Alright, I finally got a chance to write up my thoughts on HORSE GAMES! I have been teasing my thoughts on this sub-genre for a while and finally sat down with Alice Ruppert the writer and creator of The Mane Quest blog  to ask her everything about horse games. 

But in short, here are my TL;DR thoughts:

No I don’t think every dev should make a horse game (unlike horror, which I still think everyone should at least one). But I do think every developer should at least look at them, maybe even play one because, it is very important that you understand the importance of genre, fandom, and how visibility works. Even if you are not making a horse game, the lessons you can learn by looking at this sub genre are very similar to other genres, just not as blatantly clear as they are with horse games. 

What the heck is a horse game? You mean like Shadow of the Colossus?

I can’t describe it better than Alice and she gave a fantastic talk summarizing the whole thing. Watch this talk here:

You should also read some of her intro blog posts:

Also check out this thread on reddit:

PSA: Most animated horse assets you can buy are subpar in terms of anatomy and not good enough if your target audience includes "people who like horses"
byu/AliceTheGamedev ingamedev

But in general a horse game does NOT mean any game with a horse in it. I love the term that Alice uses for games that use horses exclusively for in-game transportation: “Meat Motorcycle.” 

You just added a meat motorcycle. Yes, the horse in Shadow of the Colossus has the name Agro, and is a character with its own emotional story beats and is part of the plot. But the horse is just one aspect of the game. 

According to Alice the Assassin’s Creed horses are “peak meat motorcycle”

vroom vroom

Horse games are much much deeper. 

Filtered through her blogs, my definition is that horse games are basically crafty-buildy-simulationy games where you care for horses, and manage all the infrastructure that supports them. 

Horse games have some very very specific genre anchors. Here is a non-exhaustive list of these anchors:

  • Training
  • Breeding with accurate genetics
  • Detailed horse coats and breeds all appropriately named (don’t call a horse “brown” when it is actually a “bay”)
  • Horse care such as washing and grooming
  • The ability to swing the camera around and just watch the horse move around in an environment.
  • Accurate horse animation
  • Accurate speed changes which accurately represent the different horse gaits
  • Managing and upgrading the stables with business management mechanics.
  • Ability to name the horse! (THIS SHOULD BE SO SIMPLE)
  • Accurate representations of equipment such as saddles, and bridles. 
  • A big beautiful open world with lots of interactions that you can ride your horses through.
  • Horses with individual personalities.

“Simply having all these features will not in itself make your game stand out. We have tons of horse games that technically offer many of these things, but their implementation is lacking in creativity, fun, accuracy or more. Devs getting the impression that you can just throw a level up feature in there and then it counts as satisfying horse training gameplay is already common” 

  • Alice Ruppert

You know I say “show UI because it secretly explains how awesome your game is?” Look at this beautiful screenshot for the recently 1.0 released hit Ranch of Rivershine.

Now that you know the genre anchors, lets count how many anchors are communicated in 1 screenshot:

  • I can name the horse “Rowdy Dandelion” 
  • There are accurate names for the age and gender of the horse. 
  • The variety of brush types from Bristle to Soft show an understanding that in reality all horses have different preferences.
  • The graphics show a beautiful lush environment to explore
  • The fact we can see a foal and a couple adult horses and a button called “Family Tree” indicates a breeding and genetics game mechanic.
  • The button “Send to stable” indicates the fact that we manage both the grazing area seen and a place for the horse to sleep.
  • The various status bars show that Speed, Endurance, Jump are all factors which means the simulation for competition will be deep. 
  • The icons on the bottom of the screenshot imply feeding, grooming, customization, and care. 

Even if you aren’t making a horse game, your screenshots tell people how well you executed the genre’s anchors. 

Pity the horse girl 

Read this Steam review

Specifically this line: “are you like me – an adult woman who grew up with mid to terrible horse games and for so long craved that perfect escape for your inner equestrian?… I can now look at my inner child and say ‘we made it, kid.’”

