After failing in human dance competitions, you and your partner decide to saddle up and compete in one for horses. How hard could it be right?? But can you stay hidden as a horse in disguise?? Can you win??
Local 2 player rhythm game (unless you're just that good with both hands) with 3 fresh and funky tracks (and a tutorial level).
Assets:
We wanted each song and corresponding horse opponent to represent different themes: "Disco", "Nightcore Country Vocaloid", and "Death Metal". I worked on the latter two's sprites, as well on the game's title screen and loss screen.
One sprite for "Nightcore Country Vocaloid" horse... aka Horsune Leeku.
Two sprites for the "Death Metal" horse. Sketch by Loki, rendering by me.
For the title screen, Katie and Cindy finalized the layout, and I provided the animations.
For the loss screen, Angelina's concept for it was inspired by "Spiderman No More". After passing the background painting to me, I painted the human players on top of it and further pushed the perspective to be more dramatic.
For fun, we also made horsesonas for ourselves inspired by "Horse Race Test", which we were watching during work meetings. Those are visible in the game credits and our itch.io page background.
Concept Art:
For concepting, I mainly worked on the team for Horsune Leeku, although I also contributed some ideas to the other horses as well.
We were mainly inspired by Hatsune Miku, and toyed around with how overt we should make the reference.
I pushed for the leek hair to be part of the final designs, and adjusted parts of my own concept sketches as well, as others favored braids or twin tails over short hair. I also toyed around with various potential poses for the sprites, as each character had multiple moods to reflect how well the player is performing.
The design and art style was then finalized by Ko, and I made a color guide for us to follow. We went through some iterations on the final color scheme, as there were initially conflicts with the background and UI colors, although ultimately the final stage background for her was later adjusted to match her current color scheme regardless.
I also spoke with Lucas about the music direction for "Nightcore Country Vocaloid" and how he wanted there to be actual Japanese lyrics to her song. I made a small sample of what that could look like:
「ねーねー、人気な音色を担え！」(Romaji: Nee nee, ninki na neiro wo ninae!)
"Hey, hey, bear the responsibility of popular sound/tonality!"
While this line was unused for the final lyrics, Nicholas used that idea of having ね double as horse neighing sounds.
There was also some unused lore discussion about the other contestants. For example, "Disco" horse entered the competition for the prize money to pay for his ex-wife's medical bills, but because he lost to you, she was sent to the glue factory, and the glue you are using to repair your horse costume after the match came from her.