Hold Your Horfes by RedEye Games

made by RedEye Games for Ludum Dare 59 (COMPO)

NOTE TO FOLKS PLAYING ON LD SITE: Without the fullscreen button on Itch, it's super hard to play. I'd recommend trying it over there...

How does it fit the theme? You play as a starter in an old timey horf race. You give the signal to let the horfes know when they should start running. The main mechanic of the game is gambling around when you give that signal.

Tools I used: NO generative AI used anywhere in this project. No code/assist, assets, sounds, etc. Thanks to this post for the "No Clankers" sprite for the title page :D https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/$424949/on-the-usage-of-ai-in-ludum-dare

Art: 3D -> 2D = Blender -> PixelOver -> Aseprite

Sounds: jsfxr for sound https://www.onemotion.com/chord-player/ -> LMMS for music.

Engine: Godot 4.6

Color palette (not generated by me coz I'm colorblind and it's not technically an asset lol): https://lospec.com/palette-list/endesga-16

Fonts: Chequered Ink Ltd. fontpack

Git containing everything generated for the jam	https://github.com/zlounsberry/RedEye-LD59
HTML5 (web) itch build	https://redeyegamesllc.itch.io/redeye-ld59
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/hold-your-horfes

Ratings

Given

4🗳️

2🗨️

Feedback

Jacat

Apr 20th · 02:51 UTC

The visuals and music are really enjoyable, but the gameplay is a bit dull. More initiative for players could be added.

LDJam user 428646

Apr 20th · 03:25 UTC

I'm so bad at gambling but I love it.
![gambling.png](///raw/66a/86/z/7076b.png)

The races could go by a little faster. It felt like most of the time I was just sitting around waiting for the horses to be in the right state to startle.

🎤 RedEye Games

Apr 20th · 12:16 UTC

Yeah I had to balance the player sitting around vs. having the opportunity for an underdog horf to win. I _think_ I flew a bit close to the sun balancing toward the latter and as a result the races are a bit slow... When I playtested a faster version it was skewed too far towards the low-reward horfs just winning every time :/ I appreciate y'all checking it out in any case!

LDJam user 428646

Apr 20th · 12:23 UTC

@redeye-games Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I struggled getting the high reward horses to win even on this speed, so I imagine it'd just be a lot harder when they're going fast.

BushFire

Apr 23rd · 16:41 UTC

Fun little game full of humor.
I tried my best to win without any unsportsmanlike conduct, but you seem to have balanced the game well enough that playing honest isn't viable. Once I played the game as intended, it became much easier.

Last Angle

Apr 23rd · 19:51 UTC

The gamemechanics are fun, and it fit the theme much better than I thought at first reading the description! I like the funky graphics and animations. The race could be a bit faster, but that might run into the balancing issues like you said. Maybe you could look into making the money add up a bit faster after a win once the numbers get bigger. I got 3 million on day 3 and had to wait over half a minute before it was done :P. After that I just bet 1 dollar on the best horses and got told to touch grass.