Hippogriff Haven

Applications for closed alpha testing phase #2 for Hippogriff Haven are officially open! Applications will be open from this Friday March 26th until next Friday April 3rd, closing at midnight before the 4th server time- so if you’d like a chance to join, please don’t wait too long to put your name in.

We've made a lot of progress since we last opened applications at the end of January- and we feel we're ready for a new set of players to test what we have so far, and the progress that we've made!

Here is just a shorted list of the updates we've added to the site since we let the first round of Alpha testers join in February- and these don't include the various bug fixes that we've completed since then either!

Added in the ability to toggle off automatic names for adopted pets, along with the ability to mass rename and remove names from your hippogriffs.

Added in the swap meet- the central hub for all trades and swaps between users!

Added in new stats tied to jobs, along with some long term achievements and daily errands for these stats.

Added in the ability to leave comments on a profile.

Added in the ability to send private messages to other users.

Added in the ability to customize your profile links with a selection of various button widgets.

Added in the ability to take out a specific amount if items from your produce item.

Added in the ability to change your patronage, along with the required special scroll item and shop to buy this item from in the new location Caelurbis City.

Added in the ability to auto-sort your pets in your city districts automatically, and improved the sorting system to be slightly more responsive.

Adjusted drop rates of rarer items to be more common depending on the level of a champion gathering.

Added in 2 new pet colors, along with testing the 'special drop' system where colors drop for a limited few days.

Added in seeds to crafting and soups to cooking, along with adding in crafting and cooking recipes to the item guidebook so you know exactly where an item comes from!

To Apply

To apply, please fill out the Google Form here. If you’re selected, keep an eye on your email in the following week for a unique invite code. Codes will be sent directly to the email you apply with, so please double-check it before submitting. Not everyone who applies is guaranteed a slot in the alpha- but we try to accept who we can! The form will automatically close before April 4th according to server time (just check the clock on the site!), so apply before then if you're hoping to join! Also please note- all of your account data and progress during this time will be deleted before Beta testing. We also do not have any guaranteed limited rewards for joining our alpha (yet), so please keep in mind that you are playing just for fun!

Important Note

Closed alpha testing for Hippogriff Haven is officially open!

Applications for closed alpha testing for Hippogriff Haven are officially open! Applications will be open from this Friday January 23rd until next Friday January 30th, closing at midnight before the 31st- so if you’d like a chance to join, please don’t wait too long to put your name in. We’re finally at the point where we’re ready to let a small group of players get hands-on and help us test what we’ve built so far. Closed alpha is exactly what it sounds like: limited slots, invite-only access, and a lot of poking at systems to make sure they behave, feel good to use, and nothing crashes the server whenever you interact with it. Also please note- all of your account data and progress during this time will be deleted before Beta testing.

To apply, please fill out the Google Form here. If you’re selected, keep an eye on your email in the following week for a unique invite code. Codes will be sent directly to the email you apply with, so please double-check it before submitting.

Important Note

What else can you do besides collecting every color of hippogriff? Lots!

Your most basic task in the game, beyond collecting and customizing your citizens is to grow a strong civilization!

This can be done by completing long-term and daily goals to earn civilization experience - and this can be done by just playing the game casually and completing achievements through regular gameplay!

The fine tuning of which achievements and how many points is still in progress, but the system is completely functional- with a full back end admin panel system for balancing and additional goals to be added at any time without needing a full content update!

This first screenshot shows the city level page, where you can see various long-term goals across different categories of game play. This is just the starting set of goals- we've got lots of other site gameplay loops we can integrate this feature into!

Worried about forgetting to claim achievements? Your user sidebar will notify you with an exclamation point on your EXP bar whenever you have achievements to claim.

Short Term Goals

These are your short term goals - the ones pictured are not currently balanced for daily tasks and instead are set of testing- but this is very easy for us to tweak, add, and adjust in the admin panel!

These goals are able to be refreshed daily, where you can claim a new batch of ten tasks to complete every 24 hours.

Completing these tasks also increases the overall happiness of your civilization.

Complete all ten of your tasks before the 24 hours and unlock a bonus of extra oats and experience, and gain an extra 5 tasks to complete at your leisure!

