Unpleasant Horse is the first game from 4th & Battery, a subdivision of PopCap. 4th & Battery was brought to life to function as a creative valve for the guys at PopCap; a platform that enables them to develop unconventional games that wouldn’t fit into PopCap’s portfolio. Which, at least in the case of Unpleasant Horse, are then released for free – now that’s the spirit!
Unpleasant Horse is a classic highscoring game. You’re in control of the black, unpleasant horse (hence the title) that hops from cloud to cloud, while it’s shredding peaceful, flying horses in between. The mechanics are quite simple: By touching the screen, you define the angel that your unpleasant horse will jump to the next cloud. If in between the two clouds happens to be one of the peaceful horses, the unpleasant horse will grab them and then crush them into spinning saw blades that are waiting on the ground. The longer you hold on to the innocent horses while they’re being shredded into gory pieces, the more points you’ll get. So the title is pretty accurate – it really is a rather unpleasant horse.
Besides looking for horses, you should also keep your eyes open for birds. Catching one of them enables a one-time double jump. These come in handy in case you have jumped into a direction where there’s no clouds or horses to hang on to.
So while this isn’t the deepest or most challenging game you can get on the App Store, it’s a small and fun title with a refreshingly bizarre setting – so it’s exactly what 4th & Battery were aiming for. And since this game is for free, there’s no reason why shouldn’t give this unpleasant horse a ride.
