Revisiting Star Stable Online – A flawed but lovable game experience
This review has been promised for a long time now. When I first looked at Star Stable Online, I came away with a very critical view, and voiced my annoyance at many of its choices in my first review.
Thanks to the SSO team giving me generous access to the game’s paid features, the help of several members in the TMQ community and the numerous updates the game has made since I first wrote about it, I was actually excited to give it another go. I spent significantly more time with the game this time around, and even invested some Star Coins here or there. Let’s dive into new realizations, remaining gripes, minor nitpicks and major flaws.
Meanwhile, in Jorvik
Star Stable Online publishes an update every single week, and has been doing so ever since the game launched in 2011. The content of these updates varies from new horses and horse coat colors becoming available for purchase, to new temporary quests and races being unlocked, to seasonal special events, to updates made to the play world.
In a News article about “Horse Generations”, the SSO team shows comparisons between their horse art styles over the years.
In my first write-up about the game, I criticized the look of some horses and the art style of the environments. While the goofy-looking starter horses were already exchanged for the vastly better looking updated Jorvik Warmblood a while ago, the months since my last writeup have brought significant changes to the looks of the game’s environments.
While there are apparently some fans who prefer the look of “classic” horse breeds, it has become quite clear to me personally that much of what I found decidedly ugly about SSO previously is residue of the past, and is in the process of being updated.
On multiple occasions, I found myself riding through environments that I found genuinely pretty in their new colorful glory.
A moment of genuine appreciation for the environment.
Halloween in SSO: Come on, how can I not love this
Since I took more time to play, I was present for one or the other seasonal event and special occasion – the Galloper Thompson memory race being one such that I cannot describe any more accurately than insanely badass.
Perhaps the most important change however was not in the game but in my approach: this time, I visited Jorvik as a premium Star Rider, with a generous allowance of Star Coins in my wallet, provided to me for free by Star Stable Product Owner and TMQ Interview partner Nika Bender.
Graphics comparison: Moorland Beach when I first played in late 2018…
… and the same area now. Fuller colors and cartoonier textures make for a much more consistent visual appeal.
Graphics comparison: Nilmer’s Highland in late 2018…
… and Nilmer’s Highland in early 2020
Ten Thousand Tales
Star Stable Online boasts of offering ten thousand quests to play. As can be expected with such a scope, these quests vary drastically in their quality, both in terms of writing and presentation.
Some of the quests feel epic, urgent and important, others focus very much on the daily life in horse-crazy Jorvik. Unfortunately, all too many of the quests’ mechanics boil down to the bog-standard “go there” and “pick up five of that”, aside from the ever-present “race through these checkpoints”. There are rare occasions where the mechanics deviate from these norms: the game offers a handful of stealth missions, for example. The resulting gameplay often feels extra clunky, as though the quest designers did what they could to bring in some variety, but were too limited in their toolset to add anything that actually feels good.
It’s always easy to abstract any game mechanic to the point where it sounds boring, but what makes many quests feel frustrating is that the presentation and polish around them is lacking.
A very common quest setup: go here, drag item there, wait, return.
While you sometimes get brief cutscenes and custom animations, many of the more trivial quests feature only a progress bar at the bottom of your screen that tells you what action your character is performing, rather than showing any specific animation. The game only just added differentiation between what is “main quest” and what are less important side quests, meaning that for much of my playthrough, I had no way of knowing what I was getting into, apart from starting to develop a hunch for what characters are generally involved with the more interesting quest lines. I’m happy to see this has been addressed, at least.
The writing quality in these quests is solid, for the most part. Many quests are relatively banale, some are a bit dumb and some are genuinely interesting. Dialogues are always serviceable, often entertaining and sometimes downright hilarious.
From a User Experience perspective (more on that below), the flow of following any quests in the game is hindered by the quest structure: since practically no dialogue exists outside of the Receive Quest / Complete Quest framings, the game often makes you accept quests with objectives like “Keep talking to Character X”. Such quests tend to give you 5 experience points and are necessary simply to continue in the dialogue. This completely breaks natural dialogue flow, and makes the interactions feel incredibly awkward.
The limited structure of dialogues, tasks and cutscenes can also lead to bizarre situations like this one: A quest mechanic involves you eavesdropping on two NPCs. Once a dialogue box reveals that they caught you and are coming after you, you have to
Stroll casually back to the quest giver to finish the eavesdropping quest, which is concluded with a dialogue tag along the lines of “we should get out of here, they’ve seen us.”
Click the quest giver again for a new quest where she tells you “We should run.”
