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A Million Tiny Horses Dancing In Space's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #100 | 3.133 | 3.133 |
| Art | #170 | 2.933 | 2.933 |
| Theme Integration | #171 | 2.867 | 2.867 |
| Overall | #189 | 2.611 | 2.611 |
| Fun Factor | #201 | 2.533 | 2.533 |
| Sound Design | #203 | 2.467 | 2.467 |
| Gameplay | #334 | 1.733 | 1.733 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game bring our theme, The Error is the Feature, to life?
The horses multiply up to a million, What started out as a horse race simulator mutated into a dance party in space. They shrink at strange thresholds, and "dance" in unpredictable ways. They are tiny horses, and they all work their legs on screen at the same time while floating above and around a race track. I almost forgot to mention the space jockeys.
Did you include a fake publisher splash screen at the start of your game?
Did you use the Audius API in your game?
How did you use the Audius API in your game?
I used Audius API to stream Electronic Dance Music as the game soundtrack.
If AI was used in your game, let us know how you used it.
I used Codex AI agent for code and some images.
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Comments
I like how the track is in the shape of a Jockeys goggles protecting from debris and flies but as you zoom out the tiny horses ARE the flies! Even the broken ones are like splattered flies squirming. Cool concept!
Haha, I never thought of it that way. Thank's for the insight!
This has a nice vibe to it, with the space setting, the colours, the pixelated horses and the choice of music. I got the counter to go passed 1000000 and didn't notice any performance drop, I thought that was impressive. One thing that enjoyed less is that the game does not seem to have a goal you need to reach or anything else to do than spawning horses.
This being said, I enjoyed trying this game and in the end, that's all that matters. 👍
Thanks! Glad you thought it was rad! Yes I agree, it does need some kind of goal besides just partying in space haha. I'm trying to think of interesting ideas i could put into it, some ideas is like typical clicker stuff. I think there might be some way to incorporate the "horse race" into it. Maybe add some kind of skill based score but I would need to have some kind of skill based mechanic first. hmmm. Thanks for the feedback!
Damn, I couldn't get past 250k horses but this was funny, I'm just glad I could keep my left click pressed to spawn horses rather than keep clicking a million times. My laptop might die in two days but atleast my mouse will live.
Hah! Thanks for playing! I'm glad I added the hold down feature too that would be just way too much clicking! I had it on 1 click at a time for the first day I was working on it and I think I might have worn out my mouse button, lol.
if I can evaluate me too.
Interesting simulation, but tbh I don't see it as a "game" much. Even as a idle game concept it doesn't work as well since there's no goal to get to or some fail state to avoid. It's definitely an impressive technical showcase, but gamify it a bit more and I think it could be more engaging.
Not sure what the "error" represent though, do they just randomly appear instead of horses?
Overall funny concept, would love to see it be expanded with other ideas.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, Lestavol! You have such good ideas for me to add! The “error” is a horse splitting in half, both halves keep dancing, so the chaos snowballs. I agree it needs more game around it. For the jam I scoped to one clear goal "hit 1,000,000 on screen" and focused on proving the GPU compute pipeline. In a fuller version I would like to add clicker-style ramping. I would also like to lean into the horse race more too and come up with some mechanic so maybe the player has a horse in the race and you have to unlock speed upgrades or something, or the track changes shape and gets longer or has more winding to it. If I dialed it way back to where it's not just about getting to a million it would have more room to add more detailed mechanics. I feel Compute shaders are underused in games, so this was also a way for me demo what they can do. Appreciate you playing and sharing thoughts!
This was my highest score! First to comment on my game so I thought I'd repay the favour. I wanted to go until my pc stopped existing but after I took my first screenshot of the million I was only able to gain 1 horse per click from there on out. 1,005,014 was my highest final score. My pc sounds like a train.
Edit: I just realised I could zoom out to see the whole track :O
Haha! thank you for playing yeah you can zoom in and out and pan around, hope you got a kick out of it!
what a zany idea, i love it. also respect for integrating the music api thingy! I made it just barely to a million horses, was afraid to push my poor laptop further :) Great job!
Aww thanks for playing I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for the kind words!
This would make a great idle game if you define it's system more deeply. for example each time you finish a lap you gain money and you upgrade horse spawner to get more horses to get more money and so on. Just a little idea:) Game volume is bit high tho but great job overall!
Thank you so much for trying it out, thanks for your kind words! Yes, totally doable as an idle game! I was thinking of it as a clicker, I couldn't add more features in the time frame but I will probably keep fleshing it out later on. I can imagine all sorts of upgrades and whacky stuff to add, only limited by imagination. Your are right I should have calibrated the volume I didn't even think of it I just had my speakers turned down haha.
I played your game and the amount of horses is absurd, but i do think you tempered with the counter a bit, if I click outside of the racetrack one horse spawns but the counter says that over one thousand spawned also turn the volume down please. It is incredible how you made it without lag being a big issue.
Thanks for the valuable feedback, thanks for playing! I'm so excited to hear that someone tried it! The one horse spawning is a floating horse spawning. I added those for the extra layer and to show off the use of flow fields to control them. But if you look at the "track" it also spawns 1000+ horses although they start to stack after a while they are still being simulated. I made the spawning increase exponentially just to reduce the time it takes to get to a million because I didn't want the player to lose interest. Thanks again!