- Hawthorn is featured in the Steam Cooking Fest - 12 October 2026
Nothing brings a village together quite like a good feast!We’re delighted to be part of Steam Cooking Fest, and we can’t think of a better fit for Hawthorn! In our little corner of the woods, cooking is about more than what’s on the menu. It’s about getting to know your village friends, discovering their favorite foods, preparing feasts to suit their tastes, and sharing good food and even better company.So grab your apron, gather your ingredients, and pull up a chair. There’s always room for one more at the table in Hawthorn!Join us for Steam Cooking Fest on Steam, and come hungry for a little storybook magic! Be sure to show some love to the other games in the festival as well.
- Hawthorn In Birds Of Play Event on Steam - 10 October 2026
Join us for Birds of Play on Steam! Hawthorn has found its flock!We’re delighted to be part of this Steam event celebrating games with a love for our feathered friends. With Hawthorn’s enchanted woodlands, whimsical wildlife, and a world full of creatures to befriend, we couldn’t imagine a better fit.Come spread your wings, explore a storybook world, and help us bring a little more magic to the forest!
- New Hawthorn cover art & Developer Q&A - 8 October 2026
Welcome to October! 🍂🎃Like the changing of the seasons, we’re keeping with the “fall” theme by shedding the old and growing the new! We’re excited to share a super sneaky peek at our new Hawthorn game cover art. 👀 Our original art was always meant to act as a placeholder, and we're thrilled to share an early look at the lovely line art that has been in the works. When the time is right, we’ll finally reveal the new art in all of it's glory along side the amazing artist we’ve worked with to help us realize our dream version and capture the spirit of Hawthorn. And speaking of fun reveals! Join us in Discord, tomorrow, Friday October 9th from 12:00pm to 1:00pm ET for a Q&A with our developers! We'll be discussing what it's like working on Hawthorn with such a small team, and give a behind the scenes look at the development process. Until then, the team is still heads down implementing f…
- We're featured in the Prismatic Indie Showcase - 9 September 2026
Hawthorn is featured in this years 2026 Prismatic Indie Showcase!We're excited to be featured alongside some truly amazing indie games this year in the Prismatic Indie Showcase. The wonderful team at Blue Ridge Games is showcasing self-published indie games from September 7th through the 11th, so be sure to check out all of the noteworthy indie experiences!Our incredibly tiny team is still hard at work on Hawthorn. Many of you joined in the recent play test to help provide feedback and detail your early experiences. To everyone who has participated, thank you! Building this game alongside our wonderful community was our goal from the start and we're excited to continue weaving in your suggestions during development. If you're just as excited about Hawthorn as we are, help support our indie endeavor by following and sharing our socials: 💻 Official Hawthorn Website ✖️ X / Twitter📷 Insta…
- Next wave of Hawthorn players added to our Playtest 8/31 - 31 August 2026
News from Windermere. 📜🖋️After a short delay, we’re finally adding our next wave of players to our Hawthorn playtest today August 31st! Kickstarter backers and Ko-Fi supporters of the Homesteader tier, Steward tier, and Legend tier please keep an eye on your email for your invite and instructions. We took a little bit longer working on some performance issues with this latest build, so thank you to everyone who was looking forward to joining in the fun with this latest playtest, your patience was appreciated. We've extended this playtest until September 7th at 3:00pm ET, so players who were waiting through the delay will still get the full amount of playtest time.We’re incredibly excited to have players jump in and experience all the changes we’ve brought to Windermere. Check out our latest patch notes here with all the new changes that have arrived in our latest build.Since this is a…
- Next wave of Hawthorn players added to our Playtest 8/17 - 17 August 2026
News from Windermere. 📜🖋️Today we’re adding our next wave of players to our Hawthorn playtest today August 17th! Kickstarter backers and Ko-Fi supporters of the Royal Settler tier, Philanthropist tier, and Trailblazer tier please keep an eye on your email for your invite. We’ll slowly be adding access to new waves of players, so be sure to check back for updates from us.We’re incredibly excited to have players jump in and experience all the changes we’ve brought to Windermere. Check out our latest patch notes here with all the new changes that have arrived in our latest build.Since this is a very early look at Hawthorn for playtesters, we’re asking our community to help report any bugs they encounter. We’ll be actively pulling your comments and feedback from our official Discord channel, so please stop by and share what you think! Together we’re shaping the future of Hawthorn. Interes…
- Hawthorn Playtest - 10 August 2026
Exciting news from Windermere!Today we’re rolling out a playtest of the latest build of the game for our backers on Kickstarter. While we’re starting with backers of the Scrivener and Forerunner tiers, we’ll slowly be adding access to new waves of players, so keep an eye out for updates from us either via email, or in our official Hawthorn Discord.We’re incredibly excited to have players jump in and experience all the changes we’ve brought to Windermere including:🐭 A new fur pattern and color system for your Mice characters🌳 A new expanded layout for the town of Windermere🗺️ Entirely new area map🏚️ Ruins added on the outskirts of Windermere🏘️ Updated player and NPC homes⚒️ New crafting recipes for both furniture and food🖌️ New icons for recipes🦉 New flight system💨 New animations🍃 New plant physics🦦 New NPCs to interact with🌦️ Updated weather system🎨 New Dye and Clothing syst…
