Horseless Headman by LDJam user 403938

[raw]
made by LDJam user 403938 for Ludum Dare 56 (JAM)

An unlikely duo of a Manless Horsehead and a Horseless Headman team up versus the imposing Chess Kingdom.

post_1.png

longControls.png

Controls:

=WASD - Movement
=Space - Jump, Double Jump
=Left Click - Slashing
=Right Click - Dash Dodge

Separader.png SH1_v3.gif Separader.png

Team SwanBoat

🐴Swan - Art, Game Design, Coding
🐴Boat - UI/UX, Game Design, Coding

Separader.png SH2.gif Separader.png

Music Credits(OpenGameArt.org):

🐴10 Fanfares - Spring Spring
🐴Victory Theme for RPG - cynicmusic
🐴Grassy World Overture (8bit/Orchestral) - Matthew Pablo
🐴Fast fight / battle music - Ville Nousiainen

Sound Effects Credit:

🐴Halftone SFX Pack

Ratings

Overall 20th 4.33⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Fun 22th 4.261⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 175th 3.783⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Theme 879th 3.151⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 3th 4.872⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Humor 56th 4.067⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Mood 80th 4.189⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 40🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 395766
07. Oct 2024 · 21:27 UTC
I fucking love the character and gameplay <3
LDJam user 395766
07. Oct 2024 · 21:27 UTC
I fucking love the character and gameplay <3
🎤 LDJam user 403938
08. Oct 2024 · 06:01 UTC
@leykal Thank you!!!
-Swan
perka
08. Oct 2024 · 09:27 UTC
omg
Julester
08. Oct 2024 · 09:32 UTC
I really like the game. Great art/animations and the gameplay feels smooth and polished. Making the enemies chess pieces made it really easy to understand the attack patterns, very clever.
lethargic
08. Oct 2024 · 09:36 UTC
That's some insanely impressive visuals for just three days of work! Enjoyed the gameplay, smooth and doesn't overstay its welcome. Very creative health indicator, and I love the game's name :D

I could see myself grinding this for a perfect run for a long time if it wasn't that forgiving with the initial health :) Fantastic job!

![ApplicationFrameHost_U1Jb7QDgSS.png](///raw/bbf/c4/z/67cec.png)
Torami
08. Oct 2024 · 09:39 UTC
Won the game first try:)), I wish my first game jam entry would have turned out so polished. This is a really nice piece - I like the hectic atmosphere and the movement which kinda reminds me of DOOM: eternals movement with the double jump and double dashes which in my opinion has the greatest movement in video game history i really liked that you didn't limit yourselves to only being able to attack where the player is and that gives a nice little fight mechanic to the game.
The game is a bit short however I would have maybe liked some ramp up in power from the waves that could've repeated and maybe a scoring system but time is always sparse so I get that it wasn't implemented.
The only thing is I usually only play with WebGL versions of games and only rarely download any because that's a hassle so that almost deterred me from trying out this cute game all this to say the WebGL on itch did not work for me.
Great game, I don't necesseraly see how it fits the theme apart from the enemies being kinda small but I really like the movement and the beautiful graphics.
Plundre
08. Oct 2024 · 09:43 UTC
Absolutely incredible graphics! Very fun gameplay! All and all a fantastic game
Machinic
08. Oct 2024 · 09:45 UTC
Great art and sound design - some of the best I've seen this jam. The attacking could maybe be improved so it feels less like it's just holding the mouse over the enemies -- but I also get that the separate character & weapon are part of the premise, so take that with a grain of salt.
SteD
08. Oct 2024 · 10:22 UTC
Amazing game! It is so polished and so clean. Like you made everything look like a full indie game, really great job! Also, animations are sick, I can't even think about how you managed to create everything to be so smooth.
LDJam user 387548
09. Oct 2024 · 07:53 UTC
Your animations is so great!
rsheepdv
09. Oct 2024 · 07:58 UTC
THIS IS AMAZING. How the heck was this animated in 3 days?? I need more of this!!
Bananplyte
09. Oct 2024 · 08:01 UTC
![ace.png](///raw/384/43/z/6830a.png)
Did it! With only an ace in the hole!

Such amazing animation! And the whole chess-theming was great - especially for telegraphing enemy movement and HP bar. Honestly, the game isn't very long but the time it lasts is so polished and nice that I can't not give you 5/5. Reminded me of castle crashers in a great way.
Tenai
09. Oct 2024 · 08:26 UTC
Great animation, great enemy ai, steady increase in difficulty as the game played on. Nice job!
Mackelvin
09. Oct 2024 · 08:42 UTC
The game was very cool ! The character animation looks incredible and the gameplay is on point !
In addition it would be great to have a scoring system
Overall Nice Job !!
Spica
09. Oct 2024 · 10:04 UTC
Jaw-dropping work on graphics (and the intro animation in particular!). Really liked that health is represented in cards, great decision! It was fun to play :smiley:
LDJam user 277851
09. Oct 2024 · 13:39 UTC
## it's the most stylish character I ever seen in ld
![horesless.png](///raw/b5d/34/z/6845d.png)
LDJam user 79716
09. Oct 2024 · 16:11 UTC
The visuals are amazing. But the build is not working for me =(
Ntimi
09. Oct 2024 · 18:56 UTC
Crazy cool intro and style. The gameplay was fun, too! I'm a bit fan of frantic action games. It took me a while to understand that I could move the head in circles, I was just doing short slashes in the beginning. ^^ But that did not hurt my run. Great entry!
Ronn Fever
10. Oct 2024 · 05:35 UTC
The awesome visuals captured me, and the fun gameplay kept me playing. It's interesting to separate your attack and your body, makes it a lot more of a challenge to keep track of both, and while I felt like an expert at first, the game really humbled me by the half way mark! I could see this having more mechanics and being a lot bigger of a game - really nice entry!
Loveschach
10. Oct 2024 · 05:47 UTC
Oh no, my game crashed!

