Hounded

About this game

Latest news

• Announcements·17 Sept 2026Official

  New Key Art Reveal!

  Hey everyone!We’re back with another exciting update, and this time we have something big to show off! Brand-New Key Art UnveiledYou might have already noticed it popping up across our Steam page, social media channels, and store banners ( ;) ) - we are thrilled to officially reveal our brand-new key art for Hounded! Our team wanted the artwork that truly captures the visual vibe and atmosphere we’re aiming for in the full game. It highlights the mystery and magic of the world, while keeping Duke central to the image and showing off his Border Collie-pride! ^^ What do you all think of the new look? Let us know in the comments! A little bit of extra news....Not only that... we're also excited to say we have been granted the Content Fund from UK Games Fund!The funding from UK Games Fund is instrumental in the production of Hounded. Thanks to this IMPRNT has been able to bring aboard the developers required to complete our vision for Duke's journey. At a time where funding new IP is incredibly difficult, we're glad to say that UK Games Fund are a leading the way for supporting UK game studios :) Oh and don't forget to boop the snoot for good luck! Hold on... what is that? We have passed 50 000 wishlists for Hounded! Thank you to every single one of you, it means the world to us! We have seen your comments and feedback and we want to assure you - we are working hard on the game and there are a lot of very exciting things coming soon ;) We cannot reveal everything just yet, but stay tuned - there is a lot cooking and more announcements coming soon ^^ While this update is a tad shorter than a regular monthly update, we wanted to share the news with you all! Until next time!If you would like to join the Official Hounded Community Discord Server, you can do so through here! Do you have any questions? Shoot! We'd love to hear your thoughts :) WISHLIST NOW
  Read full article on Community Announcements

• Patch Notes·2 Sept 2026Official

  Dog Diary #2 | September Update

  Hey everyone!August has flown by, and as the studio has been working hard under the hood, we have some exciting new updates to share! Designing a four-legged movementWe're hand-crafting the quadruped movement system, and it's starting to show great promise. Our animation team is deep in the UE5 trenches, working on Duke's 180 degree turns, allowing for better player control when added into our Motion Matching system.The setup for his canter animations is almost finished and we now have the workflow in place to propagate it through to the rest of his locomotion states. It's funny seeing all the animations play at once, and it really shows you how much work goes into just a single locomotion set.It will allow Duke to move and react extremely naturally between player inputs and mean that there is very little to no foot sliding, making Duke very grounded and true to life. Once we fix up the bugs of course. Major Milestone: Fletcher is complete! You might remember, in our last update we showed off a bit of how Artemys, Duke's master, was coming along. He is now fully complete, already placed in-game and ready to for animators to work their magic. New Team Members and more quick updates!We also welcomed a new programmer, Yenum, and a new level designer, Tim! They have settled in extremely quickly and got right to work. Narrative Design team is on fire, finalising the first written pass for each of the acts of the game and tying together narrative beats with gameplay flow. Once they got everything ready, our level designer will jump right in and build it all! Audio Team has made significant progress on a few tracks (including frist Hunter encounter), and have also taken to designing sounds for the technology in the world to make it feel truly special. Art Team has made their way through foliage and organic structures in the world, which will be used to reate and build each location in the game (super cool). We have also had some feedback on tech set in the game, and they a...
  Read full article on Community Announcements

• Patch Notes·30 Jul 2026Official

  Dog Diary #1 | July Update

  Hey everyone!We are officially full steam ahead with production, and the studio is buzzing. Moving forward, we want to make sure you’re entirely in the loop with what’s happening behind the scenes, so expect a lot more updates dropping more regularly! These recent months have been very busy - we have found a publisher with Silver Lining Interactive and welcomed a few new faces to the team; here is what we’ve been up to across the board!Teaching Duke New TricksDuke is the heart and soul of Hounded, and making him feel like a real, living dog is our biggest priority.Our animation team is currently deep in the weeds with Duke’s movement system. We’re using Unreal's cutting-edge Motion Matching tech. Because we are aiming for true-to-life border collie movement, it comes with a pretty steep learning curve, but the early results are already looking amazing.Bringing the Characters to LifeWhile Duke is our star, the human cast is shaping up too!Old ThomasOn the animation side, we’ve been running some early facial tests. Check out this preview - just keep in mind, he's currently bald and missing his trademark beard for testing purposes ;)Artemys FletcherWe finally got a good first look at the model for Duke’s master! He’s looking great, and the art team is moving on to his detailed head sculpt and hair next :)Gameplay DesignThere's two main things our Design & Programming folks focused on most recently:The Magical Duke: The programmers have been focusing heavily on Duke's unique abilities, primarly to get Duke's Power Bark/Howl and Scent mechanics ready for the rest of the team to implement in the game!The Hunter: Designers have been blocking out gameplay ideas and using feedback to make the Hunter encounters as tense and satisfying for the player as possible, as well as finalising all of the documentation for our gameplay systems, which the programmers will use to build them! Crafting the AtmosphereWe have always known audio and music would be very important for Hounded. O...
  Read full article on Community Announcements

• Announcements·27 May 2026Official

  We've found a publisher!

  Big news today! We are thrilled to announce that we are officially teaming up with Silver Lining Interactive to bring Hounded to all of you wonderful players! From the beginning, they understood the emotional core and creative ambitions behind the game, and we're very excited to step into this new chapter of Duke's journey! This partnership allows us to put 100% of our energy into core development, while they take the reins on marketing and publishing. We hit some incredible milestones recently thanks to our amazing community, and this partnership is the next giant leap forward for our studio. Thank you all for following our journey, and get ready: we're just getting started! We can't wait for what's to come! See you soon💜
  Read full article on Community Announcements

• Announcements·11 Dec 2025Official

  Steam Milestone Achieved

  🚨 30,000 wishlists on Steam! 🚨Thanks to everyone who has shared and wishlisted Hounded, we have now exceeded 30,000 wishlists. This is a number we didn't expect to hit so early in our journey and it gives us hope that everyone understands the vision we have for Duke.We thought it was only right that Duke get dressed up for the occasion:We can't wait to share more with you! 💜
  Read full article on Community Announcements (calvin)