(0:32)
The Horde, copyright 1993 by Toys For Bob. This is around the time that Blizzard started making games, by the way, so not all companies went the way of Toys With Bob. Starring... Oh my god, the cinematic. I want to show you how tiny this is on my screen. It is so small.

Narrator: Once upon a time, in a distant and magical kingdom, there lived a young serving boy, Chauncey.

Hank: Chauncey!

Game: *Laughter from party guests*

King: Please please, continue Chancellor!

Chancellor: And so there we are, the delegation from Borgo on one side, the congregation from Schmoo on the other. Now the High Priestess of Schmoo, as you know, considers herself to be so beautiful as to entrance all her devotees, now has the appearance of a large drowning rodent. (uproarious laughter) 

Hank: He's the bad guy, as you might expect.

Chancellor: She had been bathed in wine at the hands of the Borgonian ambassador's wife. The words that spewed forth from this saintly lady's mouth were of sort as to make the most hardened warrior's ears to burn. (1:44)

Hank: *fake laughter mocking the laughter from the game* Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. Oh no! The king!

Chancellor: On hearing this, the ambassador, who's had too much wine to drink, screams forth, dagger in hand onto the table to defend the honor of his betrothed.

Chauncey: The king is! The king! The king is choking!

Chancellor: ...in the middle of a kidney pie!

Chauncey: Your majesty! Your majesty!

Hank & Chancellor: The boy! The boy is attacking the king!

Hank: Yeah, I've played this a few times.

Chancellor: Guards! Guards!

King: *coughing, retching*

Guests: *General sounds of shock and horror but classy an subdued* 

Chauncey: Your majesty!

Chancellor: You dare attack the king?

Chauncey: No!

Chancellor: For this, I will see you die slowly.

Chauncey: No!

King: Nonsense! The lad saved my life. What is your name, boy?

Chauncey: Uh, Chauncey, sir. My lord. Your highness. Sir.

King: And where do you hail from?

Chauncey: Well I have no home, sire.

Hank: He was raised by a pack of wild cows, maybe?

Chauncey: I was raised by a kind herd of wild cows.

Hank: A kind herd of wild cows. Sorry, I mis-remembered.

King: Ah. Well. From this day forward, you are Sir Chauncey. I dub thee Knight of the Realm and grant you vast tracts of land in the Shimto Plains, along with the use of my mighty sword, Grimthwacker.

Hank: Grimthwacker!

King: It served me well in defending the kingdom from the evil, insatiable, terrifying Horde.

Hank: Horde! It's the name of the game, you guys.

Sir Chauncey: Horde? 

Hank: You don't know about The Horde? Somehow you don't know about the horde, you've just missed the entire boat on the horde thing. Yeah that sword is bigger than you. Oh my god, oh my god.

(3:52)

Hank: So there's another version of this game that fit on floppy disks, and they had a slideshow there, and it didn't have the full soundtrack, and that's the first version of this I downloaded and I was very disappointed.

Hank: uhm, Oh we're going to have a cinematic of what the game looks like. Oh my god! This is a complete surprise to me. I mean, why are we doing that? Apparently by 1994 they were like "get to clicking, boy, or I'm going to start you going."

Chancellor: I am Kronus Maelor, the king's High Chancellor. His majesty has asked that I that I give you this deed to the Shimto Plains, garden spot of the kingdom.

Sir Chauncey: Really?

Chancellor: Trust me. Hahaha yes...

Hank: Hahaha HAHAHA hahaha. Okay, the Shimto Plains. Alright, we're protecting our villagers and their crops from the horde. We start off with not very much land. You get $5 for every tree you cut down, so that's an important part in the beginning of the game. You gotta get all the trees that you can. And then you can actually build more trees, which is good to do. So I'm going to do that.

And your land will expand. You will have more land as time goes on. So, I just put a tree up there where I can't see or control, but I did it, and later on I'll have access to that tree.

So I'm going to plant fifty saplings, and I'm just going to zoom forward.

(5:39) Alright, fifty trees planted. And now I can call the horde, basically. I'm almost out of time anyway. But I can call them and I can fight my first round of hordelings, which is these little red guys there in the bottom corner. So five hordelings are approaching. I can look at the map there and see that they're coming from straight ahead.

Oh there's so many of them.

So it's going to get harder than that, as you might imagine. This game has two mechanics. One, you kill the hordelings during that period of time, also you're trying to increase your amount of money so that you can pay taxes and also buy better more things to help you make more money and also to more effectively fight the hordelings.

So I've raised seven trees this... that was really good. Got seven more trees because some of my trees grew up. There's no rhyme or reason to how your trees grow, but the entire game appears to be procedural, which is really interesting for an old game.

So your town never looks the same. Every time it grows differently and your villagers have their houses in different places. The hordelings can break down your villagers' houses, which are very small. But you know, people don't need a lot here in hordelingville, on the Shimto Plains. They're happy.