Part of the reason I feel so bad for the horse game community is how ignored they are. They have very very clear needs and are willing to pay money for it, but most game companies are like, “Let’s make another Soulslike!” or “here we put our under-funded interns in charge of this dumb girls game and gave them 1 month to finish it.” 

To live as a horse game fan is to long for the day when a developer with skills and the knowledge will finally make a game worth of them. 

I was browsing my local used game store and found this used Xbox 360 horse game with a $100 price tag. Oh poor horse fans, there is nothing for you even though the market has every indication that someone is willing to spend $100 on a vintage horse game. 

The reason I started howtomarketagame.com is to expose developers to things that are maybe outside their bubble. Here is a chance to see outside of typical genres that indie devs 

I swear I didn’t make this, I found it on reddit.

Or this one:

Indie game devs live in a genre bubble where they keep seeing the same types of games over and over. It is time to break free!

Consider the horse game! I want you to see games that are outside the 2D Pixelart platformer or soulslike genre. 

A lack of skills

Alice explained to me that basically horse-game-fans are so underserved that a big problem is that some fans will try to make a horse game and have the passion and the understanding but don’t have the game design skills to accomplish their vision. So you will see a bunch of games on the market that get a ton of hype, visibility, and wishlists because of a trailer and screenshots, but when the game ships, it lacks the actual gameplay to satisfy what the fans want.

It is so common Alice made a “my first horse game bingo card”

It is similar to dev who say “working on my first game, it’s an MMO, with 100 classes, 1000 bosses. Looking for an animator who will to work for rev share.”

Fans make their own horse games out of other games

There is such a dearth of horse games that fans are left scrambling for scraps and turning games that aren’t even horse games into horse games:

Red Dead Redemption 2 is considered one of the best horse games despite being mostly about shooting people. The scenery, horse animation, and variety of horse breeds are all so good that they bring in horse fans despite it not having the typical genre anchors. Horse fans ignore the game’s story mode and just ride around on a horse pretending it is a horse game. They basically role play as a rancher. 

Star Stable is a hit horse game MMO that is not on Steam and hits ALMOST all the anchors that fans want but Alice says that the community is primarily 8-18 year olds so adult horse-game-fans will play, but want something a bit more mature. The game also focuses on a story and when fans finish the narrative arc, there is nothing left. It also lacks the more crafty-buildy elements and simulation mechanics that fans love such as horse breeding and managing a stable.

Rival Stars Horse Racing is a game that was originally pitched as a gambling horse betting simulator but the Horse-Game-Fans were so hungry for good horse games that they took it over and the developer rebranded it to support the community. 

Look at the original branding from launch:

Now look at the branding after adapting it to appeal to horse girls:

And the updated capsule where there is just beautiful open world, no real competition, and a female rider. Horse games!

The common complaint about Steam is that there are SO MANY GAMES that everyone is crowded out. But for horse-game-fans there are so few games that players are turning other games into horse games.

The market is screaming at us to do something for them if only we would listen.

Why game developer “passion” is overrated and “empathy” is cooler

We all know the diagram, make something you can build, something the market wants, and something you are passionate about. 

I think developers put too much importance on the passionate bit. If every developer only makes games they were passionate about we are just going to end up with more of those games from that buzz lightyear meme.

There is an entire population who love games (sometimes horse games) but nobody is making it for them because people with game dev talent keep making their passion products. I think it is truly a magical gift if you take your awesome creative game design skill set and use it for someone else. Take your creative gifts and give them someone who has consistently been ignored. 

I know, making a horse game isn’t as fun as designing another souls-like boss, but you are still making games. It’s not like I am saying you should make accounting software.

I don’t think Horse games are a hot trend to chase. I don’t think they are good for first time devs (too many horse game fans have been let down by amateur products). But if you have the 3D modeling talent, maybe you have made complex management games before, or are an investor looking to fund the next project, consider the horse game. 

You don’t even have to make a full horse game. 