- Make-A-Wish Foundation Charity Event - 21 June 2026
Quick Update ahead of the Make-A-Wish news: We have a little more than 24 hours to play the Hawthorn Proof-of-Concept demo as part of Next Fest. If you haven't had a chance to jump in and experience the earliest build of Hawthorn, now is the chance! Next Fest ends June 22nd at 1pm ET. Now on to the good stuff!At NEARstudios, we believe games can bring people together and make a positive impact beyond entertainment.We’re proud to announce that Hawthorn is partnering with Make-A-Wish by donating 2,500 game keys to an upcoming charity bundle supporting the foundation’s mission of granting life-changing wishes to children facing critical illnesses.Watch Trailer HereMake-A-Wish creates moments of hope, joy, and strength for children and their families during challenging times. We’re grateful for the opportunity to support their inspiring work.This partnership reflects the values at the heart…
- Sneak Peek New Character Animations - 19 June 2026
SNEAK PEEK: NEW ANIMATIONS We just posted a blog update on the PlayHawthorn website showing some of the new animations and locomotion improvements for all 3 characters that exist in our current game build and our Village Council will get hands on with soon!We can't embed the video in this post because Steam doesn't allow us to embed Youtube Shorts. So you'll have to head over to our website if you want to see everything.Lukas is our Senior Animator who added new animations across all animal species. He has been improving them and adding completely new ones since the development on the Proof-of-Concept demo (that you can play as part of Next Fest) concluded more than a year ago. We are looking forward to getting our Village Council in to try them out. There's still so much work to do, but hopefully it gives you a sense of how we are constantly improving the game and aiming to make the ga…
- Next Fest is Live! Hawthorn villagers are waiting! - 15 June 2026
Next Fest is live and this week only the public will get the chance to see where the development for Hawthorn started several years back. Download and play Hawthorn's Proof-of-Concept Demo to see the prototype version that the developers sent to publishers to receive funding offers and to greenlight the project.This is not a build that is a nearly finished product nearing launch, this is the opposite. This is the earliest playable build of Hawthorn, the very build that received funding offers from publishers. The build that gave the developers the confidence to turn those offers down to stay independent for as long as possible. Join our movement to keep creativity, passion, and heart at the core of video games, to keep game development transparent and collaborative, and to help build something a little bit different and ambitious over the long haul.Help shape where Hawthorn goes in the…
- Hawthorn at June Next Fest - 11 June 2026
Big News: Hawthorn will be in Steam's June Next Fest! This means that the Hawthorn Proof-of-Concept Demo is available to the public on Hawthorn's Steam page for you and all your friends and family to play together for free. It will remain live throughout Steam Next Fest which starts June 15th-22nd! You are invited to download the demo as of right now from the Hawthorn Steam page and to jump in and try it out anytime between now and the 22nd. Note: Even if you have already downloaded a game build of Hawthorn from previous playtests, please do not use that build, please separately download this build directly from the main Hawthorn page as it's the build that is tied to Next Fest and will give us the most visibility on Steam during the event.This demo is the earliest playable version of the game from over a year ago that first captured the attention and hearts of millions of people all ar…
- Endangered Species Day Announcement - 16 May 2026
Endangered Species Day AnnouncementTo recognize Endangered Species Day, we have an exciting teaser announcement!In the near future, players will have the opportunity to reserve 3 exclusive playable characters inspired by endangered species from the real world. Each character is being designed to feel at home within the world of Hawthorn, with their own unique aesthetic and backgrounds.These characters will only be available for a limited time, and this will be the only opportunity to obtain them. But this initiative is about more than adding new playable characters!A portion of the proceeds from every reservation will be donated toward charities and conservation organizations working to protect endangered species and preserve the habitats that countless creatures depend on to survive. For us, Hawthorn has always been about more than creating a game. It’s about creating a world worth pro…
- Playtest Update From This Past Weekend - 5 May 2026
UPDATE ON THIS PAST WEEKEND'S PROOF-OF-CONCEPT PLAYTESTWe know that hundreds of individuals (mostly 2x Kickstarter tiers, add-on keys and some late Ko-Fi supporters) didn't receive Hawthorn's Proof-of-Concept playtest keys. We apologize that so many supporters couldn’t get into this weekend's playtest. We even heard of people taking time off work to play and not being able to receive the keys in time to take advantage of that time off. That really sucks and I'm personally very sorry to anyone that this affected in that way.Here’s a quick video update:https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AbyYYEeKX7YWe were notified on Sunday by our email campaign application/platform that our account was frozen. Then Monday afternoon (after I already filmed this video), they responded to say that there was a "complaint" and it triggered an automatic freeze. They reviewed our account and determined that we were…
