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the mares of moonlight's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Ambition | #7 | 4.174 | 4.174 |
| Sound | #9 | 3.696 | 3.696 |
| Overall | #14 | 3.452 | 3.452 |
| Kink | #15 | 3.826 | 3.826 |
| Play | #17 | 3.522 | 3.522 |
| Aesthetic | #18 | 4.043 | 4.043 |
| Horny | #21 | 3.609 | 3.609 |
| Harmony | #27 | 3.391 | 3.391 |
| Narrative | #28 | 3.217 | 3.217 |
| Novelty | #33 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Stealth | #45 | 1.783 | 1.783 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Stuff you didn't do during the jam
a variety of CC0 sound clips from freesound.org were used as raw materials for the sound design in the game. so, i did not do original foley/synthesizer work for every single sound. (i did do some original work though).
two set of sound effects were used under CC-BY: shinlalala's lewd sound pack and the "fluttershy moans" by magicalmysticva.
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Comments
one of the highest compliments i can give: nice platforming. air control, acceleration, good gravity, fast auto checkpointing, a double jump that i can't help but suspect is pandering to me personally but if so then good news i Love being pandered to. could not believe that it just Kept Going, this is a hell of a lot of Stuff for a month
i do think it suffers a bit from a common affliction with platformers that have a lot of space but only so many mechanics to fill it with, which is that a whole lot of precision and timing gating creeps in, and that wears me down kinda fast. it's hard to land on a platform smaller than i am when i can't stop on a dime because i am an entire horse; my jump distance is far enough that i can't reliably eyeball whether i'll need a double jump or not (and that's important to know in advance since i usually have to turn around twice to use it); platforms start moving while i'm still mid-coitus and i need to take a leap of faith to catch up with them.
i guess a thing i have realized is that players will always invent more difficulty for themselves (e.g. by speedrunning), but they can't really invent less difficulty on a whim
ok i have this problem where if i think something is really solid then i want to zero in on little flaws and talk about them forever because i feel like those are all that's keeping it from being even better. also i should be able to jump with spacebar, i don't know who made ZXC the standard non-fps video game keys but they are the least convenient keys on the keyboard to hit repeatedly, which is probably why they are Z and X. anyway well done, really
Fun platforming game with a nice story and characters. Lots of difficult platforming but its a lot better after that initial difficulty patch. Took me a bit to figure out i needed to stand on a horse for a jump but after that the level made sense to me.
Really nice work here. I like the way the double jump mechanic is used, though the backward movement was personally a roadblock. Cute art, which is a given coming from you. I couldn't finish because my Bad At Platformers was acting up but I really did enjoy it.
This game treads (trots??) a fine line between feeling floaty and slippery and being very precise and deliberate. It's admittedly quite frustrating at times, but it never feels impossible. Agreed with some earlier reviews that the loose momentum of the character as she moves really does not feel like it meshes with the strict timing and placement of many of the jumps sometimes, but the addition of a shadow would significantly improve this.
The double jump feels like an easier to execute version of a certain fireball stall technique in Hollow Knight, which is good because I'm garbage at stallball ;) It was a satisfying move to pull off, but I did feel like i struggled to keep it consistent. Eventually i had to put the game down because the combination of the movement tech and the sex minigame buttons (even with skipping, because sometimes i'd press e by mistake or at the wrong time near a mare...) by hands got really worn out.
It's well made and i won't begrudge a difficult platformer at all, and the visuals are clean and nice-looking, very show-adjacent appearance that makes it feel fun and colorful. I think my favorite blend of kink & mechanic was the utilization of cock TF as a sort of consumable item per level; the kink itself isn't my thing but it's such a creative use of the idea and really made me look out for where to "use" her in each level!
thank you!
note that you can actually still press c even if you're already in sex. doesn't help with the statues of course. i am definitely convinced i should have put an automatic-sex option in from the beginning. oh well.
the funny thing about the cock tf is it's not deeply my thing either. i mean, i have some amount of interest in it, and putting it in this game may have honestly increased that interest, but it was by no means something i set out to include. i did come up with the idea the first day of the jam but it was very spur-of-the-moment, and partially inspired by the jam theme.
at least the impregnation link is unabashedly mine.
