Lots of cool stuff in this update (if we do say so ourselves) thanks to the feedback and testing from our friends over in the CHKN Discord. We’ve got a lot of CHKNeers hanging out, sharing creatures, playing together, and calling out our bugs. ;) And we’re still growing. Come join us!

Check out the notes below for all the updates in this latest patch... or just download it and jump in a game to see what’s new!

• The world has gotten a major expansion, with more temples, Lifeshaper upgrades, and wild creatures to discover!
  
• Everything is now randomly generated beyond the starting area. This means that new Adventure or Creative games will generate a different world and no playthrough will be the same.
  
• NOTE: If you’re continuing from a saved game, world objects might float or be underground where the old world and new world meet since the world data has changed.
  
• Let us know what you find out there!

An example of a generated map (from one of John’s Adventure games).

• The new building workspace let’s you remove and reattach groups of blocks without them returning to your inventory! Just move a block away from your creature and “drop” it there in the build sphere. You can pick it up and attach it again, or finish building and any disconnected blocks will return to your inventory.

Important decision: snake head or dog head?

• Improved undo/redo states
  
• Improved visual clarity on creature while building
  
• New and improved effects on building

• Balance changes
  
  • Reduced the power of the initial starting area creatures and bosses
    
  • Cooked food now restores more energy; Log and branch durability has been increased; Breakable rock health has been reduced
    
  • Laser Eyes now can break stone
• Additional creatures added to the game for both the Arena and world generation.
  
  • Many of these were created by our community members! Big thanks to cohollow, jelly butter, hedgehog pug, Dinoman9877, lordofd, tycothepug, deathasholds, fallensolger666, and paradox for their awesome creations this round.
    
  • Share yours over on our Discord and they might end up in game!

You may run into Moodusa by Cohollow on your adventures. It’ll probably be fine… just don’t look directly into its eyes.

• Added in-game Feedback and Bug Reporting, which makes it easier for you to report any issues you might be having. It will automatically send us a screenshot, your session’s log, and your saved game so that we can debug issues more quickly.

• Fixed Mac being stuck at 30% when initially loading
  
• Fixed several issues that caused ID collisions in multiplayer games and break the game state
  
• Fixed trees and bushes burning forever and not taking damage
  
• Fixed rare case where exiting a build sphere would cause player to be dragged to another location
  
• Fix to an error in building that would break game state
  
• Creature wing flapping is now synced over the network
  
• Fixed client creatures in multiplayer games not taking falling damage when being ridden
  
• Disabled undo/redo in multiplayer (This was causing inventory syncing confusion, especially when multiple players were attempting multiple undo/redos.)
  
• Fixed several bugs with the creature party system that would cause a broken game state resulting in frozen, non-reactive creatures
  
• Fixed several issues with editing a creature through the party screen
  
• Fixed several issues with storing a creature if it had an item in its mouth

As always, please share your feedback, creations, and suggestions with us! We’re making CHKN together with you all so we really love seeing what you create and listening to your ideas.



- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

We’ve added even more control to the creature builder with some new improvements. We’ll keep this post short so you can get in and try them out! ;)

New Builder Controls:

• New rotation tool! Rotate in all axes, rotate blocks that are already attached, and have more control over your creature builds
  
• New highlight colors on Life Blocks make it much easier to see what you have selected and where you can place them
  
• The undo/redo system has been reworked to be more smooth and consistent, so it’s easier to experiment while building

And thanks to all our CHKNeers for your help reporting and testing so we could get these new bug fixes out!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where party creatures would not summon correctly outside of the world area where they were stored
  
• Fixed item duplication bug caused by clicking “Pick up all” from containers
  
• Fixed a big where clicking “Edit” on the party screen of a creature did nothing
  
• Torch and Lifeshaper FXs will no longer stay on in your hand even after the item is unequipped
  
• Poachers no longer change appearance when taking damage
  
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Client creatures now set the correct LOD on connect (This fixes issues where creatures were missing or in wrong positions!)
    
  • Equipped items now display correctly when a client first connects to a game
    
  • Client creatures now correctly burn stamina when gliding
    
  • Clients no longer have to “rediscover” their own creatures in multiplayer games
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused certain quest conditions to not progress correctly for clients in multiplayer

If you’re not on our Discord yet, come say hi and let us know what you’d like to see in CHKN.

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/

“Welcome to my mansion, Mr. Piggles. Please do not eat my entire farm, kthx.”

Creative CHKNeers have been sharing their Homesteads over on Discord so we think it’s time for a...


