Hordolam

How to play

Muster in Hordolam: rules and tips

In short

• The squad marches and shoots on its own. You steer it left and right.
• Gates with + and × make the squad bigger, gates with − and ÷ make it smaller. Negative gates are red and hatched.
• On a footbridge, keep the squad in the middle. Anything over the edge falls into the water.
• At the end of a level you defend a palisade against a boss. If the palisade falls, the level is lost.

Modes

• Warpath: 6 chapters of 12 levels, and the last level of each chapter is its boss. A level takes about one to two and a half minutes.
• Warband: 2 to 4 players with a camp code. Everyone leads a squad in their own lane and you beat the boss together.
• Muster: an open battlefield for 1 to 8 players and bots, rules below.
• Daily Road: a new 3 to 4 minute road every day, the same for everyone. Your first finished run counts.
• Endless Road: marches and smaller bosses take turns without end, and the pressure keeps rising. The palisade is not repaired after a boss; only the hearts you pick up on the road fix it.

The march

Gates come every few seconds and you pass through only one of each pair or row of three. Between them wait the Murklings, cartoon creatures made of mud and fog. Whatever the archers do not knock down costs the squad soldiers. Shoot barrels to break them and you get what is painted on them: soldiers or a lightning bolt that charges the hero ability.

• Archers are the core of the squad and shoot far. They barely scratch stone Murklings.
• Pikemen strike up close and hit stone Murklings and bosses harder. They cannot reach flying Crowlings.
• Shield bearers do not shoot. They cut losses on hazards and from boss strikes, and they repair the palisade on the Wall.
• The Convert gate swaps some archers for pikemen. The number of soldiers stays the same.
• A moving gate slides along the road, and a growing gate grows when you shoot at it.

Bridges and hazards

Every chapter adds new hazards. The briefing before each level shows which ones are coming, and when a new hazard first appears on the road, the game shows a short tip for it.

• Footbridge: anything over the edge falls into the water. If the middle of the squad leaves the bridge, you lose the whole squad in moments. Railed footbridges in the first chapter take only a few soldiers.
• The raft and the rope bridge sway from side to side, so move with them.
• The windmill, the pendulum and the wrecking ball sweep or swing across the road. Dash through when the way is clear.
• Hay bales and logs roll at the squad. A shadow shows where falling rocks will land. Get out of their lane.
• Mine presses, mud geysers and the drawbridge work to a rhythm and warn you before they hit: a geyser bubbles and the bridge chains rattle.
• In mud the squad turns slower, on ice it slides. Cracked tiles give way after a moment.

The Wall

Behind the palisade there are two stations, or three once your Village has the Bell Tower. The squad only shoots into the lanes in front of its station. The boss announces a strike on a lane in advance: the lane changes colour and a bar shows how much time is left. Move the squad to another station or the strike takes some soldiers and cracks the palisade. From chapter 2 the boss has two phases, and in the second it also strikes from the side across half the road.

The palisade has four sections, one for each lane. A Murkling that reaches it breaks the section of its lane, and damage goes through a broken section to the next one. Shield bearers at a station repair the sections. Most levels have two or three marches. After the first comes the Vanguard, a smaller boss that has a shield from chapter 2, and only the hero ability breaks it. Then you pick one of three boosts. The palisade is not restored between the Vanguard and the boss, but the road after the Vanguard usually has a heart that fixes a bit of it.

Catapults

Catapults are rare. One fires every 2 seconds, reaches far and hits several Murklings at once. It deals double damage to stone Murklings and the boss but cannot hit Crowlings. A squad can haul 3 to 5 catapults, depending on the chapter.

• Siege Gate (from level 3-4): shoot down its frame and pass through, and a catapult joins you. It sits on the risky side of the road.
• The Catapult Build gate: 10 pikemen build a catapult (from chapter 4, once your Village has the Siege Works).
• ×2 catapults (from chapter 5) doubles the catapults you already have.
• A catapult falls off a footbridge if it rolls far from the middle. A hazard that takes at least a quarter of the squad also destroys one.

The Starting catapult in the Workshop puts catapults in your squad right at the start of a level. You pay for it with Catapult blueprints. You get them for three stars on a boss level, for Rank 10, 20 and 30, for the tenth and twenty-fifth boss on the Endless Road and for winning a Muster.

Muster

Up to 8 players share an open battlefield, and bots fill the empty seats. Everyone starts with 5 soldiers. Villagers join you when you walk through them: farmers and hunters as archers, shepherds as pikemen, craftsmen as shield bearers. A round lasts 3 minutes, and the camp owner can also pick 2 or 4.

• A horde that is more than a tenth stronger poaches soldiers from a smaller one. When its middle reaches the banner of the smaller horde, the banner falls and most of the soldiers switch sides or scatter.
• After your banner falls you come back in 3 seconds with 5 soldiers and a short shield. In the Final clash at the end of the round nobody comes back.
• From the middle of the round the Fog closes in. Outside the circle a horde loses soldiers.
• The horde with the most Power at the end of the round wins. Power is your soldiers plus 8 for each catapult.
• The only button is your hero ability. Dash speeds the horde up, Shield wall protects it for a moment, Recruiting drum speeds up poaching and Fireworks pull villagers in.

Quick Muster puts you in a public camp. With friends you pitch a private camp and share the code, and the camp owner adds bots and splits players into teams. Training Grounds is a round with bots that works offline too.

Stronghold

• Village: buildings appear for stars or after a chapter boss. They add pikemen, shield bearers, a third station, the Siege Works and the Sparkler.
• Workshop: share your stars between the Squad, Firepower, Palisade, Hero and Gates branches. You can take them back and share them differently at any time.
• Armory: banners, catapult looks and garb. They change only how your squad looks.
• Renown and Rank: you earn Renown in every mode, and it moves your Rank from Recruit up to Hordolam.
• Every level can be won without the Workshop. The shop is switched off, so right now the game has no ducats, timers, chests or purchases.

Controls

• Touch: on the Warpath, drag left and right anywhere on the field and tap a station on the Wall. In Muster, put your finger in the lower part of the field and drag where the horde should go. The hero ability is the round button at the bottom right.
• Mouse: the squad follows the cursor; in Muster, while you hold the left button.
• Keyboard: arrow keys or A and D, plus W and S in Muster. Space uses the ability, 1 to 3 pick a boost or a station, Esc pauses.
• Settings offer game speed, lane steps, gate hints and a battery saver.

Who it is for

The game is in the Minigames section, apart from the games for children, and it is hidden in kids mode. The fighting is cartoonish: Murklings melt into grey smoke when hit and soldiers who drop out run home to the village. There is no chat. In Muster you play with bots, and in a public camp with strangers too. Strangers can only send short preset messages, they can be blocked and reported, and the camp owner can kick them between rounds. Bots always have a Bot label next to their name.

Drawings and sounds

HoyHop drew the characters, Murklings, bosses, hazards and scenery. Some drawings take their proportions from free references (Kenney, CC0; Pearson Scott Foresman drawings from Wikimedia Commons, public domain; Game-icons.net, CC BY 3.0), and the icons come from Phosphor Icons (MIT). Sounds are made right in the browser.