rant

hello everypony.

this update does have real content, but first a rant to help you get into my mindspace. :)

since my last post through, say, November 9th, I had not done tons and tons of work on heart by hoof. i had intended on participating in Lewdie Jam 3, but i really couldn't find the time or space. i did start a little project for that jam exploring a direction i've been thinking about for a while (idle games), and i do think it is a worthwhile project, but i'm not sure when i will work on it more.

i've also been thinking about, and prototyping, some ideas for an sfw game i could make, in an attempt to earn a dollar or two. i have also been thinking about platforms like patreon or subscribestar, but i'm not sure i really have anything i can provide on a regular basis for these kinds of platforms, but perhaps more importantly, the content rules remain unclear to me.

as of Nov. 9, 2025, heart by hoof. is deindexed on itch.io (it was indexed the day before). i have sent in a support ticket asking for clarification on why, as the game has not changed at all since the last post. oh well. the good news is the game is still playable, so if you like it, consider bookmarking the link in your browser, adding it to a collection, or otherwise keeping track of the link in case you want it. (you can also access it from my itch.io profile.)

in the midst of its deindexing, i thought it might be a "fun" project to do a little dev playthrough / let's play and post it online... somewhere. idk, i don't think this is a "good" marketing plan, but i thought it might be fun, as someone who watches a lot of slay the spire and such on youtube. 

as it turns out, there is essentially no internet space at all for posting lil playthroughs of nsfw games, and especially nsfw games that involve animals. if i was dedicated to providing government ID to PornHub or other sites, i could technically upload videos. but my understanding is they would be banned.

this state of affairs simply frustrates and saddens me to no end. like, a video playthrough of a video game about cartoon horses having sex is apparently just not a thing you can put on the internet. what? why? "a video of a cartoon sex game" is, to me, so unbelievably benign from a "porn website" perspective. like, you know, they had to put all this moderation in place to prevent all sorts of nonconsensual & illegal stuff from being uploaded. but an adult playing a sex game (that doesn't itself involve any real-life images/videos)... like, to me, you can't really get a safer piece of nsfw content.

but it makes me appreciate itch.io even more. yes, itch does restrict certain nsfw content, and they have even deindexed my game! ...but they let me post it, no questions asked! (i also appreciate newgrounds for this reason). it feels like a fundamentally better approach to sexual media to me.

and, to get even further off-topic, i do have complicated feelings about so-called "feral" porn (which is the aforementioned widely-banned content). but whatever my feelings about it, i do think heart by hoof. specifically is an unbelievably benign nsfw game. to me, it is diametrically opposed from anything dangerous about the porn industry--not only is it totally fictional, which keeps it fundamentally quite safe, but even within the fiction consent is considered very important! i really don't know how such a deeply sexual piece of media could be more harmless.

so, all of that is to say, i think heart by hoof. is a really neat project. and i legitimately enjoy it as a game as well.

with nothing left to do with heart by hoof. but work on it as a game, i, well, started working on it again (just a little bit).

and that's how we (more or less) get to the real update.

what's up

so.

heart by hoof., is awesome (imo). and the version i have on my computer (and my phone) is even more awesome, but it's also kind of jank.

in particular, the following things have all happened in a sort of jumble:

• heart by hoof. now has basic android support. most of this is just godot being super cool and doing the work for me, and it already mostly works in the browser. but i fixed the (very important) palette shaders to work there, and hopefully at some point i'll add camera controls and a pause button.
• lots of balance changes and tweaks.
• the new, maybe worse, maybe better, art system, and some new art. also, some new tweaks to the 3D scene, including new materials for the horses, and other changes.

the thing is, the first two changes are awesome. heart by hoof. is a great android game (although it may have performance issues...).

and balance changes are even more awesome. the most obvious one is 'accelerate!'. i nerfed this card to be draw 2, gain 4 tension, and that itself makes the game so much better. the game is better when it is harder to win, and in particular, i am working on nerfing lots of different infinites (i think that having a few is OK, but if they're too prevalent,then the game is boring).

as a fun fact, i originally tried nerfing accelerate to draw 2, gain 6 tension (the same tension gain as its draw 3 version), and this card is essentially unplayable. if you pick it in the early game it actively hurts you, and it never really seems to get any better.

ok, but what about the art.