We’d love to see what you’re building in CHKN. Take a screenshot and then head over to the #buildings channel on Discord to share it. Show us your lavish mansions, spooky bunkers, cozy farms, impenetrable fortresses… or maybe you’ve built something completely different? Show off your handiwork and we’ll showcase them in our next post!

We’ve pushed another update live. Thank you to our Discord friends for all the feedback and helping us track down some of these bugs.

• Crafting progression quests will now always trigger as you explore, regardless of whether you’ve completed the initial on-boarding quest
  
• You now need an open party slot to create a new creature in Adventure Mode (This is to prevent confusion people were reporting when creating a new creature and then being unable to add it to the party. You can still have multiple tamed creatures!)
  
• Life Blocks no longer open the edit sphere when used, so no more unwanted launching of the creature builder at inopportune moments (like combat, whoops). You can use the Life Shaper or select Edit in the radial menu to build whenever you like.
  
• Party/tamed creatures will now help remove stumps
  
• Bug Fixes:
  
  • Identified and fixed an issue that caused frame rate to drop over time
    
  • A creature being ridden in Automatic Riding Mode no longer moves erratically
    
  • The “Build a powerful creature” quest condition now works correctly
    
  • Fix to in-game HUD not appearing after completing the “Build a creature” on-boarding quest
    
  • Fixed input glitches that were occurring in the Creature Builder

Don’t forget, we’re streaming today (Friday, Feb 8th) at 3:30 pm EST. Watch on Twitch, YouTube, or here on Steam. Greg and John will build homesteads and then try to defend them against your creations. Send us your best raiding creatures in the #creatures channel on Discord. Winners get bragging rights over the devs!



Plus, survival streamer Joefudge will be back on stream playing CHKN! He’ll be adventuring with friends so there’s sure to be lots of role-playing, shenanigans, and epic voices. His stream is:

🗓️ Sunday, Feb 10th
⌚ 2pm EST

Follow Joefudge on Twitch and come back on Sunday to hang out with him. In the meantime, here’s some adventuring from his last stream to keep you cozy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC8l6YqOLOk
We’ll see you in the chat!

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930

New Creature Builder improvements give you more control. Rigid neck or bendy neck? It’s up to you!

We want your creatures for our next dev stream! See more info below… but first, check out the latest updates.

The builder has gotten some much-requested improvements to give you more control when creating and modifying creatures. Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions!

• Easily control which blocks are flexible (or not) when the creature moves in the world with a new block rigidity setting in the UI, plus improved voxelation detection
  
• Reposition whole chains of blocks so they no longer rotate awkwardly
  
• Control building better with two additional axes of rotation on Life Blocks
  
• Preview how the creature will move with new animation feedback in the builder (so you don’t have to exit and relaunch to get things how you want them!)

More Updates in v0.7.3

• On-boarding/Quest improvements
  
  • We’ve modified quest progression and added additional on-boarding quests
    
  • All tasks are now powered through quest system to keep feedback consistent
    
  • On-boarding state is now properly tracked
    
  • NOTE: This means your saved Adventure game may ask you to redo quests you’ve already completed. You can do them again or just untrack them in the quest log to ignore them.

A new on-boarding quest teaches creature riding for more mobility (and fun) early on in survival progression.

• UI Improvements
  
  • In-game UI tab names have been replaced with fancy icons for readability (and cuz it just looks pretty)
    
  • Tweens added to some elements
    
  • Minor polish to some colors, positions, anchors
    
  • Improved loading feedback during last stage before main menu
• Bug Fixes
  
  • Fixed a bug where quickly clicking the spawn creature button multiple times would cause duplicate creatures to spawn
    
  • Fixed a bug when editing a creature from the party screen
    
  • Fixed the phantom +1 notification bug shown on the Journal badge

Our next live stream is coming Friday, Feb 8th @ 3:30pm EST… and we need your creatures! Greg and John are going to build Homesteads using the new structure blocks and then try to defend them against your creations. It’ll be Homestead raiding pandemonium!


“PROTECT THE CASTLE AT ALL COSTS!”

So create your best structure-demolishing creature and then head over to our Discord and share it with us in the #creatures channel. You may just see your creation on the stream, laying waste to Greg or John’s hard work. Winner gets bragging rights over the devs!

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

Did you know you can customize your Adventure world with creatures from the Workshop? Give it a try to add some variety and surprise to your next adventure. It’s easy:

1. Open the Workshop tab in the Creature Collection and click “Subscribe to New Creature”. (See the example above!)
   
2. Find a creature you like—it can be a friend’s abomination or browse hundreds of unique community creations—then click on it and hit the “+ Subscribe” button.
   
