Head Over Hooves: My Heart Bleats For You by Blarfnip
An adorable apocalyptic dating sim! God has chosen you to save Earth from a fiery end, and your only hope for salvation is finding a sacrifice. The only problem: the sacrifice must be in love with you. You must seduce Goat: a budding writer who is also a goat. Will you and your relationship survive the end of the world?
This game has five endings. Try to get the best ones!


Hint: The minigames do matter! Your performance in them can unlock more dialogue options and other endings. We were too rushed to add a proper tutorial, but it's a simple "right choice, right place" game similar to the board game "Mastermind". You must perform the correct choices in the correct order to get maximum points. There CAN be duplicate choices though!
Our team:
Project Lead/Lead Programmer: Saul Amster
Programmer: Aidan Saltini
Lead Writer: Julia LaCava
Writers: Emma Herbst and Kristen Gregg
Thank you! And enjoy!
The "FIXEDPOST" version is the updated version that fixes some of the game breaking bugs (depending on your playthrough). It was made after the Jam time was over, so if you want the original (possibly broken) experience play the non "FIXEDPOST" game.
| Source code | https://blarfnip.itch.io/head-over-hooves-my-heart-bleats-for-you |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/head-over-hooves-my-heart-bleats-for-you |
Ratings
| Overall | 96th | 3.986⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 179th | 3.716⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 321th | 3.412⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.403⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 421th | 3.681⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 8th | 4.405⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 90th | 3.986⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 38🗨️ |
Either way, thanks for playing our game!!
Turns out testing branching narratives in 72 hours is harder than we thought. Thank you for the feedback!
the mastermind puzzles weren't well explained, but i knew them already so it was a fun refreshing break from the average match 3 dating sim minigame
played on the post-jam version and there was an occasional glitch where a mastermind square was supposed to be green but it was red instead.
I don't say this lightly, but GREAT job! It has some issues, but what can you do with branching path storylines?
My partner and I were extremely charmed by the idea!
The church/comedy club scenes didn't feel crazy necessary, but the writing for the main plot was really the hallmark. Loved it!
Great presentation guys! It has the 3 Ws (warm, weird, wtf?!) vibes that made me like something like Hatoful Boyfriend so much. Considering how short it is, you actually get to care enough (and more than I'd expect) about Goat to feel something at the end.
The puzzle mechanics kinda felt generic and out of place, but that doesn't matter. Their role is to keep the flow of the game not too linear, which is something that helps avoid getting the player tired from repetition. Though that probably isn't an issue with such a short game, the bare fact that it is there shows the dev knows how these games play and what makes them good, which is definitely a plus to me.
Anyway, I laughed, I felt sorry and I enjoyed it. So to me, this is a win o/
It would also be nice if there was a return to menu or restart button on the endings, or at least on the one I got - I'm not inclined to hunt for endings right now when I have to close and restart the .exe for each one of them, but I might play it for fun later just to see what else there is and if I can figure out better strategies for that minigame.
Overall, very strong visuals and concept, and great that there were options for text speed and music! A bit out of place in contrast to how much dead silence there was, though, and it seemed to me that text was put up instantaneously anyway, so either the speed slider is too sensitive since I wasn't even close to maxed out on it, or it's just an aesthetic slider that does nothing but look cool. I'd love to see this as a full visual novel in the future. I'm not really sure if I'd play it myself, since visual novels aren't generally my cup of tea to play, but I'd definitely watch some Let's Plays of it.
The concept and writing are of course where the game shines. The visuals and minigame are satisfactory to support the story. Overall a very strong LD game. Nicely done!
Also: God is a dick
Would have loved a bit more audio. A color scheme explanation for the minigame would have been nice. (had to look up the description / hints) Minigame got better after that.