You can actually go out here and look and you can build trees from out here, which is slightly more efficient. So we're going to build 48 more trees. We're building up our resources. That's the name of the game. We gotta make sure that we have enough money to take care of the horde, not only now, but in future seasons. 'Cause winter is coming, and there are more horde in the winter.

Alright, I'll see you 32 trees from now.

(7:24)  Alright, that's all my trees. Now it's time to call the horde.

Early in the game, you don't need a lot of help killing the horde. They're pretty destroyable on your own. But as your town grows, and as the intensity of the hordelings grow... You can actually spin your sword fast enough that it'll make you dizzy. Because obviously the sword is too big for me.

Oh god. There, they broke his house down. But they didn't eat him. That was good.

You actually get a little bit of time between when they eat them and when -- you can still kills the hordeling and save the person  in side of them because they just have very very stretchy bellies.

Alright, we got sixteen new trees you guys.

Oh! Hey, it's Kronus Maelor, my buddy.

Chancellor: Greetings, Sir Chauncey. Rumor has it there's been a sudden increase in the number of hordelings recently. Maybe it's the weather. Or maybe it's because King Winthrop is ill and I've declared the horde an endangered species. Just like you're about to become.

Hank: Hahaha. Let's make fun of the environmental climate. Oh dang. He's so evil. (8:28)

Alright.

Cows are a good long term investment, I agree. But I can't build any cows yet because I don't have enough money for cows. I could if I sold all of my saplings, I could buy some cows. Maybe I'll get up there. I got some good trees this year.

So an increase in hordelings at this point, that's actually good that it happened early in the game. Those things are random, different events happen like meteors fall-- oh look, I can afford a cow. Cows are better than trees, as far as making money goes. They can be eating by hordelings though, unlike trees, which cannot be eaten by hordelings.

That's the noise that means the horde are coming. And here comes that excellent music.

Alright, they're coming from this side. Coming from this side. Oh they're coming from every side! Oh there's so many hordelings this year, so many. Oh god I hope that they don't... One of them just, uh, drowned, which they will do. Ah, ah! Oh jeez, I saved him. Saved him.

There's one more, where is it? It's over on that side. What are you doing over there? Alright, okay. Alright, excellent. I lost three crops, which is not good, but $25 just from one cow. Cows, cows are good. We have 61 bucks, we made 61 bucks that -- that's awesome. We are rollin' in it. We got nine more trees. Winter is here, winter year one. Chop down trees for extra cash. Replace with saplings. I'm aware of that mechanic.

I should actually just replace them automatically with saplings, so let's do that. Do doot. Do doot. And now I've got enough for another cow, that's very exciting. So here is my village, procedurally generating itself, which is pretty awesome.

Okay, I'm going to plant 31 trees now, so that I can also get a new cow.

(10:35) 

Alright, picked my trees and planted my last cow, or my next cow. I can go down here and see that I now have two cows in the middle of town, so that they're easier to protect. You run faster while you're on the roads. This person's making grapes, this one's got, um-- I should've mentioned earlier that if it sounds like the sound is bad, that's because the sound is bad. It's nothing to do with the recording.

These houses, the stone ones with the skulls on them, are actually harder to break into, so that's good. The more of those that get built, the better.

But we're going to call the horde, and right after this we're going to have to pay taxes. So hopefully since I spent all my money, the horde won't eat all my stuff and I'll have enough money to pay taxes. 'Cause otherwise I think you just lose the game if you don't pay taxes.

Hey how's it going, horde?

Yep, okay, got you guys.

The most important thing is that they don't eat my cow. I would happily lose all of my villagers before I lost a cow. Cows are expensive, and if you don't make your money back-- Oh god oh god oh god, saved him! Saved him. I still don't want to lose my villagers.

Okay everybody's fine-- oh no, there's more, there's more, there's more. I don't know where it is. Oh he's up there. Oh god, where is it where is the horde, where is the hordeling, he's down here. Oh god, oh man. I didn't realize there was going to be so many.

Did I lose a villager? I lost a villager oh my god!

That's terrible, and I lost eight crops, so that was a lot of lost revenue due to crop loss. But you know, it's not the end of the world. 20 crowns, I can pay 20 crowns Kronus Maelor, I can do that, that's not a big deal at all. Oh, but there's Bog Wart plague, so next year it's going to be 70 crowns. Oh no.

And you can buy a bunch of stuff, which I'm not going to do right now. There are a bunch of various things you can purchase. ATM card automatically transfers gold into mana (pure magical energy). What? To power your mystical items. Grimflacker. These are things that I already have I guess.

Mom. This is a picture of my mom. I was raised by a kind herd of cows. That's Chauncey for you, good old Chauncey. He's got problems.

(12:58) 

Alright... So no, I can't do any of those things. Let's move on to the next round on the Shimto Plains here. Let's see if I can get myself up to another cow here.

I need saplings. Workin' my way up to another cow.

Okay, um. So now I've got another hundred gold, I can put another cow. And I can make $75 a season now, with all my cow. My awesome cows.

This guy's working hard on his awesome grape fields. Great.

Oh I lost a villager in a stone house, that's terrible news. Aww.