   
   
   
3. Close the overlay and go back to the Workshop tab.
   
4. Click on your newly subscribed creature to see its details, then select “Spawn in Adventure”.
   
   Floppy Horn by Jelly Butter!

You’re done! These creatures can now spawn in the wild for you to discover. Creative CHKN players are adding new creatures to the Workshop every day so the possibilities for expansion are endless.

You can also bring these Workshop creatures into the Arena to test them in battle, or into Creative Mode to experiment with them yourself.

New to Adventuring? Try These...
Might we suggest starting with a couple of our favorites? Hat Cat by Jelly Butter and Lazer Pea by cwilfinger both have low CP (Creature Power), meaning they can show up early on in your survival progress, and they have some fun abilities to discover Nine Lives, Hiss Stun, and Laser Eye.



For more challenging discoveries later on in survival, find creatures with higher CP to add. Or head over to our CHKN Discord to see what cool creatures the community is sharing right now.

Share Your Own Creations
If you want to share your own creations for other players to use on their Adventures, just select “Sync to Steam Workshop” on the details screen. Then your fellow CHKNeers can favorite, comment, and spawn it in their own games.


He was a chicken before it was cool.

The game has been updated with another round of hotfixes and improvements:

Multiplayer:

• Option to open world to multiplayer added to the in-game ESC menu (in addition to the Online menu)
  
• Clients joining a multiplayer game will now be automatically grouped with the host by default. This prevents aggressive creatures from attacking other players. A toggle in the Online tab is available to turn off co-op mode.

Gameplay:

• Respawn checkpoint now scares away aggressive creatures (to provide a bit of a safe zone when you first respawn after death)
  
• Trees now grow over time!
  
• Riding: Improved movement and targeting when riding a creature… try it out with the Glide ability!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5sICucq5g
Workshop:

• Clicking on a creature in the in-game Workshop list now launches the Steam Overlay to see its Workshop web page. See details, favorite, comment and subscribe from this page. (Click the green “+ Subscribe” button!)
  
• You can now also see the Workshop page from a creature’s detail screen in-game. Click “View in Workshop” at the bottom.
  
• Old shared creatures with obsolete Life Blocks have been marked as incompatible with the new game (v0.7+) and will no longer clutter the in-game Workshop (Read more info here!)
  
  
  You’ll see an orange notice at the top of the page if a creature is incompatible.

Performance/Optimization:

• Minor pooling system tuning to improve small initial hitching
  
• Fixed a bug with dynamic objects world streaming to slightly improve performance

Join us on the CHKN Discord to tell us what you think of the game, share your creations and ideas, find multiplayer friends, or just hang out in the #share-your-pets channel that’s currently full of cats!!! Come say hi.

See you there!

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

Hey, CHKNeers! This week’s update makes fighting creatures in the arena more fun, with camera and AI/combat improvements as well as new pre-built creatures to test out. We want your feedback on creature battling in the Arena! Tell us what you think of the update and share your creature combatants with us on the Discord.

This update also includes:

• New homestead art
  
• Better creature riding
  
• Fixes to loading and performance

Creature AI improvements for better combat, plus cameras have been updated so you can see the action (and faces!) more clearly.


This Snicken is quite shocked at how much health it doesn’t have. Better luck next time, Snicken.

• Cameras:
  
  • Knockdown camera greatly improved (better transitions, closer focus on face to show creature’s reaction)
    
  • Camera bugs in Team Elimination mode have been fixed
    
  • Fixed awkward camera transitions in Exhibition mode.
• Combat AI improvements: Creatures no longer end up in staring contests; they’re much more aggressive in combat
  
• New Arena creatures: Added new prebuilt creatures to try out in battle
  
• Fixed Arena attack attempt & hits tracking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24euCrR0TVE
Check out some of our favorite community creature creations in this collection and try them out in the Arena. Then share your best Arena creature creations on the Discord. We’ll be adding them to our next Arena collection!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1626493299
Improvements to loading, creatures, homesteads, and environments, plus some bug fixes.

• Optimization & Loading:
  
  • Reduced initial load time and optimized initial load memory usage. Loading should take significantly less time on lower end machines.
    
