Must-Read: Polygon Analyzes Assassin's Creed Horses with an Expert of Equine History
Polygon writer Simone de Rochefort and Horse Historian Professor Donna Landry take a close look at the horses in the Assassin’s Creed games: The recent titles Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla all use the same horse model regardless of their vastly different settings and cultural context.
De Rochefort and Landry draw comparisons between this horse type and modern breeds, and go through the games’ Viking, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece settings to discuss how horses in those regions and time periods might have looked.
I absolutely love this deep dive and am incredibly happy that for once, I am not alone in reporting on video game horse accuracy. The article is an absolute must-read for TMQ fans, horse history enthusiasts and equestrian gamers. Go read it, and let Polygon know if analytical horse content is something you want to see more of!
Click right here: Polygon: A horse expert weighs in on the Assassin’s Creed pony debate (that we started)
Barbie Horse Adventures fans rejoice! There’s going to be a brand new Barbie horse game published by Outright Games and developed by PHL Collective. Mattel announced that Barbie Horse Trails will come to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam) on October 10th 2025.
In an announcement post for Steam Developers on July 31st 2025, Valve revealed its sales and events schedule for the first half of 2026. Among other genre-specific and focused thematic sales Steam announces Horse Fest, taking place from February 19 - 23 next year.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a game about horse girl racing. Yes, you read that right, not horse racing, horse girl racing. The questions of “is this a horse game?” and “will TMQ review it?” have been in the room, so let me take this opportunity to turn the several questions and requests I’ve received about this into Content™.
Following the announcement of Equinox: Homecoming, Harvey Randall at PC Gamer began to wonder why someone would make a game like that and what is up with the horse game niche in general. Naturally, I was happy to provide some insight.
How do horses live? What does a stable look like? Splendid barn aesthetics are nice to have for humans, but what horses really need are the so-called three Fs: Friends, Forage and Freedom. Today I want to have a look at what meeting those needs looks like and how horse-focused media can play an important role in education and normalization when it comes to the question of “What should a cool, fancy, high quality stable look like?”
I was invited to a brand new podcast called You Are Error, hosted by games journalist Nathan Grayson for Aftermath. Nathan and I talked about some of the many ways in which mainstream video games keep dropping the ball when it comes to including horses and why I’m sure that the horse game audience is bigger than anyone realizes and has a lot of potential.
I was a speaker at Devcom 2024 in Cologne, giving a presentation on my horse game work. The recorded talk is now available on YouTube!
Gather up horse game fans, it is time for another announcement roundup. This is where I do a quick rundown of upcoming and recently released games that I want to let you all know about, but don’t have capacity for deep dives and dedicated articles for.