Horse

The **Horse**, also known as Gas Mask Horse or Šemík is an enemy featured in HROT.

## Appearance

In terms of physical appearance, it's pretty much a regular horse, slim, tall, and long. It has a light earthy brown coat with a long black mane and tail. Semik's most distinct characteristic is its gas mask which seems a standard-issue horse gas mask that stretches and covers the entirety of its head having a filter up the front of the mask at the front of its snout in which air intake inlets can be seen. On top, there are the horses' ears covered by the mask and the dark lenses around the eyes giving it quite an intimidating look to some or quite a nice appearance to others.

## Tactical Analysis

The horse lets out a deep grunt whenever it spots the player announcing its presence. As with other enemies, of course, chases after the protagonist in an attempt to eliminate them. once it has a grasp on the position of the player, it lets out a loud neigh as it jumps a few meters and tries to land over the player describing an arc in its trajectory.

Upon jumping, if it lands upon the player, the smack given by its hooves can reduce significant amounts of health as well as being a limit to the locomotion of the player in the point where confrontation occurs making it quite a foe when in the presence of various other enemies. Despite its relatively high speed and agility plus the heavy attack, it can't do much else on its own so the player can avoid being attacked by moving around as it jumps or runs around leaving it vulnerable to any attack by the player, although it's quite strong in this regards as it can take many shots of different weapons before finally dying,

As observed with other enemies, if the player is near a large body of water beyond the usual reach of the enemy, they'll chase after the player but will fall to the water and drown, and in the case of the horse this is prominent in E1M6 by the end of the level when spawned by the activation of one of the valves of the sequence and if the player stands at the platform or beside the valve. the horse will jump but most of the time it'll fall to the water and drown.

## Appears In

* E1M6: Vysehrad Castle
* E1M8: Mausoleum
* E2M2: Uranium Mine

## Lore

* Thanks to its unique and memorable design, the gas mask horse has gained quite a meme status in the game's community as the unofficial mascot of the game.
* The horse appeared in the menu title screen in version 0.2.4, replacing the shotgunner. It hasn't appeared there before or since.
* In version 0.4.4, a small pixel art depiction of the horse was added to the game's loading bar.
* The horse has a very generous hitbox which can cause it to clip the player through thin walls on occasion. This has been used for speedrunning purposes in E1M6: Vysehrad Castle and E1M8: Mausoleum.
* The horse was designed in a more incidental manner. To quote the a message by the game developer on the Discord server: "memory: My family was at the cinema on "How to Train Your Dragon 3" and I stayed in the car with the laptop and created hors unplanned (totally haluzácky)".
* In Czech language it is named **Kůň Šemík** (Šemík the horse) which is a reference to Czech legend about Horymír and his horse Šemík. According to the legend Šemík saved Horymír from certain death by a courageous jump from the rock near Vyšehrad.

Enemies

Animals