Hooded Horse

What Hooded Horse is

Hooded Horse is a video game publisher that concentrates on strategy, simulation and role-playing titles. Its stated purpose, set out on its own website, is to publish games that explore new ground and that receive post-release expansion and support, rather than titles built on an established formula. The company describes itself as a publisher of games that feature strategic and tactical depth, and it works with development studios instead of building games in-house.

The company's own wiki describes Hooded Horse Inc. as a publisher of strategy, simulation and role-playing games based in Dallas, Texas, with people and partners in other countries. In our database Hooded Horse appears as the publisher of Blacksmith Master, a medieval forge management game that the company lists in Steam Early Access from May 15, 2025. The Steam store page for the game carries Hooded Horse as its publisher.

How Hooded Horse works with developers

Hooded Horse publishes a statement of terms for the studios it signs. On its About page the company says games will not be given rushed schedules and will not be released before they are ready, that significant bugs will be fixed and promised features delivered, and that where content is added as paid downloadable content rather than a free update, that content will be a substantial expansion. The same page says the publisher provides marketing expertise and funding to the studios it works with.

For developers, the company states that contracts give a fair proportion of revenue and that some share of sales is paid from the beginning, and that it does not use the 100 percent recoupment terms it describes as common in game publishing. It also states that it guarantees developer independence inside its contracts and describes the working relationship as one of consensus and discussion. A separate developers page repeats that the publisher does not seek to control the studios it works with.

The catalogue and Blacksmith Master

Hooded Horse publishes primarily strategy and tactical games. Its website lists titles including Manor Lords, Against the Storm, Terra Invicta, Old World, Empires of the Undergrowth, Cataclismo and Xenonauts 2 alongside Blacksmith Master. Many of them first appeared in Steam Early Access, and the publisher's own catalogue page gives a release or Early Access date for each entry, running from Darkwood in August 2017 through to Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era in Early Access on April 30, 2026.

Blacksmith Master is described on Steam as a management game in which players run a medieval forge, handling resource acquisition and refinement alongside the production and sale of finished goods, hiring staff and laying out a shop. It sits in the publisher's strategy and simulation line-up, the area Hooded Horse says it concentrates on, and it is sold on Steam both alone and inside the Hooded Horse publisher bundle.

Company details

Hooded Horse is not listed as a developer in our database; it appears only as a publisher, which matches the structure described on its website, where development is handled by independent studios and the company supplies funding and marketing. The company's own wiki places Hooded Horse Inc. in Dallas, Texas, and states that its portfolio of strategy, simulation and role-playing games is available through its Steam publisher page.

Because the company does not publish a corporate fact sheet, details such as a founding date are not asserted here. What Hooded Horse states directly is its genre focus, its contract terms for developers and its role as a publisher for teams that retain their independence.

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