Dance Dance Unicorn of Magic! by Kagerowo
Dance Dance Unicorn of Magic!
In a world inhabited by ferocious monsters, only the magical unicorn is capable of saving us all!
While it gathers its powers with dance moves to save mankind, you are in charge of keeping it alive from all the monsters that threaten it. You are humanity's only hope! They are craving for a sign and grooving will bring us a new light. Will you be the one to keep the dancing unicorn alive and save humanity?
Share with us your experience! Post your Highscores in Twitter with the tag #unicornofmagic
Don't forget to rate and comment your experience while playing Dance Dance Unicorn of Magic! What did you like/hate most? Was it enjoyable? Have your ever played anything like this? Feel free to express yourself!!!
(GET CLOSE AND CLICK ON THE UNICORN, THERE ARE WEAPON UPGRADES IN THE MAP TOO)_
| Youtube | https://github.com/GravityI/dancedanceunicornofmagic |
| Youtube | https://icaropeixoto.itch.io/dduom |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/dance-dance-unicorn-of-magic |
Ratings
| Overall | 2145th | 3.029⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1989th | 2.927⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1956th | 2.893⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1180th | 3.684⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1891th | 3.063⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 637th | 3.368⭐ | 104🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 73🗳️ | 98🗨️ |
The game was kinda hard for me, too many enemies x)
The art is cool, love the dancing moves! Great work :D
@talia Thank you for playing, we'll surely work on the hit detection after the jam is over just so the game truly feels like its all about the fun! It's a game about a dancing unicorn ofc how can that not be fun!
I really love the idea of being able to pick up the unicorn to move it around!
The music is great, the ennemies sprites are cute and the title and game over art is gorgeous!
I'd recommand putting the player, unicorn and enemies nodes inside a Y-Sort node (as you're using Godot), to make so that when the player is in front of the unicorn it is drawn in front of it
Apart from that, nice and funny little game, well done!

@sheinxy We were kind of surprised when this idea came out from the paper! It really felt like a gamechanger and that we could do so much things with this mechanic, we were inspired by another gamejam game, a tower defense with only one tower. We're proud of the little that we accomplished and we hope this will all help us improve in the future! who knows. About your recommendation, that's something for @kagerowo to answer XD
@valisse21 I'm glad that we could get you offguard by carrying the unicorn hahaha This game was so fun to make due to it's weirdness and well, legendary unicorn power magic XD But after lauch we indeed realize how much was needed of a small tutorial >-< I hope that everyone that plays can be as kind as you for giving us another try when you made that discovery!
...but fifth try I realized you can carry the unicorn, so I carried her around the starting dance floor but still got no upgrades on screen and died... I thought that this is a little bit better game.
On sixth try I realized you can walk out of the dance floor (which I first thought was a bug) and then found out about weapon upgrades and bonus zones and everything and thought this is actually a neat game! :sunglasses:
Soo tldr: Signal the game mechanics clearer for the player, as many would have given up on the first try and thought it's totally incomplete crappy game with awesome music.
Which it clearly isn't, exept for the awesome music part :smile:
@sheinxy I actually did use YSort nodes, but I still haven't figured out exactly how they work and how to make the whole node hierarchy so that the sprites get sorted properly. We also wanted to keep the unicorn as the center of attention all the time, so I thought we could get away with it, but according to the feedback it still feels awkward nonetheless. Thanks for the tip!
@tomssuli Thanks for trying out the game more times even if it didn't gave you a good first impression! The core mechanics weren't exactly intuitive and we didn't teach them properly to the player, so that's our fault.
@demkimos I'll be honest here, we thought of that while brainstorming but synchronizing the fire rate and the music's rhythm, especially with different songs, would take a lot of work to do properly. So we didn't really intend it, but I guess it worked out in the end :laughing:
As for keeping the attention on the unicorn, maybe some kind of arrow showing the direction towards it? (I don know if it's the best idea, but it could be worth the try uwu)
@diinki Thanks for the feedback!
