Incomplete Horse Nonsense

by harrison-dunn

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.84

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.00

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.68

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.54

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.25

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.07

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.71

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.86

Life on the Infinity Ranch was nice. Until the world ended and all the other cowboys turned into angry, horse-eating, 'zombies.' As the last remaining cowboy, you must free as many horses as you can from their stables before you get captured and eaten by the angry farmhands.

Theme - Unstable. I put a hyphen in the theme and turned it into a game in which you free horses. Un-Stable them...

DESTABALIZE!

KNOWN ISSUES 10/4/21
- online high scores will not work for webGL, desktop version didn't get finished, sorry! post your highscores in the comments!
Programming, Design, Art, Audio - Harrison Dunn (CFHM)

Additional Voices - Abi S, Joe R, John F, Matt O, Liam O, John K

Photographs from unsplash.com:
https://unsplash.com/photos/7FC4WpyYcfQ
https://unsplash.com/photos/0SukTvdAx7A

Music from free-stock-music.com:
Song - "Free Play" - https://youtu.be/Yb3fn5J2CyM

Font from dafont.com - Bou Western

Tags: #high score, #horses, #ld49

Genres: action

Tools: Unity

Comments18

bklolo4 Oct 2021, 14:43

Broken link

LDJam user 2646294 Oct 2021, 18:05

Bklolo is right, the link doesn't work.

Harrison Dunnauthor4 Oct 2021, 18:11

@bklolo @pwnzer thanks! I had typed in the url like a dingus and had a slash instead of a dot!

spudboy4 Oct 2021, 19:34

This take on the "unstable" theme is hilarious. So is "neigh, motherfucker."

Pretty fun to play, although I realized you could do pretty well by just ignoring the horses and moving diagonally to make distance between yourself and the chaser whenever he gets too close. Got a high score of 60 this way!

Also, it says you can upload high scores on the download version, but I only see a web version available.

Overall fun to play and funny!

bklolo4 Oct 2021, 20:33

Okay, played it. Very funny lol. Was pretty fun as well!

Harrison Dunnauthor4 Oct 2021, 21:53

@spudboy @bklolo final version is up. I didn't realize folks would rate/play before the jam ended! Thanks for checking it out.

spud - it's actually "neigh, mother BUCKER" but I agree it's hard to hear lol

Tohmis6 Oct 2021, 17:38

Really fun game. I got to 40 after a few tries. Also some of those "horse noises" are hillarious

dob7 Oct 2021, 04:26

Really silly! I like it. I did a horse-related unstabling too, so the joke is near and dear to my heart. Very fun. I like the sound board entries too.

Tuile7 Oct 2021, 06:43

This was fun to play!

I felt that the Instructions on the main page is great, but I felt that it was too much text, and the important bits in it, didn't stand out a lot to me. Just a visual thing, but wanted to let you know how I felt about it.

Some of the Horse SFX didn't really sound like horses. When I pressed retry, I would expect some feedback as well when I restart the game. A little more leeway would be nice for when cowboys arrive on the scene, so that I have a bit more time to run away from them. Like, just pop onto the screen, and wait for a second, and then run after the player character.

Overall, I'd say that this was a very fun game, with great replayability value. It was funny in its essence, and I had a great time playing this!

eharp7 Oct 2021, 16:23

Fun game, easy replay value and some nice humor. I appreciate another horse take on the theme.

I didn't immediately connect that the arrows unlocked the stables, also never felt like I fully grasped how close I needed to before they would work. I also couldn't tell what Silly Mode did, was it just different audio clips?

Harrison Dunnauthor7 Oct 2021, 17:48

@eharp thanks for playing! yep, silly mode was just a change in audio. I had friends submit audio clips and a lot of folks made joke ones, too. It seemed a shame not to use them!

MakimoPL11 Oct 2021, 13:15

This is really cool! Nice gameplay, just play and have fun! :)

Rose18 Oct 2021, 05:34

Quite a simple game but really funny and surprisingly fun to play. I liked how you could free horses as you run by by hitting the arrow keys. The horse SFX are the best part!

aplite18 Oct 2021, 12:59

I enjoyed playing this. The controls felt good and the sound effects were a nice touch. It's not often a working pause menu is included in entries so that is great. I really enjoyed the noises in the silly mode.

Great job on picking your theme by the way. Very ingenious.

Turkey18 Oct 2021, 16:06

Loved the sfx! Neat little game, only real issue is that I felt like I was only creating a train of the people trying to catch me and that I didn't really have any other way to get away from them

Harrison Dunnauthor18 Oct 2021, 16:46

@turkey yeah, I made them spawn in randomly around you to mix it up a little bit as you got further. But the strat that emerged from playtesting was actually to *not* open every stable and use the stables to get the enemies stuck so you could put distance between you and them. I built the rest of it that way, but left it as a discoverable "ah-ha" moment for players.

JeanBon19 Oct 2021, 16:16

You should edit the page description with the controls, it took me some time to understand I had to use the arrow keys.

Freeing the horse becomes addictive after a while, I think the funny horse noises have a lot to do with that.

I thought the gameplay was missing a mechanic to slow down the cowboys, for instance freeing bulls that would charge them and slow them for a while.

It's a funny take on the theme.

Harrison Dunnauthor19 Oct 2021, 18:22

@jeanbon thanks for playing! the controls are on the start screen :)

the cowboys actually get stuck behind stables, so the clever player may discover they can skip freeing some horses in order to form a block and put distance between them and the enemy. I've debated on whether or not to straight call that out for the game jam though. In a 'normal' game, I'd leave that as a discoverable strategy, but maybe calling it out in the game description is better for a jam, allowing quick plays to have that tiny bit more strategy. After all, I can't expect jam players to play more than a few minutes which may not be enough time to see an enemy get slowed by a stable naturally.

Love your avatar btw :) HxH

Other games by @harrison-dunn

★3.51