Click ‘Yes’ to accept a quest with the objective “escape”
Click the “Ok” button to start a race type quest
Wait for the race starting countdown to run out
Finally start your escape by racing through a few checkpoints
Needless to say, this setup ruins any sense of urgency that the dialogue and cutscenes try to build up. And this is one of the more polished quest lines, with dedicated animations and camera angles.
Imperfections of Inputs
A core complaint in my initial review was the awful handling of player character and horse. I am significantly less bothered by this problem by now, which is due to a handful of factors: On the one hand, since I sort of forced myself to play the game again regardless of how I felt about it, I simply got used to it. At the same time, my horse has levelled up and gained various improvements to its stats, which includes not only how fast it runs, but also how quickly it reacts to my inputs.
Another factor that confounds me is that my starter horse was in an awful “mood” from the very start. To get a horse into a good mood, one either has to come online to do horse care chores every single day for weeks, or spend Star Coins on either ongoing stable care, or the veterinarian’s treatment. While a new horse I eventually bought started off in an excellent mood, I do not understand why my initial starter horse did not at least start out with “okay”.
That level ups and regular care bring improvements is to be expected, but the result of this set-up is that your first moments of horse riding, where the game should be making a good impression on you, will be the absolute worst experience of the game in this regard.
Ok no look, I know neither of these makes my SSO riding skills look good, but trust me there is a world of difference in the horse handling between the Level 2 horse on the left and the Level 14 horse on the right.
I can imagine a relatively simple approach to improving this: as part of the first few quests, a player could be allowed to ride an NPCs horse for one race track. The character could explicitly tell the player that their own horse can become that quick and responsive with enough training.
The tight turns of the showjumping courses remain an interesting challenge even with a high level horse.
It’s possible I missed an explanation along those lines in the first few bits of dialogue. There are loading screen hints that inform the player that training and better equipment will improve your horse’s handling. And yet, I am not sure if I would have had the patience to grind through the low levels if a friend had not let me try their high-level horse and character for a quick insight.
The actual process of levelling up my horse ended up being quite a bit of fun for me, with a wide variety of daily races in different locations. While none of the races are difficult to finish, improving your best time can be a neat little challenge, which involves trying ever riskier shortcuts in order to gain a second here or there. Variety races like the Showjumping at the Silverglade Arena or the Pole Bending outside Moorland function essentially the same as the more common cross country races, but require a bit more finesse in managing your horse’s speed on tight turns. Trying to improve my score in these races was overall satisfying, despite minor complaints like the fact that I would like to see my previous score when I’m told I reached a new best time.
Whether that satisfaction holds up once I will be levelling a second horse once I finally decide to buy one remains to be seen. I doubt I would go online simply to gain horse XP, once I have reached the end of the currently available quests.
World and Progress
The world of Jorvik is vast. Players generally gain access to more areas by completing quests, though it is once again often unclear which quest line will lead to unlocking what area. Further questing is required to unlock Fast Travel trailers, with again no indicator for how far you are away from that goal.
Repairing the bridge towards Jarlaheim and the Harvest Counties takes several in-game days and a variety of quests and busywork.
A quest line to repair the large bridge towards Jarlaheim drags on for a while, but also ends up very satisfying as a result of the significant amounts of work you put into it. When riding into new areas, the game gains an interesting explorative aspect, although the sensation remains relatively rare.
Considering that I still have several locked areas, I can safely assume there is still a whole bunch of content left for me to discover in the game. A look at Jorvikipedia tells me that horses are maxed out at level 15 – my primary mount just reached level 14. Players on the other hand don’t have an explicit level cap, but simply run out of available quests once they’ve seen all of the game’s content for the time being, generally at around level 20. At the time of writing, my character is level 14.
From keeping an eye on the discussions happening in dedicated fan groups, it seems that many players who are finished with the existing quest lines hope for updates that bring new quests rather than “only” new horses. Considering the Star Stable lore runs deeper than what can be seen in the game today – there have been books and single player games back in the day – I’d definitely consider the addition of new areas or storylines a possibility in the future.
User Experience
One of the game’s core problems is hardly surprising, considering that the game was first released almost a decade ago and has grown over time rather than having been designed for its current state: Star Stable Online’s interface and user experience is an utter mess.
On a screen with larger resolution – I play on 1440p – much of the User Interface is very small, with many interactions relying on mouse clicks and not offering keyboard shortcuts. Interface windows like Character Overview, Inventory and Shops can be dragged around for easier navigation and interaction between them, but are back in their original arrangement when you open them the next time.
Using quest items by opening your inventory, clicking a tiny item icon and dragging it onto a large sparkling area in front of you feels dated and clunky and makes one long for a more elegant inventory management system such as a quick access item bar similar to what games like Minecraft, Terraria or Stardew Valley offer.
