Hey guys, it’s once again time to get you up to speed on EQUIRE’s development. Over the past month, I’ve had quite a bit of time to work on the game and was able to make some big steps forward.
Competition System
I’ve implemented a new menu that shows upcoming competitions. As your in-game year progresses, different levels of competition will become available for your horses:
Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional, and Elite.
To enter higher levels, your horse and rider need to gain eligibility by placing in lower-level events. Keep in mind: entering a competition will block part of your training schedule for that month, so you’ll need to plan carefully. Your horse also needs to be in peak mental and physical condition to deliver the best results.
Before competing, you’ll be able to view your competitors and walk the parkour to get a feel for what to expect. Then, you’ll start the first round, aiming to complete it without gaining faults—such as knocking down poles or exceeding the time limit. If multiple riders finish without faults, there will be a second round to determine the winner based on time and faults.
Competitions offer Prestige and money based on placement and level. If your or your horse’s Prestige is low, performing well at a high-level event can give a big boost. On the other hand, if you’re a world-renowned rider on a million-dollar steed and fail at a beginner competition, you’ll lose a lot of Prestige and make headlines for the wrong reasons.
I’m really happy with how the progression through competitions feels so far. I’ve also made a few changes to the show-jumping gameplay to make it more fun and challenging, but I’ll cover that in more detail in the next update.
Building System: Flexibility & Customization
Most of my time this month went into improving the building system, which I want to be one of EQUIRE’s unique selling points. My goal is to give players as much creative freedom as possible in building and designing their ranches.
As a first step, I removed some placement restrictions that required foundations to be combined with surrounding walls. This allows you to build more complex structures and gives me the flexibility to add more customization options for walls and foundations in the future. Next, I tackled roof elements. At first glance, adding roofs might seem simple—but I had two specific goals that made it tricky:
Supporting various building shapes and roof types
Allowing for open structures (like riding halls), which have no flat floor underneath and need to look good from below
After a lot of trial and error, I now have a working set of roof elements that let you build a wide variety of roof styles. While working on roofs, I noticed it was difficult to get a good view of your building with the old top-down camera. So I added camera rotation to Architecture Mode, making it much easier to view and place elements from different angles.
I also made progress on the ranch environment. As explained in earlier updates, you’ll take over a nature reserve, with only a small clearing available for construction. The rest is surrounded by dense forest. I’m considering letting players expand the building plot later on—it could be an interesting progression mechanic, starting with a small cozy area and gradually growing your ranch as your needs evolve.
Polish & Presentation
Once the core building features were done, I wanted to showcase them in a video. So I began polishing things further:
I Created new UI elements
Added lots of new objects: storage bins, hay bales, lamps, rugs, windows…
Introduced a painting object on which you can change the image inside by interacting with it
I posted two videos on Instagram and TikTok:
One shows the building gameplay
The other is a render video of the finished stable
Check them out to see how building works in EQUIRE. To make the render video, I built a tool that allows me to load built ranches into the editor and film cinematic footage of real, playable builds. This tool will definitely come in handy for future videos.
That’s it for this update. I’ll now be focusing on a few housekeeping tasks before jumping into more exciting stuff. Thanks so much for your continued support—more updates coming soon!