Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, a certain grandness and scale is part of what makes a good vista: the sensation of reaching a new part of the map and seeing the world laid out before you, with the knowledge that all you see is ripe to explore and can actually be reached.

Our game map is therefore planned to be quite sizable, even by AAA gaming standards, in order to give players that sense of having vast areas to explore and to suit the scale of the world to feel right when traversed at a horse’s gallop rather than a human’s jog.

For our Early Access release, the world will not be complete yet: We’ll start with an accessible area of about one fourth of what is planned in the end, though exact numbers and proportions remain subject to change. To keep players in that area, we are working with natural borders such as cliffs and deep rivers wherever possible, because of course no one likes to walk up against so-called invisible walls.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h2]Event Density and Environmental Language[/h2]

To ensure that the world is interesting to traverse with its significant size, we’re applying a design philosophy inspired by games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2: For the player, there should be something happening roughly every 60 seconds of playtime. This something can be an NPC riding by, a swarm of birds soaring overhead, an interactable point of interest, or a wild wolf howling. On their own they might not be all that thrilling of an experience, but together they help make the world feel alive and interesting to travel through.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

Our level designers also employ deliberate environmental language in order to tell the player which points on the map to investigate further, to understand where it makes sense to slow down and have a look around at a walk or trot before continuing an overland journey at high speed.

In the vast wilderness, human-made objects like waypoints of fences can easily draw the player’s attention. At the same time, rocks and tree stumps can be carefully placed to subtly and non-verbally guide the player to notice accessible slopes or river crossings that might otherwise not be immediately obvious.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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[h2]Making Travel Intrinsically Interesting[/h2]

There is one additional key aspect in designing how it feels to explore the world of Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori: our horses are more than just a means of faster travel. We’ll go into more detail about this topic in future dev diaries, but essentially, the player will make certain small choices about the way they travel (the exact path they go, the speed and gait at which they ride) which then has an effect on the horse’s training.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

Similarly, horses can be trained and they also have personality traits. They may favor one type of terrain or another, meaning the player can make additional choices about whether to actively seek out or to avoid patches of sand, gravel or mud, which then influence their travel speed and efficiency. Those ground types may be further influenced by weather, adding another layer of possible consideration when picking an optimal route. To keep the game accessible and not over complicate things for less experienced players, these path-optimizations are optional: roads serve as an alternative that all horses can use in every weather condition, they just might not be the fastest option.

Our horse controls are one of the first things we will playtest with interested community members, so they’re subject to change based on feedback, but the current implementation allows the player to tweak the speed of their gait. This means that for one player, horse, or situation, traveling at a fast trot might be a better or faster choice than a slow canter, and it adds another layer to play around with.


🚧Work in Progress🚧

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Thank you for reading! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡

If you too want to be part of future playtests, make sure to sign up right here!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2697000/

[h3]Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:[/h3]

• #01 | To the Steppes

[hr][/hr]
[h2]Join the Community[/h2]
Facebook Instagram TikTok Twitter

Discord Twitch Website