Alright. Well. I guess I'm just going to call the horde you guys. We can do it, I can handle this. I can handle sixteen hordelings, no big.

Where are they coming from? Where are you at, hordelings? You're coming from straight above. Let's go get you first. Oh yeah, that was just one. one of them died. Sometimes the drown in the water, which I love. Love it when they drown in the water. Okay, where are the rest of you. Oh all the way over there, all the way over there in a different part of town.

No don't worry about it, no worries. So the graphics of this game of course look terrible to you, but they're actually quite good. Oh gosh, oh there were more. Oh god I'm not going to get there soon enough to save that guy. Yep, you got burped. Oh man I lost a villager. Two more, where are they all coming from?

Man, there are a lot of hordelings. This is more than usual-- OH NO NOT MY COW NOT MY COW YOU ATE A COW YOU GAAAAAH DANGIT. He at a cowwwwwww. URGH. Eleven crops and a cow. God that's such a waste. Oh that's terrible, that's a terrible setback. Okay, well that is terrible, that's terrible terrible news. 

Cows will eventually make the ground turn to that stuff, because they've over-grazed and you can no longer use that land. Oh god I lost a cow, dangit, I'm angry about this in case you haven't noticed.

Alright, let's set up for our next round of the horde, here. (15:55)

Aw shoot. Dangit, I took too long planting the trees and the horde came before I could prepare properly. This is terrible news. Alright, there's one coming from the bottom, which I never like. I never like when they come from the bottom.

Oh man, just all the grapes, all by himself. You guys got nothing. You can't even. Aw man they're coming from every direction at once! No! I just heard a poor villager-- oh two villagers got eaten.

I didn't put any cows down though, so we're all good on cows. That was three in one. Three in one grab. You got nothing. You can't, you can't even, don't even think that you can kill my villagers.

You killed five of them? That was a bad year you guys, that was a bad season. I just had a very bad season for hordeling death. Wow, that was bad.

Okay, let's try um-- oh man, this is going poorly. I was so good at this game when I was-- I was so good at this game twenty years ago. I just lost half my villagers you guys, that was a huge number of horde. Am I still suffering from the environmentalist protection of the horde? Is that still a thing that I'm suffering with?

I need five more to have... I'm going to have five cows you guys. And I'm going to protect them, and it's going to be awesome.

Okay. You can also sell your cows at any time. So it's not like-- like you can sell your cows for a hundred, you buy them for a hundred, you sell them for a hundred, and they generate revenue in between. It's sort of, it's amazing. It's wonderful.

Alright, cows cows cows. Cows. They're all in the same place, I can protect them.

Well, maybe actually... how much time do I have left? Not very much. So... Let's just do that, and let's see if I can... No I can't do that, no. Alright, well I'm going to trust my swordsmanship to take on the horde. And even in these most dire of circumstances. (18:11)

There's only eight hordelings coming. See? What the heck. Maybe they're going to be bad hordelings, of course there are different species of hordeling. And that is important to know. You're slow... are these, is this the giant ones? These like terrible giant horde guys?

No, this is normal horde. Oh my god, did I run too far away, and I already lost a cow? I have already lost a cow. That's freakin' terrible. Okay well, I'm embarrassed by losing that cow. But I only lost one cow.

Stop killing my crops! Okay. Well that could've gone worse. I lost a villager but um ,and I lost a cow. It was terrible. This is really quite bad. But... I'm actually going to harvest all my cows so that when we head into the tax season, I will have enough money to buy some good stuff. So in the meantime, I'm just going to be picking trees, and then we'll be back when the horde come.

(19:33) Okay, the horde are coming. I have 762 gold after all this. They're coming from the north, they're coming from the northeast and the northwest. And mostly that appears to be it. They are spread out, which I never like. I prefer the horde to bunch up some. Oh I hate these guys, they're so much faster. Oh god they're so fast. Okay two in one, that was good, I'm proud of myself.

Alright. Oh god I went way too far way. Oh god my villager's going to get eaten, where is he? Oh it was too late. Oh he wasn't even one of the hard ones to kill.

Alright, success. I like how they just pop into bubbles. Um so we got 44 crop monies, so we now have 856 gold. So this is good, we are doing well. Take my 70 crowns, I don't care, you can have it Kronus Maelor. You don't realize how exceptionally good I am at raising funds.

Okay, so uh. We are now going to buy, since we have 786... this is great, I didn't think we were going to get up to over 750. But we are up over 750, which means we can we can get three knight contracts. I might only get two, though, so I can also use one of them-- I'm just going to get two knight contracts. That's not what I meant. Undo. Can I undo that? No I can't...

(20:05)

This is what people were paying for back in 1994, and we were very happy to do it, because frankly it's very fun. Nowadays, you literally can just go download this program for free because no one cares enough to be selling it anymore. And it's wonderful, it's such a weird thing. Such a weird... it's a little bit of a relic. It's a little bit nostalgic, but it's also a fun game.

The horde, everyone. Thanks for watching this episode of Games With Hank, I'm Hank, this has been games with me, DFTBA.