well, i do think the new art is at least kind of good looking. i am by no means an incredible artist, but i try my best. but even if it is the best art ever, it presents a problem: not everything in the game has the new art (and some of the ones that do, are very ugly and bad, due to the ways the styles and systems evolved through my experimentation, or just because i did it badly).

this has made me leery to release a new version of heart by hoof., because it very much is in a in-dev state, where things have varying appearances, some look quite bad, and so forth.

but i just can't not share it, anymore.

i had been thinking about this for the, like, two days that i had been working on changes after crashing out from the video recording thing. 

but i think the inflection point was the new card select / "mating complete!" art.

now, i'm not sure it really looks like much, you know. maybe it's kind of whatever. but multiple times when playing, i have reached this screen and been like... holy shit, that is beautiful. like, i am legitimately mesmerized by this horse pussy in my face, and doing the cinema hands, and so forth.

and so here i am: i don't see how i can not share this. i must upload some version of this new heart by hoof., simply because as a project, it is so enjoyable to me, and it would be a damn shame to withhold that enjoyment from everyone else.

but to share it, i feel like i must be clear about what it is.

heart by hoof. nightly

so what is it? well, it's exactly what i said above. it is a janky version of heart by hoof., that is better in some ways and maybe worse in others. i make no promises that:

• you will like it.
• you will like it more than the jam version.
• i will ever finish it (whatever that might mean).
• i will ever release more than one version of it.

but on the plus side, you get a new release of heart by hoof. and it has lots of cool features:

• it works ok on your phone
• the game is more fun when accelerate! is nerfed (and other balance changes)
• it has (arguably) beautiful horse pussy (and other new art)
• it is completely free

my plan is to provide four downloads alongside the jam version--one "nightly" version for windows, mac, linux, and android.

i would like to figure out a way to make a web build available as well, but i'm not sure the best way to do so. the problem is, an itch.io page can really only have one web build. i could make a new itch.io page, but i don't want to make it look like i'm trying to skirt the deindexing of this page. annoying. if anyone has any thoughts on this let me know! some ideas:

• i could make a separate itch page anyway, and hope it will be deindexed as appropriate (?)
• i could upload the nightly build as a new game on newgrounds, although it will be harder for me to keep it in sync
• i could replace the build on this page, which will wipe anybody's web saves. i don't really want to do this as i don't want to ruin anyone's save. but, i could say, for example, that it will go live on this page in 3 months or something, and give people time to save a copy of their current colors (which i think is the only real meaningful data that is saved right now).

so, what do i mean by "nightly?" primarily, the lack of promises i made above. this version is provided "as is." buuuuuut.... i'm also using some sort of "command-line godot + butler" workflow to make it really easy to push new versions of the "nightly" build, in case i do make any more changes i want to push.

very important: there will only be one nightly version uploaded here! that is, if i decide to make changes and push a new build, the old build will no longer be available (at least, unless the butler process somehow keeps it available). it is simply too difficult to maintain a large version archive on itch, and i would like to reserve the right to push very small updates, as i think regular pushes to a project is a good way to keep it fun and exciting for me. the idea is that any individual version of the nightly build would hopefully not be too significant.

save data

the save data for heart by hoof. nightly should be in a separate folder from the existing version. you will be able to find the new folder under e.g. %APPDATA%/Roaming/heart-by-hoof-nightly, while the old one will have been under %APPDATA%/Godot/app_userdata/heart by hoof. i believe you can copy the contents of the old folder over if you wish to keep your old save data. but, this also means you can keep playing the jam version forever without worrying about save data corruption.

update notification

the theory being i will eventually push more builds of the nightly version, a good question is how to stay up to date. my understanding is that probably the best way is with the itch.io app, which should be able to automatically apply updates, and apply them pretty cheaply (it uses a fancy patch system to minimize the amount of data it needs to download).

but, for those who do not use the app, i have integrated a system on the main menu that will check the itch API to determine if a new update is available. if there is a newer update available, it will let you know with a clickable link to the itch page. (you may also notice that there is new art for the main menu).

more rambling about the changes

so, those are the most important changes (to me). i want everyone to understand exactly what they're getting from this version of the game. but now i will discuss some of the actual content changes.

first, there's lots of new art assets. all of the following cards have an associated "shading" asset (although some of these are quite bad, and will likely change in the future):