Just finished, and I wanted to comment specifically about how much I like the double-jump, haha! Sure, as others have noted, it feels unintuitive initially, but learning how to make it into a forward-propelling jump by facing the opposite direction felt very skillful, and also really unique. (I don't think I've ever seen a double-jump like this before, so it's exciting to see a new twist on the mechanic!)
Of course, it's a difficult platformer (feels especially Kaizo-inspired, to me), so this particular double-jump makes sense here. Admittedly, I like difficult platformers, so I wouldn't fault anyone for bouncing off it. I just wanted to express my appreciation for it here!
thank you!
i was honestly very satisfied coming up with the double jump mechanic. i thought of it like 3 days into the jam, as a way to add a bit of, as you said, kaizo flavor to the game, and i was like... this is perfect, because it's so conceptually simple (just a double jump that's backwards) while also having that difficulty to it and feeling unique.
it's also part of my continuing theory that making sex games leads me to novel places/mechanics because the only reason i came up with this is i'm like: well, i'm making a sex game, so what if your special platforming ability involved your dick? well, surely it would propel you in the opposite direction your dick is pointing... aha! backwards double jump!
It's always very impressive how huge and complete your games end up being in these game jams! Lots of levels, playful dialogue, beautiful art, interactive animations, and a complete story! I also haven't found any bugs in the lengthy time that it took me to finish this game. You picked a good soundtrack, it still felt good to hear it even after it looped many times.
The difficulty level is definitely going to be an obstacle for many players, it's right on the threshold of my own platforming skills. Even in the final levels I was still fumbling the reversed double jump a tenth of the times I used it. You've already done a lot to make the demanding section approachable by making the levels small, easy to reset, and adding quality of life features like animations skips, all of which I very much appreciate. My suggestion is to either make the really tough levels like the group elevator into optional bonus levels, or to allow players to skip one level per day that they're struggling with (if they encounter an even more difficult one, they can go back and do they one they skipped instead).
Things can get frustrating at times, but the game is very pretty, fully polished, imaginatively kinky, and fun!
i'm glad you like the soundtrack! i made it for the jam, and man, i did not feel good finishing it lol. specifically, i needed to finish the main game track something like the last wednesday of the jam and i was like, literally nauseous working on it lmao. idk, composition is not my strong suit. i think the lesson is definitely to work on the music earlier because the earlier work i had done on it was not nearly so hard for me.
i'm still not sure exactly what i want to do with the difficulty. i think i'm set on making the difficulty curve a bit easier, and i'll probably implement some assist-mode style options (i have a time slowdown mostly working locally). i'm not sure if the skip button will get to stay. it feels a bit out of place to me. perhaps if i find a way to make it more diagetic. honestly, maybe just a "come back to this later" button, kind of like you're suggesting, would make more sense diagetically. i could see that being the route i go.
thanks for playing!
Really cool game, I'm glad it was worth the wait. It's fast paced and fun, though the movement is a bit too sensitive while mid-air, which makes it a bit too hard to properly estimate the distance you travesrse when jumping.
The artstyle is really cute, the mare on mare action is really hot. A bit annoying to have to manually do the deed instead of just pressing one button and be done with it, but it's a minor gripe.
Good job on this one, I wonder if you'll iterate on it in the future :)
thank you!
it is very funny but i do like to have "skill-based sex" in the game. i do think i'll add an option for single-button (i.e. automatic) sex though, as it is tiring on the fingers.
i think the game is mostly complete content-wise, but i might add a handful more easy sex-filled levels after night one (maybe moving some of the tutorial levels there so that the tutorial is easier and the sex comes faster). and i wouldn't mind adding a handful more hard levels to the end (day 3 is currently 8 screens as opposed to the 10 or more for the rest). and of course there is a laundry list of polish things to implement now.
and who knows, maybe i'll be inspired to add a post game level set some day. those levels will be evil if so though :)
The story is quite heartfelt and the characters are endearing. I'm not usually very good at precision platformers, but managed to eventually make it to the end. Double jumping was fun, although I never quite felt like i had mastered it. Even at the very end I still flubbed about half of the jumps. The puzzles were very fun, and it was very satisfying to figure out and clear screens. Overall, it feels very polished!
