Unstable: Save a Herd of Horses by Alex Chertilin
Only a brave alien can save horses from disaster catastrophe brought down to Earth. Graceful creatures are locked down in stables and will die without your help because of fire! But be careful - horses are so scared and could be dangerous on the loose. Use your "Stabilizer" to sedate animals for further sending them to UFO. Horses spread fire so fast and furious! Try to achieve the HiScore!
CONTROLS
Move: WASD, arrows
Release horses: E
A shot from the "Stabilizer" for saving horses: SPACE, or any Q, F, LCtrl
We are so proud to present our first attempt to make a game at Jam. It was so much challenge for our team, especially because we used Godot engine for the very first time, respect @ullent for his incredible development skill, @michaelgamerus as a talented artist and jack of all trade @alex-chertilin. We hope you will enjoy our game and look forward for feedback. Thank you so much.
https://youtu.be/qvlHMd5d-Aw
| Link | https://ullent.itch.io/save-a-herd-of-horses |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-save-a-herd-of-horses |
Ratings
| Overall | 1048th | 3.295⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1147th | 3.041⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 928th | 3.142⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 751th | 3.541⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 740th | 3.613⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 622th | 3.145⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1072th | 3.101⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 169🗳️ | 119🗨️ |
- Audio Settings shows up in Main Menu and game (You can adjust Sound&Music Volume);
- Game statistics shows up at GameOver Screen (You know how many horses were stabilized & saved exactly);
- Limit for "unstabled" (active) horses was added for dramatically performance improvement;
- Some sounds and animations works correctly now.
Thank you for your patient. We learned so much for the Jam time.
Play, save & enjoy!
Well done completing your 1st jam!!!
I really liked the graphics and fire animations, it looked quite good overall. The use of sfx was also on point, as well as the music. Overall it's quite a good piece for a first jam. Good job!
Frantic and fun gameplay once i realized how to open stables. Not sure where all the horses came from once they started de-stable-izing, but lets blast those neigh-sayers.
Sorry, can't stop the bad punning. Love the theme pun.
the concept is pretty interesting, and I felt so panicking when saving the horses. the music and game combine very well
I especially liked the music track in the main menu!
My highscore was 31.
Overall it was really cool !
The controls should be easy enough that anyone can pick them up quickly without any instructions, or if not, then the instructions should be found within the game.
The audio was good and the game looked nice, but I needed to get out of the game and come back to this page to read the instructions on how to play it.
I was also expecting to "do something" to the burning trees and building, not just chase the horses around. I think the game's clarity could have used some work.
* It took me some time to understand that I had to press the red buttons on the hydrants(?) to free the horses.
* I am still not sure I understand when I need to use my "stabilizer gun". Can a non-stabilized horse be teleported (saved) by the UFO? Is it worth to stabilize a horse that is already on fire?
One idea would be to not start the fires until the player saved a couple of horses, to give him time to grasp the main game concepts.
* I don't understand what triggers a game over. To me it felt random. Might be related with the number of fires? I don't know. Some more feedback about it would be super nice.
* The stables seem to continuously spawn new horses, and this was overwhelming. I could not follow everything was happening on the screen: many stable, many horses, many fires. I think you should either have less things happening and once, or make the most important things stand out more.
I hope these are useful suggestions! And I hope to see you making games again on the next Ludum Dare! :slight_smile:
- Yes, we wanted to put players in shoes of an alien who has to figure out how to save crying horses.
- Yes, use "stabilizer" in any incomprehensible situation. It must help)
- We had a draft version of health bar, but didn't make it on time. My fault. Honestly, we need to try harder next time. Deliver proper impact is our first goal now.
- And yes, during the Jam's time we fell for development too deep and tried to entertain in more ways than we could carried out.
So thorough comments make us better! We appreciate it a lot.
Very nice graphics. Well implemented controls (even I normally prefer controller).
I got stuck a few times, but could get out after a while.
Very crazy chaotic unstable after some time passes ... cool. Feels the urge to save them here, while they are burning there and everywhere.
Yes, UNSTABLE in different ways.
Congratulations!
Good job to all three of you! Keep up the good work.
The graphics is good, especially the lighning and fire. Maybe you could add some shadows to give more deep to your 2D design ^^ and the gameplay is efficient :)
What is your best score?
Nice job!
And congratulation on your first game in LD. I hope you will stay with us for long time :)