My Cows

a little multiplayer road-trip game

My Cows

The car game where you count cows out the window — turned into a real-time multiplayer clicking game. Cows amble across a shared pasture. Click them before they wander off. Then a graveyard rolls by, and everything falls apart.

Written from the passenger seat, somewhere on a very long drive.

Once upon a road trip

There's a car game called my cows. You look out the window. You see cows. You claim them — "my cows!" — and whoever has the most cows when you get there wins. Pass a church and you can marry your cows to double them. A hospital gives everyone else's cows mad cow disease. A graveyard? Someone's herd gets buried.

This project is that game, faithfully ported to the internet. It was built in one long stretch of highway, laptop balanced in the passenger seat, somewhere deep in cow country. Real cows were sighted during development. None were clickable.

The rules of the pasture

Things drift across your screen. Clicking them has consequences.

Cow

the common case

Click it, it's yours. One cow, added to your herd. Spawned by the server, so no fair inventing cows.

Church

"marry my cows"

Uncommon. Click it and your cows get married — your whole herd doubles. A joyous occasion for you specifically.

Hospital

"mad cow disease"

Rare. Click it and everyone else's herd catches mad cow disease and is cut in half. You'll hear about it in the chat.

Graveyard

"bury your cows"

Extremely rare — about two an hour, globally. Everyone else's herd is buried: 90% gone. Friendships have ended over less.

Inside the barn

It's a small thing, but it's built like a real one.

  • Real-time multiplayer. Everyone shares one pasture — spawns, scores, join/leave notices, and a little chat box, live for every player at once.
  • Server-side cows. The game decides where every cow appears and checks every click, so you can't cheat cows into existence.
  • Tuned rarity. Spawn rates hold steady globally no matter how many players are on: ~30 churches, ~6 hospitals, and ~2 graveyards per hour, shared among everyone.
  • Herds that persist. Pick a name and play — your herd and the leaderboard survive between visits, and you can add a password later if your herd becomes worth protecting.

And that's My Cows — a small, sincere piece of road-trip lore.

The pasture is closed for the season — the herd will be back soon.