Visually is was very cute and I like the little jingle when a screen was complete.I unfortunately also called it quits early, I don't think this sort of smooth acceleration and deceleration really meshes with the level of precision the game is asking for. A quadrupedal character sprite makes it hard to tell where she's actually going to land during a jump, which is unfortunate cuz I do love playing a horse. It is particularly exacerbated by the legs outstretched during the jump animation though. If she cast a shadow that shows you her collision box at all times, that would help a lot I think.
the shadow is a great idea! i'll have to consider that for a post-jam version.
The premise is really great! The trans joy of the story is really lovely, as is the ace representation through Irradiance. Cock TF wasn’t something I saw coming, but I loved the implementation of it here - it was enhanced by the eager consent that is present through the entire game. I also love the ending; it always pleases me when games find a way to give a nod to the player and any re-playability. Also want to give credit to how polished the game is - save slots, transitions, pausing, volume controls, great animation work; there’s a lot of care being put into things people don’t always make time for in the jam!
Unfortunately I didn’t vibe with the actual gameplay itself; I felt more like I was fighting the game to advance rather than improving and mastering the mechanics. Specifically, the gameplay is both punishing on an environmental front (no skip buttons for the statues, no prior warning if skip is unavailable for mares, Brisk’s hitbox is a tad too small, timing for the statue platforms being punishingly tight, forcefield hit-boxes aren’t as clear as they could be, too many moments where you’d just miss jumps) and on a controls front (jumps feel a little sluggish to react and floaty at first, too many deaths where I’d try to position for a jump and slip off instead, occasionally wouldn’t register jumps when hitting platforms, could spam-fuck statues but not mares, could skip sex with mares mostly but not statues).
The double jump is probably the worst offender of the above. Thematically? It makes sense, with it jetting you backwards. I also see the vision to make difficulty a larger focus of the game as well (it was really interesting seeing you talk about it’s implementation in the discord and love your philosophy of “sex first” gameplay development). Unfortunately it’s rough to use in gameplay. It turns the cognitive load of “when do I jump again” into “am I facing the right way, have I timed this right, am I at the right angle?” and when combined with the aforementioned tight environmental design would 90% of the time have me jumping the wrong way anyway. It’s an increase in complexity for no gameplay payoff.
I would have DNF’d this if the skip button wasn’t available so I was extremely thankful that you added that! As it stands I had to skip four of the last levels due to the jump controls/statue fucking being both too painful on the hands and too sheer a difficulty spike. Very glad I got to see the end, regardless!
very good points.
i wish i had come up with a way to make the hazard hotboxes more obvious. i tried to make them pretty fair but they aren't, like, clear, which is a problem.
i do think a visual indicator for which mares are skipppable would be a good add. not sure what exactly but something to consider for the post-jam version.
the statues being unskippable is because their timing is relevant to the difficulty of the game. that said, i will likely add an auto-fucking option post-jam to help with this. and it definitely feels inconsistent which is something i should think about.
your description of the double jump is exactly what i want from it. like, your description matches my goal for it's flavor almost exactly. i would compare it to the difficulty of performing a shell jump, which is kind of my goal: when learning to shell jump, my brain would be like, ok, am i at the right height? am i releasing the grab button? oops, i released the jump button... this almost painful coordination of inputs is one of my favorite parts of platformer games, and for better or for worse it is pretty key to me. so I can see why you would describe it as no gameplay payoff, but for me, the cognitive load is the payoff.
i do think, after reading PLASTIC GRASS's feedback, i will likely make the controls themselves a bit (or even a lot) less slippery. it does honestly seem to kind of just work, so maybe that's what i should have done from the beginning. it's strange because again, one of my favorite mechanics in platformers is careful control over velocity and acceleration, but it might be that my gameplay is just too fast paced for this to make much sense.
thank you for playing and for the detailed feedback!
