Fan games are a tricky thing, with many of the IP holders often shutting down projects. While some companies like SEGA will sometimes hire fan creators, others like Nintendo will send Cease and Desist orders. What happens to these objected to games can go one of two ways, with the project either being shut down or as in the case of Mother 4, rebranded as its own IP. The latter was the case with Fighting is Magic, a fan game of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic that was sent a C&D by Hasbro. Rebranded to Them’s Fightin’ Herds, the game has found new life as its own IP and will even be featured at EVO 2020 for reasons I will go into.
The game is a four button fighter similar to many SNK fighters and is a great example of easy to learn but tricky to master. The game has you use light, medium and heavy attacks with the fourth attack being your magic attack. But you will need to learn each character specifically in order to understand them as they are all incredibly different from each other, each with their own style, attack pattern and most of all gimmick. Before you get too worried that you will be overwhelmed though, rest assured that the characters are easy to figure out thanks to them all sharing a basic fighting structure with anti-airs, sweeps, simple combos and more, using the same button inputs. It is when you decide to go deeper, that you notice how the roster is pretty diverse in terms of gameplay possibilities. This is welcome, because the roster is pretty small right now, but the work put into the characters makes everything worthwhile.
There is a story mode to the game that is extremely unique for a fighting game. It is down in the style of an old school sprite based JRPG, where you are a champion traveling through the land of Foenum, and trying to bring piece. You don’t fight the other roster characters over and over again, but rather shadow creates that make the game somewhat reminiscent of a beat em up, even if the fights are down in a 1v 1 style. Facing one of the main characters is a massive moment in the story mode, and the game treats it as such. Until then, it is more concerned with teaching you how to play the game, with the fights designed as a sort of tutorial where you learn in active combat. I rather like this, as it is a great way of advancing the story, adding more content and making sure players understand the game mechanics. That said, there is a separate tutorial and it is extremely well done, and is good for those not interested in the story mode, not too mention training mode.
When it comes to online play, Them’s Fightin’ Herds is amazing. The game uses GGPO rollback netcode, and I have had some of the best online fights from any fighting game thanks to this title. This is the reason the game was selected for EVO 2020, due to the event going online and making use of the great system in place here. The lobby system is one of the more interesting touches, but also where the game falls a little short. The lobbies reuse the character sprites from the story mode and is set up like the overworld map of a JRPG. there are even secrets to find such as treasure chests that spawn containing salt that can be fought over by players contesting for it. The other mode is Salt Mines, which sees you dive into caves in order to mine as much salt as possible before time runs out. Before this sounds too easy though, you will be dealing with battles against the AI-controlled enemies from the game’s story mode. The interesting thing however, is what happens when the time runs out. When this happens, the player with the most salt will become the bear enemy from the story mode and the playstyle turns into PVP as you are then tasked with hunting down the remaining players. Its something very different and I love that Mane6 is trying their best to do something new.
The big thing with Them’s Fightin’ Herds is that the game is extremely polished, even if it isn’t completely done yet. There is at least one more fighter coming, and the story mode will receive numerous updates as time goes on. Yet even with just what is available now, I feel incredibly satisfied. This may not be the most intricately designed fighting game ever made, but it is one of the most engaging and enjoyable to play. I have to fully recommend Them’s Fightin’ Herd to play as it is an incredibly fun game created by extremely passionate developers. Rather than let their hard work on a fan game be lost, they turned it into a new IP they can own and are able to bring it to everyone now.
Available on Steam
Reviewed on PC