  • Improved auto-quality detection to choose performance settings more appropriate for your hardware
    
  • Added shadow distance setting to Options
    
  • The memory footprint of the game has been majorly decreased
    
  • World hitches (periodic framerate drops) that were caused by the game reading from the hard drive are now gone
• Creature movement: Speeds re-tuned so creatures are much more agile across the board (makes for better combat and riding)
  
• Riding: Added an easy-to-craft riding item for early game to make riding more accessible, and improved targeting when riding a creature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YysvifakI44

• Environment:
  
  • Melon & Squash art are higher fidelity and Raspberry & Blueberry items increased in poly count. Basically, these all now look more delicious
    
  • Bush textures got a visual tweak to bring them in line with other environment art
• Homesteads: All new art for wood and stone structure items!

Cozy.

• Creatures & Life Blocks:
  
  • A new set of creatures now have a chance of spawning in the world
    
  • Unicorn and Dinosaur Spike Life Blocks got a spiffy revamp
    
  • Added new Antler Life Block

• FX: Impact effects are larger in scale so they’re easier to see
  
• Item destruction: Disabled destruction of ability scrolls and item recipe tomes, and Electric Shock ability no longer destroys nearby items
  
• Multiplayer Bug Fixes:
  
  • Fixed an issue where creatures were missing for clients
    
  • Fixed creature riding for clients
    
  • Fixed a bug where party members in a multiplayer game would take damage from friends
    
  • Fixed a bug where bush impact sounds were not playing for clients in multiplayer games
• General Bug Fixes
  
  • Fixed a race condition with creature spawning that was causing multiple issues (abilities not appearing, duplicate creature records, and missing creature party avatars in the HUD)
    
  • Fixed a bug where players would teleport underground and bonded creatures would be lost forever if the player died while riding a creature
    
  • Fixed a bug where creature stamina while riding a creature would not deplete during sprinting
    
  • Fixed Creature AI triggering scared or angry routines at the wrong times
    
  • Fixed a bug where resolution settings were randomly changed/reset

Make sure to join the CHKN Discord to give us your feedback! It’s also a good place to find multiplayer friends, share your creations, vote in our polls, and just hang out.

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

Thanks to the awesome CHKNeers on Discord and the forums testing and reporting issues to us, we’ve been able to swat some bugs and continue to improve performance on lower end machines. Here are some notes from the latest set of hotfixes:

• Loading: Initial loading sequence speed improved (specifically AI portion of loading speed 5x as fast)
  
• Spawning:
  
  • Creatures: Fixed a bug where creature respawning at very high rates (negatively affecting both gameplay/world population and performance)
    
  • Poachers: Fix for poachers spawning excessively and causing frame rate drops (and just being generally annoying when trying to progress)
• Multiplayer:
  
  • Structures now show up
    
  • Player Stamina fixed
    
  • Farming hoe and ground tilling fixed
    
  • Lifeshaper upgrades now work for all players
    
  • Fixed a bug where poachers were invisible
• Grass: Fixed disappearing grass, quality settings, optimizations, but there’s an edge case we are still tracking down.
  
• Game Exit: Fixed bug causing issues for players who exit the game while the creature builder orb is open
  
• Screen Resolution: Fixed bug causing screen resolution to randomly reset
  
• Party Slots: Fixed bug causing occasional creature party slots to disappear

Please check out this build and let us know how things are working for you. We’re still optimizing and fixing bugs and your reports really do help us get these updates out more quickly. Keep ‘em coming!



We’re always on Discord so that’s the best place to find us quickly and let us know of any issues or feedback. You can also post on our forums and we’ll have a look.

Thanks, everyone.

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

2018 is coming to an end and we just want to say a big Thank You to all of you. Your support and feedback has been amazing this year and we couldn’t make CHKN without you. We look forward to a great 2019!




Don’t forget you have until Jan 3rd to hunt down your free holiday hats in Adventure mode! Find a wild creature roaming the island, observe it’s magnificent festive hat, then take that hat for yourself! That’s the holiday spirit.

We’re also sharing our festive-hat-wearing creature screenshots over on Discord during the hunt. We’d love to see yours!

Speaking of Discord, we’ve got a few polls up over there right now. We want to know what content you’d like to see next, your favorite CHKN mode, and which creature should be next up for a revamp. Join up to vote, then stick around for events, shenanigans, exclusive roles for CHKNeers, and more polls in the future.



Have an awesome weekend and we’ll see you in 2019!

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/

Happy holidays, everyone! To celebrate and say thanks, we’ve got a special treasure hunt going on through the end of the year. Plus we’ve released optimization fixes to improve performance. Those notes are below.


Reindeer, Santa, and Elf hats await.

What could be more festive than a Santa-hat-wearing chicatdog? Nothing, of course! So, this holiday we invite you to hunt down or tame some wild creatures that have randomly spawned wearing one of 3 special hats on their beautiful heads. (Or you could cheat and switch to Creative mode but where’s the fun in that?)