@demkimos Personally, I was really afraid of how awesome our artist drew the Cover and Game Over and the difference of my art would affect the players when they start the game XD We think like that too! So many improvements that can be done and so much stuff that we missed >-< I'm glad you could enjoy a little bit of our game!
Edit: And the menu art is so cool!
I think it would be awesome (but require gigantic cojones) to hide the real game in plain sight, showing only the surface, the starting dancefloor, not telling the player what they can actually do, and let the casual on-looker think that the game is trash.
You guys inspired me, that's for sure! Thanks :3
/edit: Oh, my first "real" game score is 14880 :D

@tyler-anders As we have mentioned somewhere around here, not just shooting mechanics, monster behaviours. I think if we could have had done that, it would be much better, not just that, a plain tutorial XD.
About the dancefloor, i'm sorry XD i draw the ingame art and that was what i could do in 2 days hahahha A blend or a thinner outline in the dancefloor maybe could have solved the problem. Thank you for having the time to play our game!
Enjoyed this game a lot!
Btw thanks for the feedback on my game! To get the hunger bar to raise you needed to tap the button on the pump side continuously until it gets on normal speed and it starts filling the hunger bar :)
I'll be honest: I really hated using the starter pistol. Weapon upgrades felt less like an exciting bonus and more of a strict necessity to succeed at any level in the game. I'd suggest making the pistol better, to the point where you can reduce the number of upgrades so that they feel more special.
Also, I noticed a small bug: when your cursor is close enough to the character that it's on top of the gun (past the point where the bullets come out), the bullets go backwards. I keep my cursor pretty close to my character in these kids of games so I can change angles quickly, so this did mildly impact gameplay for me.
All in all I did have a good amount of fun once I realized the various other things I could do in the game, so again I'd say make those clear, if not in the game itself then in the description. Beyond that, nice work!
Okay, so I played a few more times now that I got the drift.
A few thoughts:
- I love shotguns in videogames. It's sad that I'm always disappointed when I get the shotgun upgrade here :( The machine gun just feels so much more on point and balanced while the shotgun just lacks behind.
- On the same note, it would be really nice to have some indication on which gun you just picked up. When walking around with the horse on your back, you can't really see the gun, so I feel it's on some level deliberate, but on the other hand, you did colourcode the machine gun red, the shotgun green and the pistol blue. Maybe the colour of the ammo amount could reflect which weapon you carry?
- I'm sometimes unsure about the distance at which hits will register
Also, a few expansion ideas if you guys were to keep developing this super interesting game:
- While the music selection is great, wouldn't it be cool if you could load up your own music (as a player)? o: (At least for the party sections, but maybe even in the "wild" when walking around random variations of the player's music could play O: But I can't even imagine what a nightmare that would be to code)
- The monster design shows a great promise of variation. Would be awesome if their behaviour would reflect that! "Gotta kill em' all" and stuff :D
- The monsters being easily outsped by the MC already makes for a great 'zombie' vibe. Could easily see the game become somewhat of an open world kinda deal where you can make it to settlements and be safe for a while. Until the monster nation attacks again!
sooo much potential, I love it!
Oh, I forgot to mention last time: What lured me in here was the great cover art! Really sets the mood! :3
(did manage a highscore of a bit over 45000 by now, too :D )
Overall this game has a lot of potential and I had fun carrying the fabulous unicorn around XD!
@arthurds We are sorry for it but we are actually trying different things, first we didn't know how much people wasn't noticing it, them we shouted GET CLOSE AND CLICK THE UNICORN, but that destroyed the feeling of discovering, so now we are trying "There is a hidden mechanic in the game", written on top of the downloads so it wouldn't be that throwed upon the player, we are trying to find a way to say that because we are Restrictly not upddating our game for two reason, "That's what we made, we have to deal with our flaws now" hahahha and that we unfortunatly don't have time for it....
