no-grapes-games 2026-10-20 01:48 ♥ 1
Nice atmospheric puzzle platformer, Figuring out each new way of manipulating the crates, one by one, was pretty fun.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → HORSE TOWER
By honey-pony
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 10 | |||||
| Fun | 10 | |||||
| Innovation | 9 | |||||
| Theme | 10 | |||||
| Graphics | 10 | |||||
| Audio | 10 | |||||
| Humor | 10 | |||||
| Mood | 10 | |||||
Nice atmospheric puzzle platformer, Figuring out each new way of manipulating the crates, one by one, was pretty fun.
Interesting little puzzler. Had to reset some of the earlier levels because I thought I'd found a bug, but turned out that "bug" was necessary to solve later levels -- very clever.
Nice little game: good work!
Managed to finish the game!! Including the bonus level of course :) I then tried replaying it to remember which levels gave me trouble, and ended up entering a speedrunning rabbit hole instead. I played a little slow & safe in my final attempt cause I kept messing up the easy levels when aiming for speed, and I unfortunately panicked and really blew the final level, but still happy that I reached sub-5 minutes! https://youtu.be/FcGE3CoVv8E Anyway, this was a lot of fun! I also thought the crate carrying thing was a bug at first, but it turned out to be a pretty cool mechanic. There were also so many levels and creative ways to use it! I think my favorite level was the last one, it struck a good balance of difficulty without being too obtuse. In general, I really enjoyed the carrot puzzles once I figured them out! That did admittedly take a while though, I somehow managed to beat the third carrot level without getting the mechanic at all through trial and error.
As for which levels gave me trouble... The block staircase one was very hard for me at first, but served as a good tutorial for the rest of the game. The absolute worst though was the second to last one, even on speedrun attempts I got stuck there for like 3 minutes usually (my final one was the first time I beat it first try!). I think it just required a lot of precision, and finding a good place to "store" your friend while you moved the crates around was surprisingly difficult for me. Also I kept moving the final lift up too early which forced a restart - it was always counter intuitive for me the "1 crate, 1 lift up, *2* crates (1+friend), 1 lift up" sequence and I did 1-1-1-1 instead. Something I really liked that I wished more levels did was when you had excess carrots, which let you fix mistakes by eating another without requiring a full restart.
Level design aside, the rest was pretty cool too! I liked the intro and the emergent storytelling with the friend. I also enjoyed the graphics here, while simple they had good variety and the first time I encountered the carrots & windows with the sun was a pleasant surprise. Overall this was fun, great entry! And happy to report no issues with the engine when running on Linux via Wine :)
@frogravity Holy guacomole, thank you for this comment! ๐ Very detailed and the video is super cool to see as well and very helpful.
Some comments on the video: - Love the strat at 1:29 to skip the stair. Not intentional on my end but it doesn't even break the idea of the level, which is cool. - Gah, the level at 2:35... oops. I did not realize you could drop the other horse up there. In retrospect it seems so obvious. The idea of the level was supposed to be that you had to push the horse crate on to the top of the moving platform in a way that you would have enough space to hook it again, but obviously that didn't quite work. Oh well, I think it is still a reasonable first level to introduce the horse storage+retrieval idea. - Seeing you play the level at 2:47 is interesting. I thought it was a little annoying how hard it could be to reach the crate, and I had thought about moving the middle tile one block to the right but probably just forgot to do it. I didn't consider it a huge deal because you can make the reach easier by just pushing the horse crate to the right before you do it, but it is interesting to see that pitfall in a real playthrough. (That said, I guess the speed strat is to leave the horse crate on the left and just get the long-reach grab first try. :P) - It was interesting to hear your difficulties finding a dropoff point for the friend at the second-to-last level (3:13). If you want a hint, !> you can drop them on the floor at the start similar to the crate to the right, because there's the ledge there that you can push them off
It's hard to say for sure the best design principle about these kinds of spots because, well, the easiest spot might just be missed. (As I myself did with the level at 2:35).
The point about the carrots is interesting. My approach for the exactly-enough-available levels was I wanted them to require not only execution of the platforming elements but also specific sequencing, as that is part of the puzzle. However, this kind of thing can definitely be more punishing in a puzzle platformer where there is no undo key and the only revert allowed is a level reset. On the other hand, I think having the levels become increasingly punishing as you near the end of the game is kind of what I expect from a regular-platformer, so not sure what my conclusion is.
