Secret Ponchos gets new characters and free maps this month

Hello outlaws! The team here at Switchblade Monkeys is thrilled to announce The Hunting Ground, our first major content drop for Secret Ponchos coming to your PS4 on 18th February, 2015. Our goal is to keep the game evolving and growing over time, so it keeps getting better and better.

What’s in this expansion?

A lot! With The Hunting Ground update we aimed to make sure we provide content for everyone: those who want to support us in expanding the game by purchasing some DLC, and our players who just love Secret Ponchos and want free new content.

New content

We learned a lot from community feedback since the PS Plus launch of our game, and we’ve been working hard on many improvements. Being a tiny indie team, we aimed to put out a game that’s fun and deep, but to do that it would have to start small. One of the things we heard the most is “more content”, so we took that to heart and here it is!

Included are two new maps – for FREE. Additionally, our artists wanted to show a gesture of appreciation for our community, and have built a custom exclusive unlockable skin as a special reward for our community as a thank you for supporting us and playing the game. In addition to the free content, for those who want to support us there will be two new purchasable playable Outlaws that make their debut!

Fixes

We’ve been listening and working very closely with the community in our Secret Ponchos forums, and we’ve implemented many tuning/balancing improvements. We’ve also learned that we needed stronger support for new players, so we’ve started implementing improvements such as creating a basic in-game tutorial to get new players started and moving Practice mode (with the outlaw move-sheets) to be front and centre.

“Hunting Ground” – Two new maps included

Everyone will get two free maps, increasing our total level count to six. Creatively we tried to push these maps to offer new dynamics to the Secret Ponchos environments.

A classic, battle-torn Spaghetti Western Mexican-style plaza. This is a smaller map, resulting in high-tension combat. Players can battle outside or take fights into smaller buildings. Teams can break off and regroup, and the interiors loop around back to the central open area.

The Mines provide a vastly different experience from Secret Ponchos’ other levels. They combine confined narrow tunnels with an open area, creating a multitude of player opportunities for tactical battles.

New Outlaws!

We are proud to introduce two new purchasable DLC Outlaws in “The Hunting Ground”: Gordo & The Wolf. Following our tradition of ensuring each Outlaw plays as different as they look, these two with their unique mechanics expand our diverse cast from five to seven.

The new Outlaws are available for purchase, and our goal is to use DLC proceeds to fund development of more content moving forward. These in-game purchases are the best way for the community to support the game’s growth. And for those reluctant to make purchases, these Outlaws will still add a lot of fun to the game for you because you’ll have a richer variety of enemies and teammates.

 
Gordo’s development was put on hold last year as we switched the game Engines, and we’re super happy to have him back because he is just an insane archetype.

A vile and vicious bandit, Gordo makes his way to claim Lonetree. Armed with a high-powered Gatling, Gordo is able to cut his enemies down from a distance. Gordo also comes to battle with a Molotov, and can block off parts of the map by leaving huge splashes of persistent flames, and he can even pour a trail of fire behind him to further control the environment.

The Wolf was a lot of fun to work on. We wanted to make her feel focused and deadly. It was a lot of fun to figure out how to build archery mechanics into Secret Ponchos, and her wolf stance animations especially were so much fun to work on.

The Wolf is a deadly predator rumoured to prowl near the town of Lonetree. Hunting enemies, she deals devastating critical hits as her arrows pierce her enemies. She can switch to “Wolf Stance” moving with great agility to pounce, tackling enemies for the kill with a bone knife. The Wolf is awesome for a technical player, who can take advantage of skill shots with her bow and land critical hits.

Thank you everyone for being part of our Secret Ponchos community, and helping us grow the game from its infancy stages. It’s been a crazy experience for an indie team to launch a game into the competitive multiplayer space, and we really hope to continue improving and growing the game. As we get closer to launch we will announce more about our Secret Ponchos contest for our Generation 1 users, and more info on the new content.