The hats are only available for a limited time—until Jan 3rd—so get hunting soon.

And be sure to share screenshots with us on Discord! We’d want to see your lovely (and not so lovely) creatures in their festive new gear.

Good luck!



If you haven’t tried it out yet, make sure you’re on the latest update and give the brand new CHKN a go. Build creatures with the new blocks, survive the new wilderness, send your creatures into battle in Arena mode… there's lots to explore. (See the full recap in this 0.7 update post.) Let us know what you think!

We’ve also got a poll going over on our Discord to see what everyone’s favourite mode is. Are you an Adventurer, an Arena battler, or a Creative builder? Head over there and vote!

We’ve just pushed an update with many fixes and tech improvements to optimize performance. With these, you’ll notice:

1. Stuttering/hitching as you move through the world has been dramatically reduced.
   
2. Improved loading

There’s still a point during the initial loading, before the loading bar shows 0%, where the game is temporarily unresponsive. It seems like the game may have crashed but it hasn’t! Summon the patience of a saint and it will load after some waiting (how long depends on your computer specs). We’re working on this!

And for those of you that want more technical details, here's the full list of improvements:

• New rendering technique to render many instances of an object quickly for modern video cards. Increases render range while improving FPS.
  
• Implemented compute shaders to cull based off of camera frustum and occlusion. (Requires a modern card.)
  
• Added fallbacks for the above for low-end devices to maintain current FPS.
  
• World streaming system overhauled to no longer be gameObject based. Frees up resources for other systems, greatly reduces stutters, and improves LOD responsiveness. (Collisions always register quickly; no delay when traveling through world for things to load in.)
  
• Foliage system optimized to remove frame stuttering when traveling through the world.
  
• Improved quality settings. Render distance will now tune all systems to greatly improve FPS on low end devices. High end devices can now render up to 2x as much as previous build.
  
• Plus various bug fixes (FX no longer always attached to hands, throw animation is fixed, failed to load fixed)

Our 5th creature-based armor is now in the game! If you want to keep warm on cold CHKN nights, hunt down some dog creatures and get to crafting.


“Come, Chicky! It’s time to get our revenge on those Lightcats.“

• Join our CHKN discord! Hang out, chat about your game ideas, report bugs, or get help.
  
• Follow us on Twitter and subscribe to us on YouTube
  
• Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about CHKN News

Thank you for all your support this year. We love all your feedback and crazy creature creations. Happy holidays!

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN

Earn a special Discord role by joining our first ever multiplayer event! We’ll be there, too. (It’s lonely in our developer basements. But fair warning, watch out for Greg’s creatures. They’re terrifying.) Let's join up and play the new CHKN!

📅 Saturday, Dec 15th
⏰ 8-9 PM EST (Time zone converter)

It’s really easy to join:

1. Launch CHKN!
   
2. Host your own game for others to join or just find an existing game and hop right in. (If you need help, check out these instructions.)
   
3. (Optional) Join our Discord & head over to the Multiplayer channel to find friends and group up (and get your special role!)

See you there!

Player Armor
5 new armors are available for you to craft on your adventures: chicken, cat, cow, and crab are live now, with dog coming next week. Craft them at the Outfit station. Collect them all!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La3Oq4pdUOY
Arena Mode
Check out the new Arena to pit your creatures against each other. You can go head to head in 1v1 fights or see how teams of creatures fare against each other. Who will win?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT_JgHn1ooE
We’ve updated the live build to hot fix a few issues players were reporting. If you were having any of these issues, please update to the most recent version and try again.

Multiplayer: Fixed Issues with players getting stuck or unable to join multiplayer games
NEW: You no longer need to start a new Adventure mode game before joining a multiplayer session

Loading: Fixed issues getting stuck on the initial game loading screen for eternity. NOTE: It may still take a while to load (we’re working on it!) but it should progress.

Lost item drops: Fixed issues with items dropping through temple floors and boulders.

HUGE thanks to everyone who’s been sending us information on these issues! It really helps us get fixes out to everyone quickly.

We’re currently investigating reports of performance slowly dropping when playing for extended periods of time. If you’re experiencing this issue, please send us your log! This info really helps us out. Here’s how:

1. Exit CHKN and go to this directory on your computer. (Replace YOURUSERNAME with your computer username.)
   
2. C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Katapult\CHKN\
   
3. Find output_log.txt
   
4. Send us the log on Discord or to heychkn@katapultstudio.com

We hope you’ll join us for the multiplayer event! CHKN is really fun with friends.

- Team CHKN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420930/CHKN/