Funny thing about the wine build, etc... I actually am running Linux myself, and did all the development on Linux (and I did the Windows build from Linux, so I haven't actually tested it on a real Windows computer, lmao). I even have most of the scripts set up to build and push a Linux build. What I'm not sure about is how to make a Linux build *portable*... like I know the game doesn't build if I don't have `libasound` installed, and stuff like that, and I'm wondering if I just shipped the build that I have in my release folder, if it would actually work on everyone else's system. The Windows build is therefore less ambiguously portable, in a weird way, because I know that everyone running Wine will have a normal Windows installation. (Although for me personally my own Wine doesn't work very well, but Proton from Steam works great).
...But I guess I really should at least have the build up there, even if it doesn't work, so I've just pushed one. ๐ Sorry that I didn't have it up before.
In any case, thanks again for the awesome comment! It was a joy to read and watch.
I fiddled around at the start trying to find glitches, figured out the box carrying mechanic, tried to abuse it to cheat future challenges, then was pleasantly surprised to discover it was actually required to progress, I don't know why but that was a highlight of the game for me. The difficulty felt perfect, I was never really at loss for what to do, IIRC the second-to-last level had a bit of a difficulty spike though; I just treated it as the final boss level though
I saw a few doors during my travels, couldn't find any way to open them though, those and the vents(?) piqued my curiosity, but I figured it was just decoration.
The controls felt good, the music never got repetitive, and the art fit perfectly. Great work! horse.gif
https://youtu.be/CF33CeRwST4
This is a really good game; a side-view sokoban kinda but not really. The puzzles are nothing crazy but they are non-trivial and satisfying to clear (which is something I always find beyond impressive at Jam timeframe). I'm not a fan of the decision to not include a "drop" button, as that doesn't really increase the depth of the puzzles but wastes a ton of time. I love the presentation, although old tech is regrettably nowhere to be found.
@alaah Thank you for the review and the video!! I've finally gotten around to watching it, which I wanted to do before replying:
> Iโm not a fan of the decision to not include a โdropโ button, as that doesnโt really increase the depth of the puzzles but wastes a ton of time.
On this I wholeheartedly disagree. The current structure of the crate manipulation does at least three things for me: 1. Most importantly: Serves as a source of constraints in level design. At least in principle, I can restrict where the player is able to drop boxes by avoiding placing corners nearby, especially for the ledge type placements which (in theory) require two unique pieces of geometry to be usable. Now, this is a little bit bogus, as there is actually a way to cheese the ledge placements (the strategy executed at 11:48 in your video), but I would rather fix that cheese so that the player had to use a wall to nudge the horse-crate off center first before being able to use it, then I would want to remove the puzzle mechanic entirely. 2. It is a cool emergent property of the collision mechanics themselves. This may be just me wanting to play with my physics engine at the cost of game design, but: I have tried to implement similar behaviors in Godot previously and utterly failed, and it is very satisfying to me to have this behavior work and incorporate it into the gameplay. I also literally did not know that these various tools for manipulating the crates existed until I played the game enough, and I thought it was cool that there were multiple emergent tools I could design around. 3. I think the physicality of it is quite appropriate for, well, being a horse. That it is a little awkward to get everything into its proper place is maybe not the most satisfying gameplay, but it fits thematically, and I find myself generally enjoying the manipulations when playing.
Still, watching your playthrough, I can see your point. There are definitely a number of levels where the mechanic does not do much. But yeah, I don't think I would ever make that choice for this game myself.
My one true regret with the crate-pushing is exemplified more by your video at 21:57 -- you had the crates lined up, not pixel perfect, but 100% fine for winning the level, but then spent a bit longer getting them absolutely perfect which is actually more annoying/tedious than I would like to inflict on my players. I have absolutely no idea how to communicate this to player though, short of hoping they notice the collision-fixing in an earlier level, or read the note about it in the game description. Maybe I should have had a super clear demo of this somewhere in the game. Idk.
> although old tech is regrettably nowhere to be found.
Haha. As usual, even when I give the theme an honest attempt, nobody can see it coming through. To me the game definitely follows the theme as I only decided to do this after I could not think of anything else that seemed on-theme. The idea as conceived on Friday evening was some kind of platformer (I did not know it was a puzzle game until Saturday evening) set in this particular setting. I don't know if the setting really came through, given that, well, I am working with pretty limited graphics. But the idea is basically this: some indeterminate amount of time in the future, humans have built a huge indoor vertical farming facility, including animals that have been cryogenically frozen. Many years later, when the humans have disappeared entirely, you as the main character are unfrozen by freak coincidence, and are navigating the area and trying to live. (The original concept of the game had you rescuing multiple additional horses). So the game is about this abandoned old technology that just... keeps ticking without the humans it was built for. So not necessarily a creative interpretation of the theme, but it is in my opinion *an* interpretation of it.
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Anyway. I appreciate the criticisms even if I don't necessarily agree. ๐ Your comment was great and much more terse than my wall of text. Thanks again!