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in action number 1
of Alarm Event for alarm 0 for object o_game:
Variable Index [0] out of range [0]
at gml_Object_o_game_Alarm_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_o_game_Alarm_0 (line -1)

Anyways, love the animation! Gameplay reminds me of Noitu Love 2, you guys should check it out if you haven't!
🎤 LDJam user 403938
10. Oct 2024 · 06:49 UTC
@greatvv @loveschach
Oh no sorry to hear that! We're working on a fix that'll come out hopefully very soon!
DGSpitzer
10. Oct 2024 · 08:53 UTC
OMG great animations!
Meru
10. Oct 2024 · 08:57 UTC
Animation is great, Gameplay simple and very enjoyable! This definately is one of my Favoriten so far!
Mikeandtherest
10. Oct 2024 · 09:01 UTC
Now this is a hell of an idea and execution. The art is awesome, the animations spot on and the mechanics seem just right. It was an enjoyable experience paying it!
Sharky3188
10. Oct 2024 · 09:05 UTC
Very cool design, and some fun gameplay. I loved the pack of cards for your health, very creative idea.
The enemies all felt varied and fun to play against. Maybe a tiny bit more enemy scaling would have been good towards the end as i felt it was almost a bit too easy.
The main character is certainly the star of the show, some fantastic art.
Very well polished, great entry.
Yufan Lu
10. Oct 2024 · 09:21 UTC
As others have said, incredible animation! There is so much effort in this. The design also feels creative. Love the poker and chess motif! Game play wise everything feel fluid.One of the best in the jam imo.
RoTob123
10. Oct 2024 · 13:39 UTC
this is awesome! cool graphics, nice picked audio, and in 3 days?!
Tetracold
10. Oct 2024 · 13:57 UTC
I just need to say that The artstysle of this game instantly caught my attention, it's amazing and deserving of all the praise.

The design work is amazing and very creative with a very eyecatching and memorable main character. The idea of using chess as an aesthetic is super cool and inspired

I love the use of color here with red being a dominant color contrasting with the monochrome tones it really makes it stand out.

The animation is fluid and very dynamic, it honestly seems insane for just 3 days

The gameplay complements the style beautifully, it helps the animation shine. a little simple but that's not necessarily bad, it's still well designed and fun even for it's short length.

This is hands down my favorite jam game as far as visuals, I am impressed
Wraithind
11. Oct 2024 · 00:35 UTC
I can't say enough about how amazing the visuals are for this, especially with how little time you had, extremely well done there. Gameplay was really enjoyable as well, felt fairly manageable but chaotic enough to keep you engaged. Though when it fills the entire screen with enemies almost right out of the gate, that felt like a bit much, but I got through it! Very well done. Love to see more like this.
chuckeles
11. Oct 2024 · 09:53 UTC
Wow, incredible work, I had a lot of fun playing! The game gets pretty hard pretty quickly, especially on a touchpad lol. Very nice entry, great job!
abductedPlatypus
11. Oct 2024 · 12:01 UTC
Simple yet fun game. Love the art style. I did have a little trouble with dodging everything from time to time since things quickly moved into the way while I was in mid air, but that can be forgiven in a jam where testing time is limited.
kyunru
12. Oct 2024 · 13:45 UTC
The graphics are great. The feel of the game is really good, I liked it. Animation and sound effects fit really well. great game, keep it up :)
Sockenpuppe
12. Oct 2024 · 16:50 UTC
Finally got around to playing this. And holy shit is this great!

Amazing designs (I love this duo soo much) and animation, really polished gameplay and the music is so hype!

One of my favourite entries!
Eugen Rantev
12. Oct 2024 · 16:59 UTC
Easily one of the best character designs I've seen on LD and the gameplay is so polished! Love it!
CodeRaurus
13. Oct 2024 · 12:01 UTC
Very polished entry! I love the aesthetics and the attention to detail in juice. Cards as health is a nice touch as well.

I encountered couple issues. The LD embed doesn't seem to fit very well. Early on enemies dropped two card top left side but I couldn't pick them up any time soon (one of them disappeared or was picked up, not sure which).
I also got stuck with a red overlay. I imagine it was for low health or something but it never went away. Followed me all the way to main screen when completing the game.

Visually one of the favorites for sure and good work overall!
Ecaterina
13. Oct 2024 · 16:14 UTC
Wow! I love this art style. Every detail of the game, even the mouse cursor, and every mechanic is polished. You can clearly see the effort put into it. I haven't won yet, but I'll keep trying. Well done!
Sightseeker
16. Oct 2024 · 22:56 UTC
The animations are very very impressive! they really stuck and resonated with me. I enjoy how the health is the order of the cards.
Wenyu Bao
23. Oct 2024 · 12:43 UTC
The bullet-time effect when attacking is so cool! Plus, the amazing animations, complete features, and an interesting world-building make it even better. I really love the protagonist's design!