Can’t complete tasks within 24 hours? No worries - you can leave tasks to complete on your own schedule and re-roll them whenever you prefer!

Happiness and Oats Production

So what’s all that happiness you earn when you complete goals for, anyways? It’s to keep your farmers working overtime to produce you more oats, of course!

Your city produces a modest sum of oats depending on your total civilization level every 30 minutes, which you can collect at your leisure- just check in once a day to keep your silo from overflowing and your production at maximum!

The happier your civilians are, the higher the amount of oats they produce - up to 250% of your base level rate if you stay on top of their happiness!

Can’t or don’t want to keep them happy? Don’t worry - you’ll always produce your base rate of oats no matter what- so you'll always have a steady oat income as long as you log in.

Managing Your Civilization

Want to show off your civilization’s growing strength? Customize it how you want!

Change your civilization's name for a sum of oats.

Change the civilization title at any time- for free!

As you level up, you earn different titles to choose from. From a Settlement to a Megalopolis, the larger you grow the bigger the title!

Customizing Icons and Quick Stats

What about the icons that show up in the breadcrumbs and title bars of your civilization ? You can change them too!

With over a hundred icons to choose from, you’re sure to find something that captures the vibe you’re going for!

And of course, we love data- so we've added some tools to keep track of:

How many citizens you have

How many champions you have

Your Settlement - City Overview

This screenshot highlights the 'hub' for your city- where you can earn levels, keep your citizens happy through doing daily quests, and even collect idle oats (the game currency) for doing so!

You can also give your whole city a description, sort your citizens into different town districts, edit and rename these districts and your city, and customize the little icons on the page.

It also has a robust search feature to help you find that one sneaky hippogriff that you can't remember their info on easily.

Collecting Hippogriffs - The Infinity Gate

So how do you collect hippogriffs?

The main way will always be through the infinity gate, a mysterious portal where hippogriff eggs from other realms arrive. Here you'll be shown a selection of six eggs to choose from, which rotate out automatically from the available drops.

Assigning Tasks - The Job Center

You can assign your hippogriffs to do various tasks around the world for you, such as Farming and Gathering, which are almost completely idle- for farming, just make sure they've got resources to work with and they'll plant and harvest everything as needed!

For gathering, you'll need to check in every once in awhile to make sure they haven't stalled and are wasting time – and they'll stay in one of the regions of the world and gather items as needed while you're away!

Crafting, Dyeing, and Cooking work differently, where you'll have additional slots to craft recipes when you've assigned champions to help you with these tasks- and the higher level these champions are, the faster these tasks will be completed as well!

Not sure who to assign to a job? At the bottom of the page, it will show you a list of your champions that are unemployed - great for making sure you're on top of managing things!

Color Collection - The Color Guide

Prefer idle collecting instead? That's okay too!

The color guide is a page that lists your progress towards completing your on-hand collection of all sprites in the game.

You can even sort by what colors are the furthest or closest to completing!

And what's with those elements and base colors? Well, for breeding of course!

Some colors are only obtained through hybrids, such as the rose color being a red rose (gotten from the gate) being bred with a blue-base hippogriff making blue roses!

Managing Your Hippogriffs - Hippogriff Overview

And what can you do with your hippogriffs? Just about whatever you want!

Rename them

Add apparel or markings to make them unique

Give them a bio

Even give them items from your inventory to hold onto as trinkets!

You can also manage them to:

Make them new champions if you have the space (my champion list is unfortunately full - maybe next city level, Landin!)

Breed them

Or, if you're tired of them - exile them to the wilds!

There is also a helpful log that keeps track of some of the life history the hippogriff has gone through, such as where they were first obtained and previous names.

Character Customizing - Apparel

And here is Landin sporting some cute new feathers and little devil horns

This first section is showing off the backend system that any admin can use to create, manage, and retire NPC shops — meaning that it is a super hands-off process code-wise and built for a fairly solid "future proofing" where active code development can be spent on new features or the resources for code can be put towards art and other assets instead!

Admin Panel Features

This first screenshot is the basic system where admins can:

Rename a shop

Determine what currency it uses:

Oats (the regular currency)

Sugar cubes (the premium currency)

Any item in the database as its currency!

