A Sneak Peek at New Character Animations
One of the most rewarding parts of building Hawthorn is watching the world become more alive with each new addition. Today, we’re excited to give you a small glimpse at some of the new character animations currently in development.
These animations are being created by Lucas, our Senior Animator, who has been hard at work bringing more personality, charm, and life to the creatures and villagers that call Hawthorn home. Whether it’s the way a character walks, reacts, works, or simply exists in the world, animation plays a huge role in making a game feel immersive and believable.
We’ve also seen some reviews and comments from players who tried the Steam Next Fest Proof-of-Concept demo expressing concerns that parts of the experience feel rough or unpolished. That’s completely fair.
The proof-of-concept demo is exactly that: a proof of concept. It’s the earliest playable prototype we created to answer a simple question: Could this idea work? Before we invested years and much of our personal savings into building Hawthorn’s systems, content, world, and technology, we first needed to prove the foundation was compelling and worth pursuing.
One area where that prototype especially showed limitation was animation. At the time, many of the animations were placeholder, incomplete, or simply not representative of where we ultimately wanted the game to be. We didn’t have a dedicated animator for long periods of time and much that you see in the demo was hacked together to get the gameplay stood up. Because animation contributes so much to how responsive and polished a game feels, we know it had a significant impact on how some players perceived the overall experience.
That’s one reason we wanted to share these previews with you today.
The version currently available during Steam Next Fest was branched from our main development build more than a year ago. Development on that prototype effectively ended shortly afterward as we shifted our focus to building the future of Hawthorn. Since then, we’ve continued adding new systems, features, content, visual improvements, and a great deal of animation work that simply isn’t reflected in the public demo.
The goal of the proof-of-concept wasn’t to showcase a finished game. It was to share the earliest foundation of Hawthorn and invite players into the journey. What you’re seeing today represents some of the progress that’s happened since then, and we’re excited to continue showing more as development moves forward.
For those who want an even closer look behind the curtain, our Village Council members will be among the first to see new work as it comes online. By pre-ordering Hawthorn and joining the Village Council, you’ll gain access to playtests, exclusive early development updates, Q&As, and exclusive opportunities to provide feedback on features, content, and improvements long before they’re shown publicly.
We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who has taken the time to play the demo, leave feedback, and support our small independent team. Hawthorn is still growing, and we’re excited to share more of that journey with you in the months ahead!
There’s still time to check out the Hawthorn Proof-of-Concept Demo on Steam before June 22nd. Please Wishlist Hawthorn on Steam and join the conversation on our Discord.