As you may have noticed Asgard Run changed a bit for the Winter Holidays. We decided to grab a coffee with our guys from the development and art team to chat about some of the ideas that went into the game.

It all started as the idea of a gift for our players, we wanted to reward their involvement, feedback and support and thank them. We decided to use two winter holidays as a source of inspiration. Yule, an old Germanic solstice festival that lent some of its symbolism to the present day Christmas and of course Christmas and the whole idea of giving and receiving gifts (who doesn’t like presents :D?). We thought that the imagery of wrapped gifts and decorated trees was pretty universal. Since this was well received by the players we’re considering other holiday themed expansions of the game and they might have also a Viking twist.

Of course we had a lot of ideas before starting the work on the Holidays DLC but we had to be realistic about the time we had at our disposal. Let’s say that we wrote down ideas for at least 3 more expansions :D. We’re pleased with the results and it seems the players responded well. Asgard Run also got featured in the US AppStore under the Best New Updates for Racing Games.

Some challenges we had to work through:

• Though the art direction remained along the same lines, we had to change most of the textures involved in the game (both characters and environment)
• We had to work with the snow cover in order for the environment to be as rich and diverse as the green-grass theme the game originally launched with

While working on the UI and the new content elements, we also worked on solving all the issues our players noticed in the game (Thank you guys for being there and giving us constant feedback!)

We added new features and fixes, some of them as a direct answer to the request of our players:

• Ad removal
• Fixed some pesky bugs with the daily missions
• Each character received a new skin and a seasonal weapon to get them in the Holidays mood
• We adapted the whole game to the winter environment

Obviously all the new stuff we added is available for a limited period but all the things our players will unlock will stay with them.

We’re proud of what we achieved in this short time, but we felt motivated by the dedicated players and the amazing feedback we received. We know there are still some issues to fix but we’re working on them and of course we’re preparing for the Android launch in early 2016 and also for adding new content as the story of Asgard Run goes forward.