BONUS: Goat DLC and Goat story.

February 10, 2018 6:26 AM

Them’s Fightin’ Herds [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Them's Fightin' Herds is exactly what it looks like: a fighting game where all the characters are four-legged animals, a few of them ponies. Its "original universe" was designed by My Little Pony producer Lauren Faust, and it's billed as a spiritual successor to Fighting is Magic, a direct, fan-made adaptation of the cartoon which was shut down by Hasbro in 2013. It looks like a standard four-button fighting game at first blush, albeit with pony magic flare, but there is at least one novel system: juggle decay, wherein "opponents become gradually heavier during a combo."” [via: PC Gamer]
posted by Fizz (12 comments total)

I cannot stop grinning at the punny title of this game. It's so perfect. I also love that this is a thing.
posted by Fizz at 6:39 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

This seems delightful.

Its "original universe" was designed by My Little Pony producer Lauren Faust, and it's billed as a spiritual successor to Fighting is Magic, a direct, fan-made adaptation of the cartoon which was shut down by Hasbro in 2013

Huh. Any idea if they compensated or included the fans who made Fighting Is Magic?
posted by schadenfrau at 6:41 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also there is a badass llama wearing what appears to be the top hat Eric Schmidt wore to Burning Man. I like to think the llama head butted Schmidt and stole the hat.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:44 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Huh. Any idea if they compensated or included the fans who made Fighting Is Magic?
It's the same team. Ms. Faust stepped in to help out after hearing that they got C&D'd. More at Wikipedia.
posted by darksasami at 6:50 AM on February 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

Original universe, do not steal.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:07 AM on February 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Does the llama in a hat say CARRRRRRRLLLL! at any point? This is important.
posted by delfin at 8:17 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

No llama, it's an alpaca. Her name is Paprika! She has a lot of love to give. A LOT. If only she could find somebody to give it to. Somebody. Anybody. She’s not picky.
posted by bonehead at 8:36 AM on February 10, 2018

This is making it hard to adhere to my "not so much with the constant violence" preference on my son's videogaming. I mean, this is pretty violent! But also so adorable!

He'd probably love it.
posted by emjaybee at 11:16 AM on February 10, 2018

I’m intrigued by this game, because my initial knee-jerk reaction is to wonder what the overlap in the Venn diagram of “fans of MLP aesthetic” and “fans of hardcore long-combo-heavy fighting games” would be, given that it runs on the Skullgirls engine.

And, yes, Skullgirls has a well-intentioned set of in-depth tutorials designed to teach fighting game fundamentals, but in practice it’s like putting training wheels on a racing motorcycle.

I will say, though, I’m very intrigued by some stuff this does, like the highly dynamic music. Might drop fifteen bucks on it just out of fondness for indie fighters if it hits a platform other than Windows (which it… might? I haven’t followed it very closely).
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:43 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

(I do worry that it’ll have the same problem DBFZ has had, where people new to fighting games pick it up, go online and get matched against experienced players, and get discouraged and give up forever because with games this complex, it’s easy to not even have the first inkling of why you lost)
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:46 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love fighting games as a genre, admire long combos and loathe being the subject of extended juggling. This looks like a really decent fighting game with a distinctive character, but Oh! when does the hurting stop?
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:38 PM on February 10, 2018

I'm not much of a long-combo fighting game player (I've been playing Street Fighter since the nineties but still can't Guilty Gear), and I worry that this will have the same issue Dragon Ball FighterZ had, as mentioned yesterday. On the other hand, hey, maybe not? It can't hurt to at least get another one out there, for the folks who would be into that sort of thing.

I'm extremely fond of streamlined, new-player-friendly fighting games, and after Divekick wound up going a bit too extreme (it's less "simplified fighting game" and more "game based on the positioning aspect of the neutral game," and with a presentation that was just MAXIMUM INSIDE JOKES, which absolutely hurt its ability to be picked up outside of the existing fighting game community), right now I'm mostly really into Fantasy Strike (feels like a modernized version of Street Fighter 2, but without joystick commands, so anyone really can play it with minimal learning time in my experience) and Pocket Rumble (not quite as extremely streamlined as FS, but still quite fun and fairly accessible and arguably a bit more Real Fighting Game-like, and at least nominally coming to Switch One Day™). Both are available on Steam Early Access, and both are extremely playable despite their nominal "unfinished" status, and both have quite good netcode. And to be honest, because my favorite part of fighting games is trying to land that first hit, rather than doing super long combos, Fantasy Strike is genuinely my favorite fighting game of the moment, even though it lacks conventional stuff like joystick motions or, uh, crouching.

I love this genre, but can't disagree with the description I've seen of it being "kind of absurdly up its own ass." At this point in time, it's hard enough to suggest in good faith that a brand new player start with even Street Fighter, much less Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Marvel vs. Capcom, or Skullgirls, given that stuff like Fantasy Strike exists.

I do hope that TFH finds some success, though! I absolutely do not want to fall into the mindset of "in order for [my favorite game] to win, someone else has to lose." A rising tide lifts all boats.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:21 PM on February 11, 2018 [4 favorites]