theHunter Classic is a long-standing, free-to-play hunting simulation game that Ringtail Studios and Magic Media have been delighted to work on for many years now. Providing full-cycle game development and live service operations has been a pleasure for our team given the long-standing collaboration and partnership we have with the Avalanche Studios team.
Given the passionate and engaged player base the game has maintained over a decade of gaming, we’ve been pushing to maintain and improve its realistic hunting mechanics and immersive environments that it’s so well known for. Over many content updates, live events, new species to hunt and be hunted by, and weapons, players have had plenty of reason to keep coming back!
Collaborating with Avalanche Studios on theHunter Classic
We’ve had a highly productive and collaborative engagement with the Avalanche team for many years now! The reason for such a strong relationship is we get to share our time with peers and people just like us! Those working in the gaming industry with a passionate and driven team of those who simply love games.
Our full-cycle development control means we often align with the Avalanche team early on with strategic planning and a roadmap including seasonal events and any long-term goals they might want to include. Following this, concept and development takes up much of our time as we develop and test new features, mechanics, optimizations, and bug fixes from the last round of QA.
Once we’ve stuck to a direction and narrowed our plans, we can iterate and test to find the right balance and match of any new mechanics or species. After this, we get into client feedback and adjustments for said feedback. Lastly, of course, we launch and monitor all community feedback for continuing improvements.
Newest Content Drop for theHunter Classic
This update was the second Halloween-inspired event, which freezes time deep in the middle of the night. We like to focus these events on tree-heavy maps to ensure player visibility is limited and the scare-factor can be increased! This time, we used the Alaska inspired “Whiterime Ridge” map which we covered in fog and blizzards. These would randomly affect players giving a unique experience each time they play with varying degrees of visibility and obscurity.
For this event, we developed and created eight species skins and behaviours on Whiterime, each from their First Nations mythologically inspired roots. We’ll keep them a secret so players can properly enjoy themselves when they discover them!
Three were passive, two would attack if encroached upon, and two would actively hunt the player. We’ll give two brief looks behind the scenes! The Werewolf, a frequent visitor in theHunter Classic Halloween events, was given a visual makeover with a Wendigo skin and utilizes our TRURACS system (which is for dynamic antler and horn growth). The second look is the snow goose
which behaviour was made to remind players of Hitchcock’s The Birds
which many players can look forward to!
The trophies and all other new items that can be found and collected by players are all inspired, just like the creatures, by First Nations mythology and beliefs.
Avalanche Studios Feedback
Our colleagues over at Avalanche were more than happy with the work we provided. The timing of the execution was important, given a lot of player sales and engagement can drop in the early months of the new year. The community reaction and response from streamers was a great boost, which both our teams were thrilled to see.
This event proved to be a huge success, especially with our full-cycle game development team having skilfully expanded into new mechanics for players to work with. Our collaboration is now looking at expanding into new mechanics for future events.
Given the success, Avalanche are very pleased and view this as a big win, they’re eager to build on this momentum. So, look out for more content in the future players! We’re thrilled to hear they’re happy with the Magic Media full-cycle game development team’s efforts.
If you’re interested in leveraging Magic Media’s full-cycle game development team for your own gaming project, get in touch with us today! No matter the genre or style, our team are ready to rise to the challenge.
