First, a confession: I’m absolutely rubbish at fighting games. Like, embarrassingly bad. Can’t even handle “Super Smash Bros.”, let alone something with a truly complex move set.

That might make it seem odd that I really, really want to see Them’s Fightin’ Herds successfully meet its fundraising goal and move forward, since I’m not likely to play it all that much myself. (Oh, I’m sure I’ll try it out a few times and get thoroughly trounced, but still…) The thing is, I really admire projects like this. It’s one thing to dream about doing something big, and it’s quite another to actually move forward and make it a reality. The band at Mane Six set forth to make the truly impressive fighting game “Fighting is Magic” using all of our favorite pony characters engaged in adorable combat. I loved seeing the updates to that, hearing the music composed for it, seeing the artwork and animation… and yes, I even tried the leaked version of the game and got trounced as usual. As such, it was a real loss when Hasbro’s lawyers stepped in and shut it all down (though as someone who holds copyrights myself, I certainly understand.)

Luckily, MLP:FIM creator Lauren Faust felt the same way and stepped up to work with Mane Six in developing an all new IP full of characters for them to use a new fighting game. Those who played the Pony version of their first game can likely recognize the inspirations and movesets of the original mane six combatants, but the new ungulates that have taken their place have a lot of charm and interesting quirks all of their own. Above we have Oleander, the unicorn who bucked the pure-as-the-driven-snow nature of her people to see if Dark Magic couldn’t be harnessed in order to save the world, and we have Paprika the Alpaca champion (Watch out… she’s a hugger.)

There are more great new Faust-created characters to check out, and a rich new world with its own history to discover at the Them’s Fightin’ Herds crowdfunding campaign site. Please do go take a look, and if you have some money to donate, that would be outstanding! There’s a lot of great rewards to be had for helping them meet their goal (such as copies of the finished game itself, of course), but even small amounts can help them launch these characters. We’re moving towards the final week of the campaign, so now’s the time to start the last big push. There’s nothing in it for me (I don’t even have an account there in order to get the credit for the referral), I just really want to support some folks in the community who embarked on an effort to make something truly impressive. And I really do want to see more of these characters…