We lack in the ingame art not for time but for lack experience >-< That was the way that we found being able to do everything. But the Cover and Game Over art, to be honest, they were made in 15 minutes by our team artist, Yuu didn't joined for the rest because she is not interested in the area :/ But we believed in ourselvs for doing something pleasing that wouldn't fall SO MUCH behind that art but my experience for drawing characters is atleast more than 1 XD but never drew scenarios, so i used collage and drew, for the terrain texture i didn't know anything that i could do but "Dirtying" everything a little hahhaha. I won't even talk about colloring >-<
Our mistake about the pistol was playing the game already knowing that there were guns, so we just ran for it, really our fault, when we realised, using the pistol is so bad we had already uploaded the game... And we couldn't fix a glitch of the Waypoint, yes, that weird thing appearing randomly in the screen is a waypoint XD If that was done correctly and the ground with a little more work, we believe it would grab the players attention.
And yeah! A dash would sure be interesting! Don't know how it wouldn't make the game too easy but with enemy behaviors it would sure be needed for a "Charger" monster!.
Thank you for your feedback and I hope that you had fun after getting a little mad with us! We will surely improve XD
@herniewise Inflatable Dinos, it really does sound like that hahahahha Didn't think of it in that way XD We wanted to make a cute and fun unicorn that contrasted with space marine like player and monsters, but this is what we ended up with XD Really thanks for playing or gaming and we're happy you had fun!
About your game, i thought about the pump! But i was thinking... How does a pump/heartbeat is going to feed him? Maybe because english is not my mother language... But I check the monitor and I think I did something wrong and didn't see changes, but at the same time explains how i survived more than 2 minutes, i kept pumping believing it was for hunger XD
@grentacular We also hated using the pistol! We didn't realise how bad it was soon enough... And yeah, getting things clearer would definatly have a better player experience, instead of leaving him alone with a boring starting gameplay with a fun unicorn.
Oh no, you saw the bug! hahahhaha Not for just your playstyle, i tried it with my family and what they usually do is clicking on the enemies or clicking veeery close to the player, and for them, it was a game breaker because they wouldn't understand why the character was shooting backwards >-<
As I said for Arthurds, we are trying diferent things with the description, no information at start, shouting the mechanic to the player and now saying it's a hidden mechanic, but if it was to be hidden, the pistol should have a better feel through the first minutes.
Thanks for playing our game and we're happy too see you had fun even through the challenge of getting to know it XD!
@hueson hahahahah @kagerowo has mutual feelings XD
@monblu Don't worry! We will definatly check your game! We're glad you had fun with it! Thanks for giving us a bit of your time!
**_Breathing_**
Now, point to point:
- We got that same feeling but we believe is the lack of ammo. 60 rifles bullets can kill 20 monsters, 60 shotgun bullets can kill only 12 monsters, with occasional multikill, maybe raising it a bit would make it feel better, and yeah, we also thought "Everyone loves shotguns, put a lot of shots in it", in the start it shoot only 3 bullets XD
-Collouring the ammo aaaaaaa why we didn't do it XD It would save players from "What weapon am I gonna take..." only after realeasing the unicorn.
-We do really missed player feedback, i all apects, no excuses, I'm not saying we didn't think of it, but we poorly excecuted >-< But hit markers, even after player 9712xxxxx hours of Call of Duty, Battlefield and hundred other games, we forgot that XD
Improvements point to point:
-Yeah! It is a nice idea, we were only focusing on getting good musics to randomize but being able to select your playlist would be nice. Would make the playlist usable after beating the game though, so the first experience would be based on what we choose.
-Definately! We were a bit sad for not being able to implement player behavior, there is a monster that we didn't make that we think would be awesome, a Charger! Like Left for Dead 2. We did one concept that could work like that.

-That's an interesting point to think about! That will surely be on the table! We really think of a big open map to play!
So you found our trick card? The cover art! XD It was a last minutes idea for a 4th member of the team hahaha So much talent from Yuu!
Thank you for playing our game again! And we're happy that you had fun even playing in a 2 time!
