Description
C.O.W.
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!
Proud winner of the 2025 Luanti Game Jam! (The version submitted for the game jam was 1.0.3.)
Goal
You have 3 lives and 2 minutes to destroy your enemies, using your deadly laser eye.
Collect as many points as possible and improve your highscore!
Gameplay
Due to military experiments, your body behaves in funny ways:
- Your laser eye shoots automatically; it cannot be turned off
- Your super bouncy body will bounce off surfaces
- You can boost to the left, right, front or back
If you get hit, you lose a life.
The game ends when the timer 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, watch the double arrows at the bottom.)
- Hold down the Jump key before hitting the ground to gain height (only works when your bounce height is low)
Your boost ability needs to recharge. When the double arrows at the bottom turn green, you can boost
Releases
2026-01-21 11:53 UTC
1.1.2
- Fix faulty error message falsely claiming the level did not load in Luanti 5.15
- Fix typo
2025-12-16 14:38 UTC
1.1.1
- Rewrote the help text and readme to explain the game better
2025-12-08 08:53 UTC
1.1.0
This is the first release after the end of the game jam. Changes:
- 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
- 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)
2025-11-29 09:20 UTC
1.0.3
- Give special thanks to palette creator
2025-11-28 23:54 UTC
1.0.2
- Document licensing of the other two cow textures
All releases
Threads
New thread
Information
Provides
cow_check_movement_settings
cow_core
cow_creative
cow_game
cow_game_meta
cow_gui
cow_hand
cow_highscore
cow_holder
cow_levels
cow_locale
cow_los
cow_mapgen
cow_menu
cow_movement
cow_music
cow_no_drop
cow_no_multiplayer
cow_objects
cow_player
cow_results
cow_sky
cow_sounds
Dependencies
- Required
-
No required dependencies
Information
- Type
- Game
- Technical Name
- cow
- Languages
-
English
- License
-
GPL-3.0-or-later
for code,
CC-BY-SA-4.0
for media.
- Maintenance State
- Maintenance Only
- Added
- 2025-11-08 00:09 UTC
- Maintainers
-
Wuzzy
Good stupid
The author didn't try to do anything super elaborated or that should be taken seriously. As a result, they deliver something stupid, fun, but most importantly short and replayable (great choice for a jam). Mechanics are simple, and just in case you can also find a "help" section inside the game. Music is on point, setting is on point, nonsense is on point: chapeau!
I'll never eat beef again, I swear! o_O
Each round of this game goes by really quick, but it is so addictive. The music and sound design are pristine, and the gameplay is fun and easy to get the hang of. Who doesn't want to be a floating cow with laser eyes? Can't wait for S.O.W. (Sows Of War)
Scores rate how good different aspects of the game are.
Effects is mostly how the game looks/feels. If a game doesn’t have good-looking textures, particle effects, or architecture that is actually plot-relevant, it can get a low Effects score.
Gameplay involves how good, fun, interesting or effective the gameplay is. If a game doesn’t have well-designed puzzles that are something a gamer actually feels they can figure out with obvious end results, it can get a low Gameplay score.
Plot is how good the plot is, how well it fits with the game itself, and whether it is actually interesting for players. If a game doesn’t have an obvious plot or goals, it can get a low Plot score.
Theme is how the game feels and is laid out. If a game doesn’t feel right, doesn't have a theme that fits its plot or gameplay, or is too bland, it can get a low Theme score.
Game Jam Theme is how well the game fits the theme set (this year is "line of sight")
All of these are rated out of ten (#/10), and the final result will combine all these scores out of fifty (#/50).
Effects: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Plot: 8/10
Theme: 9/10
Game Jam Theme: 8/10
Overall: 45/50
Hilarius and fun.
The gameplay is super fun and intuitive (though it feels like I should be clicking to shoot the laser idk.), the dash and bouncing is really responsive and makes it into quite the movement game.
The controls are quick to learn and yet the tactics and techniques to play are still complex and require practice to become good at. Unfortunately, you don't get a whole lot of time to play, you either get mauled by something behind you that you didn't see or you run out of time. The game is fairly replayable, but tends to be pretty much the same gameplay, you even start in the exact same spot every time.
Unfortunately you get swamped by all the features up front and then that's it, there's no progression really beyond what you'd see by exploring in a few rounds.
Simple and cute
The game is pretty much what the description says, and it is enjoyable for what it is. With some further polishing and a few more elements, this could be even funnier and hold attention longer.
I’m not entirely sold on the cow shooting automatically, it feels like it takes away some agency. I also felt the hitboxes were a bit unclear; there were times I took damage without feeling like I actually collided with anything - even though I'm aware that Luanti not allowing to rotate hitboxes doesn't help much. Plus, the enemies being simple cubes breaks the immersion a little, though I assume that's a Jam compromise.
On the other hand, I love the cow model and the 'maculated' titles' UI style. Also, good attention to detail making the cow semi-transparent when looking directly below so it doesn't obstruct the view.
Overall, nice game!
very cool :)
I found the description funny and the game is really cool. 😄
Cow
A very funny little game, if you overlook the rather trite acronym for the title... bouncing around and shooting lasers while dodging a hail of bullets is quite fun, it seems. I only wish the matches lasted longer so I could bounce around and dodge bullets even more.
Best game!
Although the game is WIP and has some bugs, apart from that. The game is very good, there's threats everywhere and you need to be cautious to where you walk into, or you DIE! Good game, Wuzzy :)
Bem legal mais um poco dificil
Achei bem legal mais um pouco dificil, é bom para dencançar em quanto espera algo.
Nice game
The graphics are nice, look beautiful, and work stably.
Peli kaatuu. (Game crashes.)
Tämä peli kaatuu kun yritän pelata! Suosittelen ainoastaan jos haluat peliä joka kaatuu! (This game crashes when i try to play!) (I recommend only if you want a game that crashes!)
For some reason I really like cows
The game have a pretty cool style, some intresting enemies and a very very nice looking cow.
Sadly the gameplay is a bit too simple (automatic shooting, basic movement) to keep playing more than a few minutes.
I hope it will get some updates later to make the gameplay more entertaining for the game to get a longer lifetime.
(review writen post gamejam)
The missiles follow you
Fun, although the constant bouncing of the cow got pretty annoying after a while. Also the missiles are homing missiles, which I didn't realize until after I had been killed on the same level multiple times. Strong tie in with the the theme, and the gameplay was decent, could have maybe used a bit more instructions though.
cow
Nice game. its got a cow, and its fun
cows & cows & cows
Actually pretty fun and replayable. :)
Arcadey Fun
As everyone else's noted: does a small thing and does it well. Game mechanics are easy to pick up on and it's very replayable.