If you are good at rigging and animation and are interested in studying how horses move, you could even make asset packs for unity and unreal. The leading Horse animation asset on the unity asset store is Horse Animset Pro but it makes so many core horse movement mistakes that it is notorious among horse fans. They know when a game uses Horse Animset Pro. You can beat Horse Animset Pro if you just care enough!

Lack of visibility isn’t why most games fail

The number one question indie game devs ask about marketing is “how do I get more visibility.” But in most cases, games get plenty of visibility, it’s just that fans don’t like what they see. For horse games this is very apparent because of the specificity of the genre, and the clarity to which they assess games.

Horse fans are so hungry and passionate about the genre that for any newly announced horse game it gets thrown into a gauntlet where fans dissect every aspect of it and if they don’t like what they see, the game is trashed.

Look at this quote from a Mane Quest blog post warning the community not to get too crazy about an upcoming game

Key quote “In the horse game communities on Facebook, I’ve seen an unfortunate trend for people to project all sorts of impossible hopes onto this particular project.”

The game in question was Astride which launched with an estimated 100,000 wishlists. It had TONS of visibility from the horse game fan community. 

However, the core horse game anchors that fans expected were not met by the game at EA launch and it got bad reviews and the game underperformed. See this call to arms from one negative review:

If you thought there was a stereotype for toxic hardcore bro gamers, watch out for self-proclaimed “horsegirls.” Let me make it clear once again: I don’t think horse games are good for first time devs. 

The bottleneck isn’t visibility, it is finding a game that excites an audience and has follow-through. If you find a genre with hungry fans (like Astride did with it’s 100,000 estimated wishlists) and your game looks like it might satiate it, they will come. But, if the game launches and doesn’t meet the expectations, it is ignored. It is a product problem, not a promotion problem. 

I have seen this with other games in more traditionally hardcore genres like Song of Iron (full analysis here). For all genres, people see your game. If it is appealing to them, it will get shared, people will find it, streamers will play it. If it doesn’t seem to be getting that “lift” It could be the product, not the promotion.

Casual games don’t mean they aren’t discerning

I think there is a stereotype that if someone isn’t a hardcore gamer they have lower expectations. I have consulted for developers making more traditional indie genres and pointed out key missing features and places where the game was janky and the developer response was “well we are making a more casual version of that genre. We aren’t appealing to the hard core fans so we don’t have to add that.”

That is not the right answer. Casual fans have high expectations too. They aren’t dumb.

If you look at a “nice” game without guns or hard core difficulty like My Horse & Me 2, you might assume those fans are naïve and you can get away with a jankier game.

As we have seen from reviews by “Fellow horsegirls,” those fans are very discerning. They know what they like and if you deliver a dumbed down, simplistic game you will get roasted with bad reviews.

Plenty of people in this audience are ALSO playing souls-likes or cozy farming games or open world RPGs or any other genre. A big chunk of the target audience KNOWS what good games look/feel/play like!

Alice Ruppert

“Casual” does not mean you can get away with casual development. Your game has to be flawless no matter the audience. 

Summary 

  1. I don’t think every indie should make a horse game. They are very difficult to do correctly. They require a big budget, and a lot of expertise. 
  2. Horse games are not just games that have horses 
  3. Horse Games are a fantastic example about how anchors are secretly more important than hooks and if your game is too unique it can actually hurt your chances. 
  4. “Casual gamers” does not mean they don’t have taste or will settle for a lower-quality product. They are very very discerning. 
  5. Even if you aren’t making a full-on “horse game” but have a horse in it, do some research and make it authentic. The fans are out there.

It kind of makes me mad how ignored horse game fans have been. These are fans with very clear needs, know what they want,  are willing to show up, and there isn’t as much competition as the genres indie game devs are more familiar with.

If you want more inspiration check out these links from the Mane Quest

Also there are some opportunities to make smaller scale horse games. The Mane quest ran a game jam for lo-fi horse games which you can check out here: https://www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/6/2/tiny-horse-game-jam-8-adorable-new-horse-games-you-can-play-for-free