Welcome to our Big Splash summer 2019 Anniversary Event.

Create a Horse Madness!

SEA PONIES

I imagine the biggest news of the day will be Sea Ponies! You guys have been asking for ages and they are finally back.

How does it work? For the month of June only 1 out of every 150 creates will be a Sea Pony. (These are way higher odds than we normally do candy pony events for.) Seaponies come in 15 different colors. 5 for each body type. The color you get is random and can not be changed.

ADULT HORSES ONLY! FOALS CAN NOT RECEIVE TAILS.

First person to collect them all will win 1.3 million hbs, 130 IVs and 13 +5% boost tokens!

Sea Ponies can be turned in 1 GMT token each. Once they do they lose the sea witch curse and turn back into normal horses.

Yes it is possible to get a candy sea pony, they are still only worth one GMT though.

500 hb rerolls:

For the month of June rerolls are an astounding 90% off! :-O This is to allow you guys to go nuts collecting Sigil herd helpers and Sea Ponies. Enjoy your creating madness!

Daily Switch Up:

Instead of gene switch up on the 1st and 15th as normal, switch up will be happening every single day for the month of June. Watch the announcement section of the forum each day for the post announcing which genes are the sale of the day. Should be lots of chances to fancy up your new creates.

New Herd Helpers:

Today Jun 1st is your only chance to create one of the "The Accomplishments of Like-Minded People" herd helpers. This herd helper triggers the following events "Homozygous Snowflake, Mysterious Sigil, Heterozygous Appaloosa, Exceptionally Perfect, Brindle Breakout."

The Homozygous Snowflake herd helper was created to be part of the ALMP herd helper. It is not available to reroll and will not be put into the system. You can consider ALMP to be the only hom snowflake herd helper in the game, and today to be the only change to get hom snowflake from an HH. This is a one-day-only event.


Mysterious Sigil, as many of you noticed, is obtainable via normal hh rerolls, and will be staying as part of the game. Mysterious Sigil gives a horse one copy of the TE1 tiger eye gene. More info below.

New Genes and Generator Updates!

New Eyes:

Yesterday we rolled out a major update to the image generator. Dynamic eye color. The eye might be a small part of the overall image but this is going to be a big change towards realism. Eye art is now a bit brighter and clearer so you can see the range of eye colors.

Multiple genes may interact in unexpected ways. When you start stacking gene variants you may see eyes far more diluted than expected. We believe this to be as accurate to real life as possible, but many of these gene combinations simply don't exist in real life, so it is hard to confirm that. We don't tell the system what each gene combo looks like we allow it to predict the eye color based a huge list of compounding factors

We consider the new eye system to be a beta, and fully expect to be making tweaks to it over the next several weeks.

TIGER EYE:

The new dynamic eyes have allowed us to add a new gene in the game. Tiger eye is a real gene recently genotyped in the Paso Fino horse breed. Right now the only way to get Tiger Eye is from the ALMP and Sigil herd helpers. Tiger eye dilutes the eye color of horses without changing the coat color. There are two variants TE1 and TE2. When a horse has two variant copies they present with yellow eyes, but the gene interacts with other genes that dilute eye color as well. As some of you have already noticed genes like champ, cream etc can make tiger eye show an effect when hom.

Tiger Eye will be available on normal creates and the random gene sale and is not a limited gene. There will be more information in a separate post when it fully launches.

New Fantasy Gene:

In addition to tiger eye there is a new closed fantasy gene coming out in the second half of June as well. This one will be a light fantasy gene and look mostly realistic. Should be a good one for those who are not into crazy colors.

Sales and Tack!

Flat 25% off the entire real money store for the month of June.

New Tackpacks:

We have two new tack packs that will be launching this month. More info when they release.

New Layout

Hj2 members have already seen the new layout, it will be coming to both servers in June. We have only adjusted the shell of the site, and have lots of plans to better the page content over the next few months. This has been a huge project and we are so happy to have it in your hands now.

We know there are some fixes that need doing. HJ2 members, please look out for the official report post for your feedback.

Personal Note

I just want to extend a huge personal thank you to our amazing members. 13 years is a lifetime in the gaming world. I personally have been making this game for 1/3 of my life and essentially my entire adulthood. That's kind of mind-boggling. This spring I got to spend a month in Europe. I travel all over the US doing conventions now. I get to make horse art and hang out with all of you for a living. That is amazing. The support is so touching.

One of the things I have not talked to you guys much about is my personal growth over the past year. A year ago I was not in a good place with the game. I really hated working on it. I had been creating it for so long and I was really worn down. I felt trapped. We even seriously talked about selling the game just so I could be free of it. But as is so often the case, it wasn't really the game that was the problem. I was unhappy with my life and myself.

Over the past year, I have spent a ton of time working on me and building a healthier relationship with the game. We have changed up the internal structure of the company and moved a lot of the programming work to Haystack. The new layout (and many of the new still to come stuff) was designed by our amazing development team. I have Dena now who helps free me up from having to constantly watch the forums like a hawk. These days instead of getting locked into things that are not a good fit for me I have a team to help with that. These days I can focus my energy on fun things like long overdue improvements to the generator, and sea ponies. Of course, it's not just changes to how the company works. I've changed a lot to in how I see myself and what I am capable of. A year ago I certainly would not have been able to just go explore another country where I don't speak the language.

I am happy to say that I am truly loving working on this site again. I am not only generally far happier in my own life I feel so proud and confident about where we are going with HAJ. Expect to see lots of improvements in the next 12 months. We are planning to grow more than ever before.

In these past 13 years, I have grown up a lot. Thank you all for traveling this journey with me.