A rhino in a red bandana charges through a jungle and a refinery to smash a robot core. An old prototype we picked back up, fixed properly and finished enough to play.
Play it now
Rhinohed was Brady's old internet handle. The game started as play: could we make a real one with the AI tools of the time? The tools built the code and painted the art, and the idea and the design of the game came from Brady.
You move, jump and hit, but the move that matters is the charge. Hold it to wind up, let go to dash. A long charge smashes walls and goes straight through shields that a normal hit bounces off.
Each stage teaches one idea and then tests it. Jungle Entry is moving, jumping and smashing. Bomb Run has you ride a platform over spikes, lure a bomb bot into a wall and step on two plates to open a gate. Canopy Core is the boss: break its two nodes, hit the exposed core, then survive the lasers until it opens again.
The prototype looked close to done. Playing it properly told a different story. On a phone, the on-screen arrows and the charge button did nothing. The gate in stage 2 could never open, so the stage couldn't be finished. Miss your first window on the boss and it could never be beaten. Hitting certain robots crashed the game.
The rhino also seemed to float, which is what started the clean-up. The ground art was being stretched, and the place he stood sat well above the grass in the picture. Now every surface is measured to where the ground really is, and the same rhino and frames carry through to the boss fight, which used to swap in a different, oversized one.
The prototype ended the run on any fall. Now a fall costs one heart and puts you back on the last solid ground, so a missed jump stays a small mistake.
A game is mostly small decisions you don't notice. You can still jump a moment after leaving a ledge, and a press just before landing still counts. A short tap gives a short hop. You can walk under ledges and jump up through them. Falling costs one heart and puts you back on solid ground instead of ending the run.
It also explains itself now: hints in the level instead of a manual, keyboard instructions on a laptop, touch buttons only on touch screens, a loading bar, sound effects with an off switch, and a next stage button so you can keep going.
All three stages can be finished and it runs in the browser, on a laptop or a phone turned sideways. It's short, and there's plenty left we could add. It's here because it's fun, and because finding what's really broken takes playing the thing, not looking at it.
Open Rhinohedyou work with the people doing the work, from the first question to the last detail. tell us what you're making and where it's stuck.