I think the particular texture you’ve chosen for the hazards could be played with - the top 50% suffers from a “is it or isn’t it there?”because of the fading in and out. Maybe a more persistent texture?
Yeah, definitely get the difficulty is partially timing the fucking - an autofuck setting would be the happy medium between intention and accessibility, since it preserves the timing you’re wanting. It would also make hand-strain issues way less of an issue, since it is literally an issue for the game in its current state.
It genuinely might be artistic difference that leaves me unable to engage with the double jump then, if that description is exactly what you’re trying to convey! I’ll be curious how it feels with less slippery controls - then again, my favourite platformers are precision platformers, which doesn’t feel like your aim here.
Glad you appreciated the comment, hope there was some insight you could glean from this!
Had an absolute blast, the premise really comes across. It's difficult on my hands, but that's fine imo. The challenge felt really tuned to its genre and it was an interesting tension to have the precision platforming demand a very specific action from my hands. The story was very charming and friction-less (everyone finds a way to get along quite well!) which contrasted so uniquely with the very considered friction of the puzzle platforming design. I felt the most delighted when the roles and actions of each mare had to be considered in order to traverse the puzzle. The tight timings were brutally fair in a way I personally enjoyed, with exception of the last two to three puzzles. Loved a CTF double jump! The sterilization radiation spikes felt like a very funny inclusion. When things got frustrating, I almost worried that Irradiance had something against me for letting all of these "delete my balls" spikes permeate the whole forest like that when she can just zap me away at a whim, but that's just diagetic thinking- I appreciated the escalating difficulty. At the same time, the conversation where she compliments the main character had me wondering if she was interested in some bodily transformation of her own somehow, too. Overall, a lovely game, excellent work and remarkable polish. Great work!
thank you for the kind comment! i'm glad the story worked well for you.
there were a couple ways i thought about taking the story with irradiance but in the end i think i wanted her to just be asexual, with her interest in the sex driven primarily by its utility for the community, and for her to have a kind of almost detached/analytical perspective if that makes sense. i think this is a kind of fun perspective to have in the game as it's ultimately kind of how i end up feeling about my sex games... like, yeah, there's sex, but is it getting the job done?
the difficulty is turning out to be an interesting facet of the game. so far most of the feedback about it has been negative, which is extremely fair imo... i am very glad to hear it mostly works for you.
I played a lot of this entry, but my platformer skills are not the best to be honest.
So after getting stuck one too many times I had to call it quits.
It's a solid game and very long.
The mechanics were utilized in more than one way and there are some quality of life features for bad platformers like me. :D
Pretty but still punitive despite the difficulty tweaks. The ability to skip is nice but the gamefeel (the double jump, the landing slip) could benefit from some tightening. Integrating sex as a puzzle/platforming element is a nice idea that works very well here.
i'm curious what you mean by "punitive." to me that implies something, well, punitive to the difficulty of the game; the example that comes to mind for me would be very long times between checkpoints a la dark souls.
for me the purpose of the very short levels with fast respawn times is to be difficult but not unfairly difficult. so i'm curious what specifically comes across as punitive to you.
tbh, the skip button was perhaps less well thought out than it could have been. oh well.
i do think i have yet to master the programming of platformer physics. i think the acceleration profile is not quite ideal. the double jump though does feel exactly how i want it imo.
thanks for playing!
Controls are punitive, not signs and feedback - these are pretty clear. As you mentioned the acceleration and jumping mechanics are off, and with the very tight level design the consequence is a punitive setup that requires extreme focus and precision and a hefty amount of luck to land jumps that have to be almost perfect. In general, I'd recommend not setting challenges in the tutorial area of a game: players are already getting the hang of that specific moveset, so giving them grace with open level design allows them to be better equipped when you are actively mean, later.
well, thanks for the elaboration! i'm going to be honest, i still don't think i get it. punitive means, like, punishing, right? like, there should be a punishment involved? i'm not sure i see the relation.
i will say, your description of the difficulty is definitely something i will keep in mind. i do not experience the game as being nearly this precise or luck-based. it is valuable to have heard your experience. (personally, i actually really like how the game controls! it feels pretty smooth to me.)
if the tutorial area is still too difficult i would love more details on that. i have a hard time failing a single jump in this area so i am entirely blind to any issues that might remain. no pressure of course, you've written a lot about my game already, but nobody has really given me any specific feedback on this (besides you and a couple other folks about the purple level, that got nerfed) so i'm sure it would be useful.
