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Hol Horse

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This is Delta and I's entry into the Extended Workshop's Anime Jam. We hope you enjoy this eccentric gunslinger!
-ArtistOfSeer

A wandering Hitman who always prefers to work as a team with someone else, Hol Horse was hired by DIO to hunt down and eliminate the Joestar Group in the year 1989. Utilizing his powerful gun shaped stand, The Emperor, along side his partner, J. Geil and his stand Hanged Man, Hol Horse is a threat to be reckoned with that must not be underestimated.

Hol Horse is a powerful and highly tricky zoning character who emphasizes strong projectile play and tricky traps that are great at stifling approaches. Utilizing his highly flexible projectiles with some tricky normals that help keep opponents at bay up close, Hol is good at putting up an annoying wall that is hard to get past and can explode horribly in the opponents face if they aren’t careful. That being said, his ability to play a conventional poking game is pretty lacking, making him easy to outbox by characters with better close ranged tools. Couple that with his combos being a bit awkward to start and requiring decent setup, precise spacing or specific attacks to connect in order to secure kills, and he can be pretty easily overwhelmed against particularly aggressive opponents. Still, if you can keep the opponent at bay and play your cards right, then you can show your opponents not to mess with the Emperor.
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Utilizing Fspecial or Dspecial, Hol Horse can create puddles on the stage that show the menacing silhouette of Hanged Man within them. If the opponent passes over the puddle, then Hanged Man will erupt out of the puddle, stabbing the opponent before throwing them if he successfully connects. This acts as a powerful setup tool, enabling strong followups if Hanged Man manages to hit the opponent. Do be careful though, as successfully parrying Hanged Man’s attack will put Hol Horse's puddle on cooldown. Attempting to create another puddle will destroy the previous one.

If Hol Horse hits the puddle with one of his gun shot based attacks (Ustrong, Dstrong, Nspecial, or Uspecial), the puddle will erupt in a massive blast while launching off a glob of water in a direction based on the move that hit it. The blast of water deals high damage and knockback, sending at different angles based on which attack triggered it, enabling some powerful kills from a properly placed attack. The glob of water also acts as a projectile tool, traveling at different trajectories depending on the attack used to launch it, which enables further zoning interactions.
Hol Horse summons his stand, Emperor, and fires off a quick shot in front of him. Acting as his primary zoning tool, Nspecial is a fast projectile attack that travels a huge distance and is good at frustrating approaches, albeit the shot itself isn’t particularly damaging. Reflecting the powers of the stand, you are able to change the trajectory of the bullet as it is traveling by holding up or down on the control stick, enabling it to cover more angles and snipe people at long distances more effectively. You are not able to shoot a second shot until the first one has been destroyed in some way, whether by performing Nspecial 2, it getting destroyed by the opponent or the stage, or by it naturally despawning (which happens faster if you hit someone with it). Aiming the bullet into an active Hanged Man puddle can be used to move said puddles, giving you the shallowest angle out of the potential options.

If you press Nspecial again while the bullet is on screen, Hol Horse will perform Nspecial 2: Override, stalling the bullet in the air with a finger gun gesture before launching it off. While the bullet is stalled, you can change its trajectory to whatever you want by holding a direction while its stalled, which will then launch it in that direction once the stall has been released. You can increase the duration on the stall for a bit by holding the special button, giving you more time to think about where you want it to go and to vary up the timing for your opponent to deal with.
Hol Horse pulls out a beer bottle filled with water and lobs it at an arc in front of him, creating a puddle on the ground once its either hit the ground or creating a water glob if it hits an enemy. A powerful arcing projectile that is useful for setplay, acting as a secondary projectile option to compliment his Nspecial. The move has a melee hitbox in front of Hol Horse just before the bottle is thrown, working nicely as either a tricky anti projectile tool to help you contest fireball wars or as an excellent combo starter at close range, as the melee hitbox reliably combos into the bottle and the water glob at close range for an excellent close range punish starter.

If you press the special button after Hol throws the bottle, he will perform Fspecial 2: Glass Shower, summoning Emperor into his hand before shooting a shot upwards while cheekily looking away from his gun to show off. The bullet fired from Emperor homes in on the bottle’s current location to destroy the bottle, causing it to travel in some utterly wild trajectories and covering a ton of air space if you delay it a bit. If the bullet contacts the bottle, it will cause the bottle to shatter as if it had hit an opponent, releasing a water glob downwards that can act as a defensive wall wherever the bottle was destroyed.
Hol Horse summons his stand, Emperor, and aims it down, only for him to put too much willpower into his shot and creates a large explosion that sends him flying upwards. A fairly bog-standard recovery tool without any real ways to mix it up, though you do have decent control over his horizontal trajectory during it. The move has a spiking sweetspot for 1 frame where the explosion spawns, enabling some cheeky kills off stage in an edgeguarding scenario. This explosion hitbox also can be used as a way to move your Hanged Man puddles, sending it in a straight upwards arc.
Hol Horse leaps backwards into the air while pulling out a beer bottle filled with water before lobbing it at an arc below him, creating a puddle on the ground once its either hit the ground or creating a water glob if it hits an enemy. This is a defensive utility move, helping you get out of dodge while also throwing out a projectile that sets up his Hanged Man puddles where he was previously standing. You can control his horizontal trajectory a bit while he’s performing the move, enabling you to either keep on its base trajectory to create some space or fade forward to potentially punish overzealous opponents for a failed attempt to punish you.
Moveset Concept, Animation, Normal attack implementation and Balance – ArtistOfSeer
Moveset Concept, Special move and Gimmick coding, VFX polish, Sound design, and Victory Theme – Delta Parallax
Complex coding assistance - Pejota
Playtesting and Additional brainstorming – various Team Grappler Project members