“We want to build something that can grow over the years to come” - Windstorm Developer Aesir Interactive talks about New Plans and Past Struggles

Getting approached by the developers of horse games is always something exciting for me. Not only do I love getting a look behind the scenes of horse game development, I also relish any chance to discuss my insights and opinions into the horse game audience and what it wants with people who have experience in the game development and publishing industry. And of course, there is always the possibility of learning about future projects early on.

In a call with Aesir Interactive CEO Wolfgang Emmer, I was treated to all of the above. Our talk was spontaneous and unstructured, but over the course of an hour and a half, I learned a lot about the development and reception of 2017s Ostwind/Windstorm and its 2019 sequel, as well as Aesir’s fascinating upcoming project.

Windstorm 1 – Flawed Game, Financial Success

Wolfgang, who says he was a passionate horse rider for several years, reveals that the Ostwind/Windstorm team had high expectations about their game during its development. Even with a team of just eight people, the 2017 Windstorm game was probably the biggest single player horse game developed in years. 

The budget for the project was half a million Euro, which makes it an order of magnitude costlier than competitors like My Riding Stables or Bibi & Tina. A significant portion of the funds were provided by the FFF Bayern, a cultural fund for Bavarian film, television and games.  

Make sure to read the Ostwind/Windstorm review for a detailed look at the game.

Not included in that budget at the time was an in-house animator, Wolfgang admits. Having played the game, that does not come as a surprise to me. Instead, animations were outsourced to the creators of the horse’s 3D model. 

“The project was very ambitious,” Wolfgang says. “The team was relatively small and inexperienced, which was why publisher and developer decided to start developing the PC Version first and only porting it to PlayStation and Switch later on. This was definitely one of the biggest mistakes in the end and resulted in lag and visibility issues for the console versions”.

Wolfgang hints that the demands of horse game enthusiasts are not thought to be particularly high in the eyes of game publishers. The notion that “horse girls” will be happy with just about anything is prevalent. 

There are various things that the Aesir team would have liked to do differently if the project guidelines would have allowed for it, Wolfgang tells me. The horse care minigames are one such aspect: they were originally a more complex system rather than the simple implementation they ended up with, he says. Wolfgang has been following The Mane Quest for a while, he tells me. He mostly agrees with my recent analysis of what makes horse care minigames frustrating, his own game’s inclusion in that criticism notwithstanding.

Despite these issues, the first Windstorm game ended up being a big financial success for publisher EuroVideo Medien. Via other German horse game developers, I know that Windstorm’s impressive sales played a big part in games like My Little Riding Champion and the latest My Riding Stables getting funded – albeit with much smaller scopes and budgets.

Even today, the first Windstorm game sells much better than its sequel Windstorm: Ari’s Arrival – not exactly to Aesir’s contentment.

Windstorm Ari’s Arrival – Bigger and better, except in sales

While the target audience for the first Windstorm game were seven to fourteen year olds, Wolfgang describes the target age range for Ari’s Arrival as ‘ten plus’. 

The project was budgeted at 1 Million Euros, almost a third of which was once again provided by the FFF Bayern according to the fund’s 2018 yearly review. As an interesting side note: the corresponding movie Ostwind – Ari’s Ankunft received a grant of 600 000€ that year, according to the same document.

The game was again published by EuroVideo Medien, under the Wild River Games label.
Where the first game had a mix of linear quests and free riding around, Ari’s Arrival is a “proper” Open World game with about four times the content of the first game. 

“The save and mission system was the most complex thing to make about the entire game,” Wolfgang says. “Real Open World is vastly more expensive to make than what we had in Windstorm 1.” This and other issues lead to delays in its development. Despite these problems, Ari’s Arrival launched in March 2019, in time for the movie’s theatre release. In the weeks following the launch, Aesir worked on various patches and bugfixes, but the project was off to a rocky start. 

On Steam, neither of the Windstorm games were particularly well received.

“The project was really complete with patch 1.3, two or three months after release.” Wolfgang tells me. In the months since, Ari’s Arrival has not yet been able to fully recover: Despite many improvements in the 2019 game, the first game still outsells its sequel by a factor of five or more these days. 

But for children’s games, retail is an important part of the market not reflected in Steam reviews or sales.