@lapisraider We surely missed on that, even though we talked about implementing gore in the game. We completely forgot about hit markers hahahah Thank you for playing our game and having the time for a feedback! And for sharing that you actually had fun with our game ^-^
I think you could make the game a lot more dynamic if you only scored points for being in the dancing area and if the dancing area moved at faster intervals (or every time you pick up the unicorn). Right now it feels pretty static, and it seems like if you're careful you can just survive indefinitely if you grab the unicorn and run around, since you're faster than enemies.
The main piece of feedback that I can provide is around visual feedback when hitting enemies. It is a little bit hard to know if you're hitting them, if you're just not aiming correctly or if you are indeed hitting them but not visually seeing it.
A small explosion when the ball hits, a small blink or something like that should be more than enough.
Overall though, good entry! :unicorn:
P.S. In my game I'm also protecting a unicorn, although it is a bit different. Mine is definitely not DANCING!
I missed some feedback with the monsters interaction, like hit effect and HP bar.
At first, the game looks very difficult but when you realize you can grab the unicorn everything makes sense.
Overall a good game! Congratz! :smile:
@amigarulz O.O, wow, thank you for finding that bug! For liking the mechanic and for writing a feedback!
@loginaut Thank you for not giving up on us hahaha And yeah... We had that glitch going on we don't know what happened but maybe @kagerowo can answer it.
About that idea, It's pretty interesting, we could try it when we keep developing this game! Thank you for your feedback!
@sndr Ownt, thank you! And yeah, we really lacked in player feed feedback. Guess we learn it the hard way XD And don't worry! I will surely test your game, don't worry! Thank you for sparing a little bit of your time!
@orlandobatista Brigadão pelo feedback! We're glad you enjoyed our game and had that little feeling of surprise when getting the unicorn that we intended! We sure have that player feedback that we missed, but a health bar was in our mind!
@lorwon hahahha We did our best to make them funny for all of you! Thanks for the feedback!
@yxmx-rsx It was the first song that we found, right there the menu song was decided! hahahah About the Weapon Shooting Cooldown, do you mean only the pistol or the shotgun too? By your feedback I don't know if you grabbed the unicorn or not >-< If not, is our fault for not guiding the player enough. Thank you for playing!
@forgeronstudio XD Thanks for not giving up! XD And sorry for not making that very accessible >-< We hope you had fun nonetheless!
@marcusnystrand  Thank you!
@robokarla Hahahah thank you! We're happy you like our crazy idea hahaha! We have plans on keep working on this project, just that right now we aren't able to do any advances on to it >-< We're looking forward to summer break! Feel free to follow us if you like ^-^
@punhos Thank you for giving our game a try and writing a feedback! We're glad you enjoyed the core mechanic of our game ^-^
Good job guys, awesome entry!! :ok_hand:
Like many other commenters here, I initially didn't know you could pick up and move the unicorn. I think I read earlier in this thread that the idea is for that to be a "hidden" mechanic. I cannot stress enough that **framing this as a hidden mechanic is a terrible, terrible idea**. It's basically the one core mechanic of the entire game - it's virtually unplayable if you don't know about it. The game should ensure that the player knows about it before the game even starts, by any means necessary.
Now, that aside - it seems that the game never really scales in difficulty, so I found it pretty trivial to stay alive virtually indefinitely. After about 15 minutes I just got bored and quit, as I didn't see an ending in sight.
I think you utilized the unicorn movement well, the 3x score area was a great idea as well as making the player move around for weapon upgrades. I found it somewhat strange that the camera only followed the unicorn, which limited the player's movement.
The next step should be creating some variations between the different enemies besides just sprites, and then maybe a few powerful/rarer weapons.
Great work!
@beng Hahaha we were shocked with how well made for the game was that game over screen too!