• accelerate!
• controlled thrust~
• deep breath.
• finesse.
•  flexibility?
• impending orgasm~
• intensify!
•  patience.
• perfect thrust~
• poise.
• pull out.
• in and again.
• thrust in.
• visualize!
• wild plunge!

some of these cards are probably unfamiliar! that because i have implemented one new card, and tweaked others. the new card is patience.

i have wanted to have some permascaling cards in the game ever since i first started working on it. i thought it would be fun to implement at least one for this update. i think this card is kind of cool as there is a risk-reward of waiting to draw it to permascale it. (of course, if you put it into your opening hand through one of the reflect events, the risk is mitigated). and of course, it does not protect so much against the very tricky cozy encounter in day 2.

the two cards i renamed were:

• wild thrust! -> wild plunge!
• surging thrust. -> in and again. (i don't love this name, i may tweak it further in the future).

these renames were done to nerf the finesse. card, which i felt was too much of a strict upgrade over intensify! due to most tension-applying cards being thrusts. i think it is more thematically appropriate if the finesse buff only applies to cards that apply tension a single time, while letting other kinds of scaling apply to multi-hit cards.

other balance changes include:

• accelerate! nerfed to draw 2, gain 4 tension. this feels much more balanced to me.
• poise. buffed to -2 horny. this is essentially necessary with the new patience. card, and i also feel it is a needed buff as poise. has felt pretty weak to me overall.
• arouse! buffed to cost 2 stamina and draw 1 card. at 3 cost this card seemed pretty weak. now it is a decent source of scaling, although still rather slow.
• candlelight. buffed to apply 6 ambiance. i felt this card was pretty weak at 3 ambiance; now it feels pretty strong to me. it may need to be tweaked further in the future.
• bouncy? changed to apply only 1 bouncy, but have no stamina cost. i am still working through my feelings on the stamina system. i do think it is kind of interesting and has decent flavor, but it also means that any build using stamina cards that doesn't find a stamina generator will end up with a bunch of curses in the deck when cycling long enough. so far though, i am enjoying it enough to keep it.
  
  but, i do feel like stamina cards that are "pay a ton of upfront stamina" feel pretty bad too. and, i thought this card was probably too strong at draw 2, even with the stamina cost. so i'm trying this out: get rid of the stamina cost, but nerf the draw to 1. hopefully that makes this card more fun. it might still be too strong though--i found it was pretty good even with the only card in the deck that powered it being flexibility?.
• (for the same reason, i am considering changes to take it slow., but haven't implemented them yet).
• impending orgasm~ has been "nerfed" so it no longer draws 1. i find the get her off~ cards have been more fun for me to play than impending orgasm~, and i think the reason is because you actually get to play your whole hand nice and simple. this also gets your partner back into the mix more--if you can't quite finish yourself off in one turn, she actually gets to contribute, which seems nice to me. as a side note, once you have gotten to the impending orgasm~ state, you can't "lose" the encounter anymore, even if your partner manages to remove some of her tension.

besides the new 2d art and the balance changes, i have also tweaked the 3d scene. the most substantial change here is i have placed a landscape under your hooves. i do think this actually makes it feel quite a bit nicer. i also found a 3d camera option that solves a bunch of my problems (essentially, the camera is shifted up vertically so that the horses can appear approximately in the center of the space above where the cards are. this used to be done in a janky way where the 2d image produced by the camera was shifted up, but it turns out it is possible to simply shift the camera's output up directly, which is much cleaner).

there's also new 2d art for various other parts of the game, including the main menu, the background for most scenes, the deck icon, and the card frames. some of this art may be tweaked a bit in the future.

conclusion

so, there you have it! heart by hoof. nightly. i hope you enjoy! and feel free to leave feedback. i may eventually try to put together a discord server or something, but i'm not sure i have the energy to maintain something like that right now.

if i do start regularly pushing changes, i will probably try to figure out some way to document the important ones here on itch. i probably won't do a changelog for every single push, as i don't want to spam your feeds. maybe i'll do something like an update every two weeks.

and, if i feel like i do have some sort of "regular-interval" value to provide, maybe i will think again about opening a patreon or something. i'm still not really sure if it's possible to do so for nsfw content, but it would be neat.

either way, thank you to everybody who has played, downloaded, rated, and bought heart by hoof. it is one of my favorite projects i have ever worked on and seeing people continue to enjoy it to this day makes me very happy. have a good one, everyone.