“Even now, marketing campaigns for Windstorm 2 result in more sales for Windstorm 1 instead,” Wolfgang says. “Even though the second game’s ratings are steadily rising across all platforms since the 1.3 patch.”

He challenges me for insight into where and why the 2019 game fell short. Wolfgang believes that Windstorm Ari’s Arrival is a better game than its predecessor: “It’s better looking, has better animations, more content, better systems, a real open world, a long diversified story and mission, and full compatibility to older PCs and Laptops. And it was created for consoles from the beginning, to not repeat the same mistakes.” Was the rushed launch solely responsible for the game’s underwhelming sales? 

After all, The Mane Quest has spent the past year claiming that a decent quality horse game aimed at a more grown up audience could be successful, and yet Ari’s Arrival struggles to find an audience despite aiming at an older target audience than its predecessor.

I look forward to giving the game a more thorough look and find out what may have led to its financial failure. Because if I find no major flaws in it, I may have to re-examine my claim that the market is more than ready for quality single player horse games. 

No animals were harmed in the making of this game (I think?)

Ari arrives and Ari freakin’ delivers

The gifs above were recorded by the team during development and shared with me for this article, not recorded in the game’s current version.

Stable Girl – A Game built to last

Despite the issues faced with Ari’s Arrival, Aesir Interactive is not giving up on the horse game genre: “We believe in creating a very good new one that hopefully sets the bar for other horse games to follow,” says Wolfgang. Their upcoming project bears the working title Stable Girl and was pitched to the FFF Bayern as a “Horse Riding Adventure, Simulation and Builder”. The target platforms are PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Like its licensed predecessors, Stable Girl will be built in the Unreal Engine.

“We want to build something that can grow over the years to come,” Wolfgang tells me in our call. The new project will move away from the narrative focus that Windstorm 2 had. He describes the game as being “system-driven” and mentions games like Minecraft, Rimworld and Stardew Valley as inspirations. 

“We had a wonderful time with the IP Owner of Windstorm,” he says. “We would like to continue the Windstorm Games, but whether or not Stable Girl will end up adapting the license once again is not yet certain.”

The Aesir Interactive team as presented on the studio’s website.

 What can definitely be taken from the Windstorm games are technical structures however: “We will be able to use the complex save system we built, as well as the dialogue systems,” Wolfgang says. Many of the complicated development tasks that consumed so much time for Ari’s Arrival are already done and can be reused, giving Aesir time to focus on other things for Stable Girl. 

In the years since the first Windstorm game, the Aesir team has grown to over forty people. “We’ve been hiring some game industry legends,” Wolfgang says. Some of their recently joined teammates have worked on AAA games such as the Mass Effect series, Anno 2070 and 2018’s Spider-Man. 

While Aesir will not be working with EuroVideo Medien anymore, the first funds for Stable Girl are already secured: the company will again invest a big amount of its own savings and received a 120 000€ grant from the FFF Bayern for the development of a prototype. “Every unit sold of Windstorm - Ari’s Arrival will help Aesir to create a better new game,” Wolfgang promises. 

The studio has applied to further grants and funds for additional funding. Wolfgang tells me that pre-production has begun in December 2019, with the project now moving towards the creation of a prototype. 

Exciting Times

Generic as its working title may sound, Stable Girl has the potential to become the horse game I have been waiting for. It’s a single player PC and Console game that’s built to last, rather than being intended to make a quick buck in Christmas retail, it’s an open world sandbox made by a professional team with industry experience, and it’s a project owned by a passionate team who believes in their product and is not (yet?) hindered by publisher interference and licensing limitations. It sounds like a dream come true. 

Of course, it’s always one thing to make games sound good in concepts and pitches, and whether or not Aesir Interactive can actually meet these expectations remains to be seen. But between its experienced team and Wolfgang’s obvious engagement with what horse game fans want, it sounds to me like the project is off to an incredibly promising start.

I personally cannot wait to hear more on the project. If you feel similarly, you may want to

1. Follow Aesir on Facebook for updates 

2. Use the Horses & Video Games Facebook group or the comment section beneath this article to let the developers know what you are looking for in a single player horse game on PC and consoles

3. Buy Windstorm: Ari’s Arrival to support the development of Stable Girl (TMQ review coming soon!)

4. And if you’re a horse-interested game developer looking for work in Munich, you might want to check out Aesir’s job openings.