Dialogue options come up frequently in some quest lines, not at all in others.
Interface Elements such as central yellow overlay text, scrolling text at the bottom of the screen and character-based text boxes are used inconsistently throughout different quests: Sometimes the player characters’ dialogue is implied only through the reactions of NPCs, sometimes you can choose dialogue options, sometimes your character gets a textbox on the bottom left, and sometimes your character’s reactions or thoughts are represented in the central yellow overlay that is also used for instructions sometimes. None of these inconsistencies are game-breaking, but they prove a lack of unified vision in the user experience.
My location marker looks like it’s exactly on the quest marker, but the quest giver is actually outside of town and further down.
A similar list of minor frustrations can be made about the map and navigation: Quests are shown on the map, but to know what quests they are, you have to open the separate quest log and remember what location they’re assigned to. Quick travel points are shown but not labelled on the map, and when you actually select them you do so from a non-visual list, meaning you better memorize exactly where what is and what quick travel point is closest to it. The map itself cannot be zoomed into, which means that finding a particular quest giver or goal can be a pain, especially in towns and villages where you don’t see very far.
I would not be surprised to learn if these issues are known and ready to be addressed at the Star Stable offices: It is clear to me that the game is in dire need of a fundamental UI/UX overhaul. Whether long term players who have gotten used to the current situation would be in favor of such a thing is another question. But if the functionality stays the same, I could see an optional “legacy UI” setting as a good approach to ease the transition.
Monetization
When playing the game’s free version in 2018, I felt incredibly limited in almost every way, with not only all other horses, but also most quests and most areas being exclusive to paying users.
Now that I’ve revisited as a Star Rider, I wonder if I was wrong to look at SSO as anything like a free-to-play game. In reality, Star Stable is a full-price title with constant updates and additional in-app purchases, that happens to have a free demo.
That a lifetime purchase includes a continuous allowance of weekly Premium currency is something I don’t recall seeing in any other game, and deserves some praise in my opinion. Its existence is also something that renders the purchase of temporary Star Rider access fairly useless, considering the lifetime pass will always be the most efficient investment.
That the SSO team releases new horses that can be bought with SC on a relatively regular basis is something I cannot blame them for, nor do I share the community’s opinion that it is somehow indicative of the game’s downfall when one new model isn’t quite as exciting and widely beloved as others have been.
The updated Tinkers were released last December, to much acclaim by the player base from what I’ve seen.
Whereas the Knabstrupper released in February sparked a lot of discussion in the community, including accusations of devs being lazy, because gamers be gamers, whether they’re discussing maps and guns or horse models and animations.
Whether or not it makes ethical sense for a game primarily aimed at children to rely so strongly on premium currency is another matter. For parents, I would especially recommend simply getting the lifetime option and making it clear that if kids want to buy extra stuff, they have to save up their weekly allowance.
The Best Horse Game – For Now
Okay, I’m gonna say it: even for a solo player like myself, Star Stable Online is the best horse game currently available, among everything I’ve seen and tried.
It has hours and hours of content with entertaining writing, an increasingly decent level of visual quality and polish, and a dev team that takes its horse-loving audience and its desires seriously, which is sadly rare in this genre.
With its focus on young girls and magic adventures, Star Stable Online will never be able to meet all the desires of adult and/or male equestrian gamers, nor those of people looking for a more grounded, realistic experience. This one game, however much many people love it, should not be the only thing we get and have to be satisfied with.
My outlook on the future of SSO is hopeful however: already, numerous improvements have been made to the game, and I am looking forward to what comes next, even though I doubt I’ll be playing every day to keep my horse(s) happy for weeks and months at a time. In a way, I feel like with the rate of updates, half the complaints in this review may be out of date in a few weeks.
Whether or not core issues like the monotonous quest mechanics can be fixed remains to be seen, and I don’t blame anyone for not putting up with the User Experience and early game controls in their current state.
What remains one of my main takeaways about this game is its huge potential in convincing video game publishers that we can be a viable target audience: The existence and ongoing success of Star Stable Online despite its supposedly niche audience and its many issues should prove that equestrian gamers are worth catering to, and one look at the quality of the average game in this genre is evidence enough that there is plenty of room for competition.
Until the industry realizes this and acts on this potential, I may just keep hanging out in Jorvik to pass the time.
Star Stable Online is a horse-focused massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. It is arguably the biggest and most successful game in the genre of horse games at the moment — if not ever. This article is not so much a conclusive review of the whole game, as it is a summary of my first impressions after a few hours of playing.