Horsey Bash by jakefriend

You are a horsey on a rampage.
LEFT-CLICK to jump in L-shapes onto (or over!) enemies and explosive barrels. Collect points and chain attacks to build a huge score before you burn out in a blaze of glory!
When you've jumped 3 times (or take too long), your horsey desire to BASH grows too strong and you charge forward uncontrollably in a random (but predetermined) direction.
After your turn, any ignited barrels explode, then enemies near you take a turn. Then you're up again!
All art, music, and code created within 48 hours by jakefriend (me). Public domain SFX from freesound.org; acquired during the jam. (I've opted out from Audio voting due to this.)
Built in Godot Engine 3.3.3
| Source code (download from Itch.io) | https://jakefriend.itch.io/horsey-bash |
| HTML5 player (embedded on Itch.io) | https://jakefriend.itch.io/horsey-bash |
| Windows (download from Itch.io) | https://jakefriend.itch.io/horsey-bash |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/horsey-bash |
Ratings
| Overall | 40th | 4.034⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 57th | 3.955⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 20th | 4.216⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 160th | 3.898⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 22th | 4.33⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 11th | 4.352⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 28th | 4.058⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
I would just have one thing to say to criticise it : I sometimes had troubles calculating the movements due to the fast-paced nature of the game.
Amazing job overall !
I didn't know what I was doing for a couple of attempts, but I got the hang of it eventually and I don't think that's a bad thing.
great art, there's so much charm. i really enjoy the gameplay loop too, being forced to look at your surroundings under time pressure. going for a full clear is quite hard!
i think my only gripe is the view range, it's only slightly larger than the distance you dash to, which makes it quite likely you dash into a barrel or even just in range of a chicken if you jump in the direction of your dash. on the other hand, i understand having a small view distance for the sake of preventing a ton of enemies from moving (and therefore forcing you to wait longer)
the only bug i noticed is that you dont collect a coin when landing on an enemy that is on that spot.
other than that this is lovely entry, i enjoyed it a lot!
Really impressive outcome from 48hours, great work!
Super nice overall!
I would maybe like to see keyboard controls, I wasted a lot of time just pointing were to go and then my time was out, but that is just a small thing!
At first you feel completely out of control, and the game just destroys you, and it seems like there's nothing you can really do. But then you start developing tactics, applying the knight rerouting skills from chess, positioning yourself in smart ways, using the environment. The first time you manage to kill an enemy with dash — the very thing that's supposed to be working against you — it feels *powerful*.
Maybe it would be good for the learning curve to greet players with weaker enemies at first to give them some time to adjust. But overall, this is already an endless treasury of possibilities. I really hope to see this project live on and develop into something much bigger!
Oh, and I can't get enough of those UI transitions. How are they so delicious? I'll just go click around some more.
About the audio, You may be a bit harsh on yourself. Maybe one or two audioclips are a bit over the limit to pick from freesound, but stuff like animal sounds you are not supposed to go around the street trying to find chickens to record for you jam game anyway (I usually pick stuff from random asmr videos like "relaxing chicken sounds 40hours"). Maybe with one or two clips replaced by mouth-made sounds you were all good imo.