- Hawthorn Village Council Playtests This Week! - 29 April 2026
Exciting News! Village Council Playtest for the Hawthorn Proof-of-Concept Demo starts on May Day. So that means all of our backers on Kickstarter and Ko-Fi will get access to the earliest version of Hawthorn this Friday, May 1st at 11am EST and ends Sunday, May 3rd at 10pm ET. For more info, please see our latest update on the Hawthorn website:https://playhawthorn.com/village-council-playtest-proof-of-concept-coming-soon/We will have more playtests in the coming weeks, so if you can’t make this one, there will be more opportunities! Specific details will be emailed out to your Kickstarter email on Friday morning, so please keep an eye out!We will reveal a lot more information on Friday and in the coming weeks and we will need your help with a few things as we go. For now, can we ask a favor? Please like and comment on this video to help us grow our youtube channel to reach more people a…
- Hawthorn Flies Past 400,000 Wishlists on Steam! - 6 April 2026
Huge Milestone Reached!Hawthorn flew past 400,000 wishlists and is about to cross 415,000!We’re currently sitting at #103 on Steam’s Most Wishlisted Games and this is the closest we’ve ever been to breaking into the Top 100. This is a huge milestone for an independently bootstrapped team and we’re almost there.Let’s see if we can carry Hawthorn into the Top 100 together! Share with your friends and family as this is a game you can play with others!It's also the last day of the Steam House and Home Fest! Hawthorn has been featured and if you missed our fun video showcasing our newest home interiors for the villagers in Windermere Valley check it out below:Check out the event and support the other game participating as well!Stay tuned for big updates coming up!-Hawthorn Dev Team
- New Hawthorn World Map - 25 March 2026
Today, we revealed the new world map for Hawthorn! Adam Flores, our Lead Environment Artist and the rest of the team have been hard at work getting the official map and all the systems up to parity with the old temporary map from Hawthorn's Proof-of-Concept demo that you may have seen a few creators playing a few months ago.Check out the new map at the link below: Note: Steam doesn't allow us to embed Youtube Shorts.Our main goal with the new map is to create a world that we can scale and expand over a long period of time. There's a lot of thought and work that goes into this process to plan that far into the future and try to anticipate how these systems will work together to create an incredible dynamic experience for this community! We plan to create more videos on the world of Hawthorn and dive into details of how we are building this map as well as other videos introducing new folk…
- Development Update - Winter 2025-2026 - 6 March 2026
AN IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE TEAMFirst off, thank you for your patience, support, and continued enthusiasm for Hawthorn. We’ve been deep in the work over the last few months, and we wanted to share a bit more about what we’ve been building toward and where things stand. You may have noticed we’ve been quieter than usual. That wasn’t by accident and it definitely wasn’t from a lack of momentum. With a very small team (5 full time devs), we’ve been juggling a lot at once: actively building the game, planning and executing a bootstrapped go-to-market strategy (with results that rival an entire publishing team), recruiting, business development, and having careful, ongoing conversations with potential funding partners. Balancing all of that while also keeping up a steady community and social presence is a real challenge, and at times we’ve made the deliberate choice to put our heads down and…
- Hawthorn Featured In Midwinter Spirits Event - 5 December 2025
We’re excited to announce that Hawthorn has been invited to the Midwinter Spirits Steam Event! Whether you’re drawn by curious creatures, ancient fairytales, or the promise of warm fires on cold nights, we’d be honored to have you join our little lakeside hamlet!Wishlist Hawthorn on Steam: It guides more travelers to our village and helps us grow this enchanted world!
- Hawthorn at Endix Expo - 29 November 2025
Hello Villagers,We’re delighted to share that Hawthorn will be featured in the Endix Expo this weekend! The expo brings together some of the most exciting upcoming indie games, and we’re honored to stand among them.If you stop by the Hawthorn booth, you might notice a few glowing terminals... we have a little surprise waiting for the first 200 visitors who interact with them!Whether you’re already part of our growing community or discovering Hawthorn for the first time, we’d love for you to swing by, explore, and soak in a bit more of the world we’re building.Thank you for all your continued excitement and support as we are developing this game in it's early days. See you at the expo!What is Endix Expo?Endix Expo is a completely free gaming showcase with exciting and immersive digital booths accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Every booth is an experience designed by the exhibi…
- Hawthorn Kickstarter Last Call - 23 September 2025
Only 30 minutes left to get the exclusive Hawthorn Kickstarter rewards. After 10pm EDT tonight the Pledge Manager will close and Hawthorn's Kickstarter campaign will conclude. Click the green "Join the Adventure" button on the Hawthorn Kickstarter page to select a tier that speaks to you!Thank you to all our amazing backers who are making this game a reality and allowing our small team to keep plugging away on this dream project!Stay tuned for updates!