Assign what NPC runs the shop (or none—though that's quite boring)

Edit the description of the shop using the rich text editor (used across the site — supports links, images, italics, bold, etc.)

Toggle the shop open/closed with a one-click checkbox Ideal for seasonal shops or staging new features!

Item Management System

These next screenshots show more of the backend that admins use:

Overview shows:

This shop is set to accept fish as item payment

Contains two items

Includes buttons:

Add Egg Product

Add Item Product

These buttons take admins to further pages showing:

A full catalogue of in-game items and color variants

Interface to:

Add items to a shop's stock

Set purchase cost

Choose if eggs have a specific pose (or not) when bought

Edit Item Page

Of course, it isn't a shop unless users can actually buy things!

By default, items are added as 'unavailable', requiring a manual check before becoming purchasable.

These next screenshots include:

Edit item interface where admins can:

Set item cost

Toggle availability

Once an item is available — it's time to explore what users see in the marketplace!

Shop Hub - User View

This is the hub page for all shops open to users:

Displays:

Shop info

Accepted currency

How much of said currency the user currently holds

Click on any shop to open the shop's full stock page

Shop Stock Page

This is the complete stock view per shop:

All previous info displayed

Optionally shows:

Splash image for the shop

Full artwork for the NPC running the shop

Clickable icon for item-based currency

Demonstrates how shop info changes depending on the currency type selected

Shopping Basket Tool

Users can:

Click 'add' on any item to add it to a running basket total

Basket tracks:

Quantity of items

Total cost

Current currency holding

Management options:

Purchase items

Remove one of an item

Clear all with trash can icon

If purchase isn't possible:

Button updates to reflect that (e.g. "Can't afford", "Not enough civilization space for eggs")

Purchase Flow

Spending your money is the final and easiest step!

Click purchase → get a no-frills confirmation.

Logs:

Item transaction history

Currency transaction history

Just a small update as we work towards opening the Haven to everyone! The main site at hippogriffhaven.com is now live for browsing - while registration isn't open just yet, you can explore the menus, check out some of the lore, and get a feel for what we've been working on behind the scenes.

If you'd like to be the first to know when alpha testing begins, make sure to join our Discord at discord.hippogriffhaven.com! All announcements about registration, alpha key drops, and future updates will be posted there first. You'll also find channels for Q&A, sneak peeks, and a place to chat with fellow future patrons!

Here's a little of what we’ve been working on lately:

The NPC shop system, where you’ll be able to buy apparel, markings, items, and special Hippogriff colors from in-game shops.

A new dark-mode layout for the carnival, plus splash art for job center activities.

Five champion jobs - crafting, cooking, farming, dyeing, and gathering - are all up and running for testing.

The happiness and oat silo system, which rewards you for taking care of your Hippogriffs each day!

Feature Focus: Wing Markings & Colors

Just like the back leg markings, wing markings are a subset of accessories that replace the default colors on a Hippogriff, giving them new patterns or accent colors that may not have been present in the original design! These accessories allow for you to maximize the design of your characters and gives you an easy way to make even individuals of the same coat color look unique.

Previewed above are a few markings on the same coat colors, focused on the color fade options that we plan on launching beta with. The default color is on the right, and the left is the accessorized versions. The first example is a Hippogriff wearing a black base, with grey mid fade and white tip fade, creating a contrasting gradient!

Feature Focus: Back Leg Markings!

Markings are a subset of accessories that replace the default colors on a Hippogriff, giving them new patterns or accent colors that may not have been present in the original design! These accessories allow for you to maximize the design of your characters and gives you an easy way to make even individuals of the same coat color look unique! Some markings come in the full color set, while others, such as body splotches and patterns, come in a more limited color variety.

First Feature: Accessories!

Accessories are items like clothing, jewelry, effects, sparkles, and backgrounds, that break the lineart of the Hippogriff and provide an object on top of the original base. These items are planned to come in a standard set of 17 different colors as shown above to allow for maximum color matching and consistency between site-generated accessories! Every pose of Hippogriff will also be able to wear site-produced accessories, so no color will be left out from the fun!

Hello future Patrons,