[Game] C.O.W. [1.1.1]

[Wuzzy]

A cybernetically enhanced cow seeks revenge

Proud winner of the 2025 Luanti Game Jam.

COW.jpg (50.48 KiB) Viewed 640 times

C.O.W. is a a top secret military experiment with the goal to turn ordinary farm animals into weapons: the Cows of War.

But one brave cow managed to breach containment. That cow is you. You want revenge!

Use your deadly laser eyes and your super jump ability to destroy everything that moves.

The more you destroy, the better your score.

You have 3 lives. If you get hit, you lose a life. The game ends when the time runs out or you’ve lost all lives.

Controls

• Look at enemies to hit them with laser beams.
• Use the movement keys to move.
• Hold down Aux1 and press a movement key to boost in that direction (this ability needs to recharge).
• Hold down the Jump key before hitting the ground to reach higher places.

Download

Download version 1.1.1

Game information

• For Luanti 5.14.0 or later
• Code license: GPLv3 or later
• Media license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (see README.md for details)
• Available in English

Links:

• ContentDB page
• Git repository
• Report bugs here
• Help translating the game
• README file

Credits:

• Idea, design, programming, sound effects and (most) graphics by Wuzzy
• Cow model and textures based on work by 3December2022 from Sketchfab
• Music by Snabisch
• (see the README file for details)

[Wuzzy]

You have voted, and C.O.W. has won the game jam! Thank you!

Thanks for playing and to everyone who voted in favor of C.O.W. Many players wrote in the reviews this game is very silly and I agree, that was the point. ;-) I intentionally made a game that shouldn't be taken too seriously this year, it really was about some simple arcade fun.

Now that the game jam is over, I present to you the first release after the end of the game jam:

The Version 1.1.0 release

cow110.jpg (50.75 KiB) Viewed 554 times

This release mostly is about cleaning things up: Fixing bugs, polishing the HUD and effects.

A big problem in the first release was bouncing. If you bounced below a tree, you would bounce forever in an infinite loop because the leaves are bouncy on the lower side, too. This problem is fixed. You no longer bounce off blocks from the lower side.

I spent a lot of time on adding furniture into all of the houses, which were empty before. This is purely for flavor and has not gameplay effect, but I think it adds a nice detail.

I reworked the HUD to fix some issues. It should now also work well on small resolutions. The original HUD was designed for large resolutions (above 1600×1200) but below that, the images would become so large they cover the whole screen. So I added a "small screen mode". This game is now playable with resolutions down to 800×600.

The game is now fully translated into German, including the text images, which had to be custom-drawn. (Technically, the game supports translation of text images by looking for special-named files in directories. This is done by the cow_locale mod.)

Changelog:

• You no longer bounce off the bottom side of blocks
• Highscore is now shown in game menu
• Can toggle music in game menu
• Add `/music` command set music volume
• New game menu background (cow conveyor belt)
• Slightly improved formspec design
• Better "game over" animation: Cow now falls apart on game over and has X-es for eyes
• The houses are now furnitured
• Fences now connect to concrete
• HUD automatically scales down on small windows; C.O.W. should now work in resolutions down to 800×600
• Add setting to manually choose HUD image size
• Various very minor HUD improvements
• Game is now fully translatable
• Added German translation
• Added secret cheats (psst!)
• Display warning if game was started with bad movement settings
• Disallow starting game in multiplayer mode
• Fix many situations where player randomly teleports on game start
• Fix missile direction reset if it flew too far away
• Stability improvements for internal game values (lives, time, score)

Future updates?
I only plan basic bugfixes from this point on (please report bugs!). I want to focus on my major game projects again (Hades Revisited, etc.).

But if I decide to pick this game up again, I do have some ideas for this game: More levels (or a difficulty setting, not sure), different types of enemies, collectible power-ups to make you stronger (invulnerability, stronger laser, etc.).

[Wuzzy]

Version 1.1.1 has been released.

I noticed a few players were having problems with understanding the gameplay, so took some time to rewrite the help menu and README file to (hopefully) explain the game better. There are no other changes.