@epicular Yeah.... we agree with you on that XD From one of the feedbacks I had the greatest idea "What if we tell if it is hidden?" hahhaha It blew back instantly and we quickly changed it back to **CLICK THE UNICORN**, but a little less intrusive, removing the explore so the player could recognize something by himself, but, well, the boombox waypoint didn't work out as well do to bugs. Whe had nothing, till getting feedback, then it was... "Get close and click the unicorn and explore for weapon upgrades**, we tried hidden >-<, and now we are like this and also implemented it on the image of the itch page, since we don't have full screen, we believe it won't be missed that easily, it sure will, but not as much as before.
About the difficulty, we had a hard time with that for the lack of experimentation, it was waaay easier before, but the scaling is present, but tooo slow. The monsters get faster as time passes but by so little that it it's boring till that point. I believe its from 20 minutes it starts to be something but still not hard, we even don't know when the enemies starts to be faster than the player.
The camera being stuck to the unicorn is something that we liked and gets the player off guard but we do believe that if the camera was a bit more higher it would be better, best reason for it is that if you walk up or down, you will be hit by monsters that are almost impossible to evade.
We'll definatly work on that! We planned some behaviours and weapons but couldn't implement them at the time but it will surely help the game out, and now that i'm thinking of it again, power ups may sound interesting too.
Thanks for your feedback! I hope that even after these problems that you had fun!
* You can pick up the horse and move around the whole map (not just the little starting square)
* There are bonus multiplier areas (blue circles)
* There are weapon upgrades (globe icons)
There's also the massive exploit were you just run around with the horse in your arms. That's pretty much how I managed to get a score of 7150. The loading times were also very bad if I look at what is on screen. Perhaps you can optimize the game a bit in that aspect.
@mika-la-grand I have to disagree with you that we didn't informed, it wasn't informed previously, even in @epicular post it was already meantioned but he saw in another feedback (correct me if i'm wrong) that we did it at some point. It's on the description and in the itch game page image, that is, about the carrying the Unicorn and that there are weapon upgrades. And about the Bonus multiplayer zone, it was made for the player to discover, but the waypoint is glitched, anyhow, finding it, the 3X on the screen would notify that that was a bonus area.
Now for the exploit, we couldn't make our game well balanced in time, but i must inform you that the highest score was 64k points. We wanted to implement an Highscore sistem so that it would motivate the players to make their best scores instead of surviving, even tought there is a point were the enemies start to get faster than the player, but we didn't managed to get there yet, and don't even know when that starts to happen. We will sure keep on working on the game to keep on improving and we're sorry for any incovenience! About the slow loading, our game has 100mb due to the amount of music.
@ovid Thank you for playing our game! And we're happy that you enjoyed it! And thank you for your feedback!
Overall a great entry with potential!
The dance moves, sooooo dope!
The game mechanics could do with some polish, and since you have really cool art for the intro and the end, if that same art style was done in the level and on the characters , it'd be better.
It feels a bit inconsistent where buttons , characters, level design and intro/outro all appear to have different artists?
But good Jam game, nice job.
@johnnysix If you check our credits, yes, everything was made by different artists XD
@lazzydev72 I can give you a special one:  hahaha
The concept is great - just the right amount of ridiculous!
The shooting I didn't much enjoy at the beginning. It felt like I have the slowest gun in the world :laughing: Some picking up of the pace would do this game much good, I think.
Mixing a shooter and dancing unicorns is a concept, I've never considered. But now, that I think about it more, it makes complete sense!
Unfortunately I did not get really far. I think, the only thing, which is missing, is a better starting weapon. Something like a minigun shooting rainbows.
Nonetheless, good job!
@zubspace Have your tried leaving the dancing area with the unicorn? It's not restricted but it's our fault in the scenery art >-<. You can get better weapons looking for Disco Balls. But thanks for playing our game!
I found two minor bugs:
1. The radio icon often glitched out of the view, and was visible only when the whole camera was moving.
2. If you put the cursor a little behind the tip of the gun, the gun fires backwards.
If you'd like to watch again, the highlight is at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/617113697
Nice job
Well done!
I liked it, it was pretty and the unicorn danced like mad. My first play through i never even stepped off the dance pad, I didn't even check to see if there were walls lol. that unicorn didn't last very long