Nah, don't worry, I get the struggle of finding hard stuff that is obvious to you.
I restarted and took playtest notes, hope that helps:
Screen 2, slippery, I most often than not ended on the tip or past the platforms. They're very short and do not allow leniency while you're still figuring out the slip and air control.
Screen 3, I realized that if I don't stop air control right before I land, left-right direction will be applied on landing and I will slip. Especially frustrating on the even smaller platforms while still trying to figure out where I need to stop applying directionality (direction buffers on landing are a good way to mitigate that by allowing floor grip to negate directionality for one or two frames).
Screen 4, didn't struggle but I think it's because I try-harded on it on the alpha.
Screen 5, a drop jump in tutorial is CRAZY. It's a movement that requires in-depth control and understanding of mechanics, it's absolutely not something you should throw at players this early in the game. I was never trained for it in previous screens (no platforms with similar level design but without the drop, allowing me to get used to the timing without being punished*). *By punished here I mean "failing not because of my own lack of skills, but because I don't know how it works yet" as in it's almost impossible to succeed on the first try. If it was not a playtest, I would have dropped here. I love platformers but the challenge curve is ludicrous and if I'm playing this I came for the horny, so would probably drop since no such content lured me into thinking the effort is worthwhile. Seeing a breedable poney just above that insane jump could do the trick tbh. I detested the purple right before the challenge and died twice on it by slipping. I wanted to die because of the drop jump if I had to.
Screen 6, easy enough, with this time a timing that feels both rewarding and challenging (getting to the core content gave me a motivation boost). I had trouble understing that the gate was a platform: the shape didn't afford it.
Screen 7, the grunt I let out when the platform didn't keep moving after coming back... It moves away way too fast, comes back too fast, and with the slipping barely starting to be under control I'm unhappy with the amount of tries it took me. There are no indicators for the amount of thrusts that it takes to start it and I only fucked one poney before so the number was elusive at best. I went for spamming the controls to get it over with then jumping as soon as I could to catch the platform before it moved back. Then the up-down platform came. While what I had to do was obvious, I still slipped and missed what I anticipated to be a very easy moment, and thus realize there was also some slip on the floor, or the platform, or something else I had not understood. I made it at the second try, and was almost had by the quick move back (again, no warning, but I came to expect the worst that could happen and surely enough, it does). At this point the thrusting mechanic was not motivating anymore and I just kept going out of curiosity and playtest necessity.
Screen 8, seeing the UI change was a nice reward. I enjoyed the little piece of dialogue but was a bit disappointed that the breeding with an actual poney was shorter than with the statues. The insemination anim was so quick I barely had time to see it, and at this point I wonder whether you just made an edging game.
Screen 9, easy pass with a nice use of purple areas to guide jumps. I wished I had had something similar at the start instead of the drop fall or the moving platforms of hell.
Screen 10, hard but fun. I was starting to get a hang of the slip and chose to skip platforms 1 and 3 to have more air control. Took me 5 tries but was actually fun since I was making an active choice to go against level design while being afforded that possibility. Then I slipped from the purple mare when jumping up left and fell in the pit, and had to do it over again with much frustration, since vertical air drift is something I always struggle with (and is a very advanced skill to expect your players to have: most platformers focus on horizontal drift challenges). I went back to the purple, first rty as I knew the timing now, only to realiza that in addition to the vertical drift the platforms were not pass-through (their hitboxes apply when coming from below). I was very very close to rage quiting as it was again info I had to learn not through affordance, design or logic, but through blindly bumping against obstacles. I had lost timing at this point, failed green twice, then purple thrice (passthrough bump and fall to pit twice, slipping while trying to attempt the first platform from the left and fall to pit). Honestly, just a platform extended to the left and one less green paltform would make this so much more enjoyable.
