There’s a new “audience game” called horseracetests that just blew up on Twitter, by indie/hobbyist dev snakesandrews. The gist of it is a bunch of mspaint horses bounce around an inscrutable maze to try and reach the goal. People have gone wild for this and are coming up with yuri fanfics, fanart, phonk memes, etc. It’s pretty funny. Like fan works for a pachinko game.
We need a name for these tiktok games that are basic physics simulations where you just release a field of contenders and watch them bounce around until one wins via a process that tricks your brain into thinking it’s chaos theory. Like Ian Malcolm putting the two water droplets on the back of Ellie’s hand but having them race each other and picking one arbitrarily to root for.
I don’t think it’s tricking anyone personally, it seems to me to just be bored people making stories from something “procedural”; like Dwarf Fortress stories if there was minimal game.
Part of why it went viral I think is because ongoing trends developed between races, like yellow bumping orange close to the finish, that spur the imagination. This is the goal of proceduralism whether it’s an entire world simulation or horse plinko.
I called it an audience game instead of anything else or slop because the game is the act of spectating an automatic process. It’s spiritually similar to saltybet. I find the whole thing fascinating, personally.
still so mad about the shenmue duck racing guy on twitch, who had a great stream idea (just do shenmue duck races over and over again and set up a way for the chat to bet), who i showed up for duck races all the time, who i bet so much (fake) money on and then i saw him CHEAT LIVE. I SAW HIM MAKE THE DUCK HE BET ON WIN THE RACE SO HE COULD JUST KEEP WINNING and it ruined the whole thing for me. i can understand someone hackign the duck game to make themselves win every time but to put it in front of an audience?? and make them believe they had an equal chance to you??? BETRAYAL
Sounds like the start of a good Video Game Championship Wrestling plotline.
horseracetests does remind me I need to get back to checking out Jelle’s Marble Runs, which is this except with marbles on toy race tracks. But a name like horseracetests makes me think it’s going to turn into an ARG or internet horror fiction.
