I forgot to rein in the horse puns

Lauren Faust, creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic who also worked on The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, has taken to IndieGoGo to help make the game Them’s Fightin’ Herds.

The game is the second game development attempt from developer Mane6. Its first game was Fighting is Magic, a fighting My Little Pony fangame that was unfortunately shut down by Hasbro faster than you could say “neigh.” Thankfully, the team isn’t horsing around, and really want to harness its creativity to make this game, and so it's back with this new adapted version.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds is Fighting is Magic, except it now features a new world with new characters that is totally unconnected to My Little Pony. It’s still all cute hoofed animals, and it’s all still created by Lauren Faust, but it’s nothing Hasbro can legally get angry about.

If the gameplay below looks familiar to you, that’s because Them’s Fightin’ Herds is using an engine borrowed from the excellent Skullgirls. Herds is different in its controls (four buttons as opposed to Skullgirls’ six), but it still looks like it has that fast-paced, combo-heavy gameplay Skullgirls fans enjoy.

What’s also interesting is the “visual lobby” system, which turns the game into a pseudo MMO. There’s a top-down overworld for players to trot around in, to find opponents or find new fights to spectate. It looks like a bit of an unnecessary budget sink if you ask me, but hay, it’s still cool nonetheless.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds is currently asking for $436,000, and it's hit 23% of the goal before the end of the first day on IndieGoGo. Any game that lets me beat the shit out of everything as an Alpaca is something I can get on board with.

I won’t be a neigh-sayer for once, it looks awesome.