The Next Chapter for Habbo Hotel: Origins
Let’s be honest for a second.
Right now, a lot of the Hotel runs on timing. You log in for an event, a rare drop, maybe check your plants or fishing, then log back out. In between those moments, things can feel a bit.. quiet.
That’s not quite where we want Origins to be. We want more reasons to log in, stay a while, and actually do things together. Not just wait for something to happen.
A quick look back
Over the past year, we’ve added a lot to Origins.
Fishing and Gardening. NPC Shops. Treasure Hunts. Daily Challenges, Community Challenges. Achievements. Market Stalls, Horizons, Habloons. The Daily Bulletin. Even smaller things like Infostand customisation that change how you present yourself in the Hotel.
That’s a long list for a small development team, and it matters. We know we haven’t made the most of everything we’ve introduced. Some systems have become part of everyday play. Others have barely been used to their full potential. Community Challenges are probably the clearest example of that.
That’s on us.
This year isn’t just about adding more systems on top. It’s about making better use of what’s already there. Running more engaging challenges, using existing features in smarter ways, and making sure the tools we’ve built actually show up in how the Hotel feels day to day.
That also means building on what already works. Fishing and gardening aren’t going anywhere, but they don’t need to stay purely passive activities. We want to expand them with more group focused ways to play.
In practice, that means slowing down on large feature releases where we need to, and putting more focus on how events run, how players engage, fixing gaps and how often there’s something worth logging in for.
Let’s talk about building: Introducing Blueprint Studio
One of the core aspects of Habbo Hotel: Origins is the environments in which you build your rooms, and both the length of time, skills and dedication that takes. We also want to acknowledge how difficult it can be sometimes to tear a build down, after having spent hours (or days) putting it together.
To solve this we’re introducing a the Blueprint Studio. At its core, Blueprint Studio will allow Habbo Club members to capture the position, altitude and direction of furniture in a space (between 1x1 tile, and 100x100 tiles) and capture that in a “Blueprint”.
Blueprints then become reusable - assuming you have the furniture in your hand, and space in the room, you simply select a blueprint, find space within the room and have the furniture stack itself on the floor. Build once, and repeat!
But there’s more! We plan to introduce the Blueprint Marketplace. Builders of all skill levels will be able to put their blueprint on a marketplace for sale. Other players, Habbo club or not, will be able to purchase a copy of the blueprint, and assuming they have the furniture, immediately place it in their room. Giving builders a creative outlet to be able design complex, beautiful stacks, and then let users replicate them in their own rooms, by purchasing the blueprint from you!
New Skills: More to do, together
Expeditions
Expeditions drops you into a generated environment with its own layout, challenges, and pace. Some runs are straightforward. Others don’t quite go to plan. That’s part of it. Collect all the gems hidden amongst challenges and within the environment for the expeditioner who joins you to gain experience.
You can go solo. But Expeditions are built to feel better with other people. Groups move faster, earn more experience, and generally have a smoother run. There’s a natural rhythm to it. Run one, run another, swap who you’re with, see how far you can push it.
They’re not just about clearing challenges, either. Along the way, you’ll come across pockets of familiar activities. Fishing spots, gardening patches, small moments where you can train other skills while you’re inside. It’s not as efficient as doing them normally, but that’s not really the point. It makes each run feel a bit more alive, and gives you reasons to stick around longer.
Expeditions are one part of a broader shift. Alongside them, we’re also exploring more group-based ways to engage with existing skills like Fishing and Gardening. The goal is simple. Less doing everything alone, more reasons to play side by side.
Cooking
Cooking will come a little later in the year, and whilst we teased an early prototype already, there’s a lot behind what we want to do here. Cooking is going to utilize existing skills like fishing and gardening, as well as inventory from NPCs to challenge you to make dishes for NPCs and guests across the hotel.
On top of that, we aim to involve player vs player challenges, in cooking showdown type battles to ensure that it doesn’t remain a solo activity, but is distinct from expeditions in that you would not be working co-operatively, but instead in opposition to other players as you work through the showdowns.
More information on cooking as we get closer to releasing it!
Helping players get started
Tutorial park is something we’ve teased for a little while, and will be one of two new public rooms we plan to add to the hotel.
Tutorial Park is a guided space that walks new players through what Origins actually offers. Fishing, gardening, NPC shops, the basics that are easy to miss if you’re dropped straight into the Hotel. It’s a small thing on paper, but it should make a big difference. Players who understand what’s available tend to stick around longer, and that’s what we need more of.
Additionally, we’re also planning to clean up the Infobus Park and add a new, dedicated marketplace public room. We want to encourage trading inside of the space, and so will introduce routine mechanisms, similar to Ophelie and Fishing Frenzy’s to encourage users to congregate and make those trades happen.
We also want to trial a number of new furniture runtimes that exist in public rooms, allowing users to spend stamps to get a roll on an account-bound piece of furniture from our standard lines, like Lodge, Mode, Iced. Providing new users a free to play way to get furniture into their hands. We acknowledge that the community as a whole has a general distaste for account-bound images, but we think in the context of availability for stamps it beats out Short Stay furniture, and wouldn’t provide a means to impact the economy - instead it may help encourage users to enter the economy by taking the step to purchase additional furniture to finish their rooms!
Titles - Round 2
When Origins first launched, we pitched the idea of titles within the game. There was almost a 60% YES rate, but ultimately the poll failed.
We still strongly believe that titles would be a positive addition to the game, they’d provide another means of rewarding users - for participation in events, titles that are seasonal, awarded for achievements or are campaign exclusive, perhaps some that are available year round for purchase similar to other avatar customizations.
The last pitch focused on adding titles to the chat - we still believe they belong there, but plan to add them to additional areas too. Profiles (assuming their poll passes), the infostand, the messenger, more details and additional showcasing soon, but we strongly believe in titles as a rewarding mechanism, but will make sure the questions are broken down and specific so you can all vote on exactly where they’re visible, if at all.
A quick word on a couple of pending features
Some of you have been asking about Shutter Showdown and the Stickerbook, so it’s worth being clear about where things stand.
Shutter Showdown has been held back for one main reason. We can’t fully trust the photos sent from the client. Rather than rush something out and deal with the fallout, we’ve been working with members of the community on a safer approach.
That work is focused on a room renderer we can rely on. Once that’s in place, it opens the door not just for Shutter Showdown, but for bringing photos back in a way everyone can actually view, not just your friends.
The Stickerbook is in a different place. Technically, it’s ready. But releasing it right now wouldn’t feel great. The sticker pool is still too small, and bringing back older stickers properly takes time. They need to be redrawn across multiple sizes, and that’s not quick work.
Both features are still in our roadmap, and we want to deliver them. We just want to get them to a place where they feel worth using.
The players keeping this going
A lot of what makes Origins work isn’t just what we build, it’s how you use it.
The players running events. Keeping rooms active. Trading, testing things, calling out what works and what doesn’t. Then there are the ones who go further. The EC team putting on regular events. Hobbas keeping things in check. People contributing art, tools, even pieces of the client itself.
Those things don’t always show up in patch notes, but they shape the Hotel every day.
Even the quieter moments matter too. Sitting in rooms, chatting, just being around. That’s what fills the gaps between everything else.
We see it, and it makes a difference.
Where this is heading
Right now, too much of the game revolves around waiting for something to happen. Logging in, checking a few things, logging out again. We want to shift that.
More moments where something is already happening. More reasons to stay, not just check in. That’s what this next chapter is about.
We can’t wait to hear your feedback!
- Macklebee
test!