I didn't see or find the skip tooltip, so I stopped there as my hands were starting to cramp up. For reference, they don't do that on platformers, they do that on Souls, which gave me a chuckle given your previous commentary on punitive games.
So yeah, a punitive experience through the following aspects: lack of affordance and anticipation, lack of control (especially through air and landing drift), hard to extreme challenges in quick succession with little to no breathing room between them, poor die and retry (the core of a proper die and retry is that you warn the player that something will be hard or they can deduct it by themselves in order to brace before facing the actual challenge and the death that follows; "gotcha" challenges are fun to develop but much less to play unless you know that the game is ragebait, which isn't the case here), little to no reward to foster engagement and desire to go further.
ok, that is extremely helpful!
some thoughts:
3. i think i see what you're saying here. i could honestly probably change the ground deceleration to be almost instantaneous in all cases. i do like a little bit of slipperiness in the movement but maybe it is too much.
5. oh wow. i never thought about this level this way. thank you! i might tweak it to just extend all the platforms out so there's no need to "drop" into the jump, instead it would just be straight up.
6. gotcha. note that the platforms are shaped to resemble a clitoris. i can see how this could be a readability issue. i think a general rework to the level would make sense here, it was designed rather early and never really tweaked.
7. good point about the number of thrusts. perhaps i should rework this one so both statues are on the platforms. tbh, spamming through them is the intended gameplay, so i'm not sure if there's much to be done about that.
8. the breeding with the real mares is never shorter than the statues. in fact, they force you to actually take your time (0.18 seconds between thrusts). the impreg animation is kept short so as not to impede the real gameplay too much.
it is funny to hear you say edging simulator. i would actually go one step further: i do not see this game as really being a porn game at all. it is a horny game, but that is it. to me, the reward of playing the game is the gameplay itself. the sex is incidental. you will notice it is not possible to perform the sex/thrusts with a single hand. this is on purpose.
i do wonder if having the tutorial not be horny is too much of a turn-off (in whatever sense) for the average player. but i also just don't feel the story of my game can abide the tutorial level being horny. i think just making it easier overall could help ease people in better.
10. this is very helpful to know. i definitely think those purple statues could use a rework, they are a bit annoying.
11. you didn't mention this one but i think it perhaps needs a nerf too. :)
i'm ngl, this is unbelievably helpful feedback. i honestly might do a rework pass on the tutorial level after the jam is done to address most of these issues, and it's only possible thanks to you. i'm not sure if there's much i can do about the later levels; i feel like they do need to become actually difficult at some point, as that really is my goal with the game. i also feel like the initial sex levels (the ones right after night 1) are themselves not really that hard. maybe i'm mistaken.
i'm not sure what you mean by "die and retry." i will say, i tend to like platforming games where i sometimes have to die a few times to understand the level design and the intended route. maybe that's not appreciated here though.
but yeah, i gotta say again, thank you a lot for this. i think it is quite possible i can make a much more polished version of the tutorial now.
Good luck with it and happy to have been helpful :>
Edit: the entire thing is giving transgirl dev (sorry if I'm wrong) and I think you should always be supported in whatever it is you do
Nice platforming and pretty art, really funky horses peak
The premise, art, and characters are all really cute. And I really like how the sex and cock TF are worked into the game itself. This is definitely a horny platformer where the sex and kink are core to the identity of the game.
That said, I unfortunately can't see myself finishing all 40 screens. It's rather slippery for how tight and technical the game is. Having to constantly tech the double jump to keep my moment heading in the right direction got tiresome. I had to stop playing cause it was just to hard on my finger joints. If you keep working on this game, I think an accessibility feature should be a simplified double jump.
On a final note tho, I think the timing of the double jump is tricky without feeling "unfair". I just unfortunately cannot do that trick as many times as the game seems to require.