Exclusive Game Announcement: Horses of Hoofprint Bay, a 2D Stable Management Game Inspired by My Childhood Favorite Horse Game
Disclaimer: This article is about a game I work on and whose success I am directly invested in.
I have very special news to share today: Horses of Hoofprint Bay is a brand new upcoming horse game that’s incredibly special and dear to me for various reasons I’ll tell you all about below. But first of all, here’s the just-released trailer:
About the Game
Horses of Hoofprint Bay is a 2D stable management and riding game: Inspired by a 2003 classic – more on that below – this game lets players take over a piece of farmland and slowly upgrade it from a few ramshackle sheds to a prestigious stud farm. Players earn money through participating in Show Jumping competitions, giving riding lessons, and selling home-bred yearlings, while investing into additional buildings and upgrades and staff to manage their growing herd.
Horses of Hoofprint Bay aims to be a very classic take on the horse game formula, but modernized through the lens of a team made up entirely of horse lovers. The game is family friendly and safe for kids, but offers a challenge to adult players who want to perfect their horses over generations and succeed in the more difficult competitions.
The team has tons and tons of ideas for additional features and content, but I can attest to the fact that even in its currently playable state, I got about 30 hours of time out of a playthrough earlier this year… over a single prolonged weekend mind you, because I was immediately that hooked.
We’re planning to open the game up to playtesters at some point in the coming months, and release sometime in 2026, though our exact timeline depends upon various factors including funding opportunities and how big the interest in the game turns out to be.
Meet Thogli Studios
The dev team behind Horses of Hoofprint Bay is a two-person studio based in Germany. Both software engineer Theresa Thoma as well as illustrator Anna Glinsmann are equestrians, which puts me into the wonderful position of not having to correct and suggest aspects of horse realism for once, but being able to focus on game production and marketing work.
Programmer Theresa Thoma demonstrating her jumping skills – and providing an important reference image for our game’s key art with it!
Illustrator Anna Glinsmann currently doesn’t have a regular riding opportunity, so games and media with horses matter even more.
Both of them played various horse games in their childhood – though interestingly enough, not the specific one most relevant as inspiration here – and went on to rediscover the genre in adulthood. “When I moved to the big city for uni, I craved horses and nature more than ever,” explains Anna. “That’s how I ended up finding likeminded community via The Mane Quest!”
Theresa’s story is similar, except she happened to be stuck on an Antarctic research station for over a year at the time. “I had absolute horse withdrawal,” she says. “So I searched for horse games and found TMQ.”
Anna has been sharing teaser material from her work on this game on her Instagram.
Theresa’s passion lies in buildup and management games. Her day job since returning from the Antarctic has been making educational app games for Funline Media. She cites a love for Zoo Tycoon and wants to make something like that with horses one day. Horses of Hoofprint Bay isn’t quite that yet, but has a contained enough scope to be a much more reasonable first independently made game project. “I really enjoy working on HoHB because both the tech side of things and the horsie things are well inside my comfort zone. Combining them is an interesting, rewarding challenge, but not so hard that it’d get frustrating.”
“I’m excited to have a super cute game – Anna is giving it so much character! – that I myself also enjoy playing,” Theresa says. “And I can’t wait to see what players will make of our game, the horses they breed and the tack items they might add with our very accessible modding setup.”
“Working on a game like this is literally my childhood dream!” says Anna, and adds with a laugh: “That’s why I teamed up with a stranger from the internet and no pay, which I would normally never do.” She was impressed by an early prototype shared by Theresa in the TMQ Discord right away.
About her own work, Anna says that she aims for a “playful and touchy-feely style by imagining I can pick up and touch what I’m drawing. I want the yard buildings to look friendly, lived-in, nice but not sterile, and still have space for nature – I don’t like when progress means destroying trees. I take a lot of inspiration from the northern German countryside where I grew up, which shows in the architecture, I think.”
Origin Stories
Horses of Hoofprint Bay is closely inspired by the 2003 game My Horse Farm (Mein Pferdehof) by Limbic Entertainment – the title that made me personally fall in love with horse games back in the day. It wasn’t a flawless game by any means, but it managed to be a crisp and satisfying experience in ways that early 3D horse games just weren’t, by focusing more on mechanics and management than realistic visuals.
Almost seven years ago now, I gave a short talk – it’s available online here – at a local games festival about what made this game so special back in the day. Even as a teenager looking for new horse games to play, I was always irritated that nobody had yet made a game similar to Mein Pferdehof. Over the years of working in games, improving my understanding of scope, and learning more about the development of the original Mein Pferdehof from its developers has only increased that irritation, because surely this would be a scope-friendly feasible game pitch for even a small indie studio, and surely this – at the time – massively successful game deserved some sort of revival nowadays.
Funnily enough, it was that 2018 talk and my incessant prattling about this game that would indirectly lead to what is now Horses of Hoofprint Bay: When Theresa posted about her intention to prototype an MPH-like game, TMQ community member SartorialDragon – who themself had found the website and community through the MPH talk video on YouTube and went on be instrumental in TMQ Community efforts such as the creation of the Horse Game Database and the Tiny Horse Game Jam – pointed to Anna as a potential collaboration partner, based on her activity in the Horses & Video Games Discord server.
It’s a rare treat to actually have screenshots from the precise moment when community magic happens.
This initial prototype showcase shared by Theresa in the TMQ Discord hooked Anna enough to team up
Anna and Theresa went on to flesh out their prototype together, which eventually led me to offer my help and experience in marketing and producing. Fast forward about a year, and here we are with Anna and Theresa having founded Thogli Studios to release their joint project and The Mane Quest being the game’s publisher. I cannot wait to show you all more now that the initial announcement is official. My posting fingers have been itching for months.
Outlook
I could go on and on explaining why I’m absolutely in love with this game’s idea and execution so far, how I’ve already been utterly absorbed in my first “proper” playthrough this Summer, how the contained scope of a 2D game allows the small team to focus on a few fun features and hopefully finish this project in a reasonable amount of time, how absolutely giddy I am to finally share this with the wider world and see the excitement even a first few teaser posts have garnered… but I think the best I can do is letting the game speak for itself sometime soon.
Horses of Hoofprint Bay is already in a very playable state, of which we hope to convince people through an open playtest or demo within the coming months. If you want to make sure to hear about any such opportunities, I highly recommend that you Wishlist and Follow the game on Steam, and that you sign up to the Thogli Studios newsletter via this form. You can also follow the studio and its project on Bluesky and Instagram, and you can find additional links (including a press kit) right here on the dedicated landing page.
