Roly-Pony – a Horse-Themed Puzzle Game – is Out Now and Already Charming the Internet
Roly-Pony is a Suika style puzzle game that you can play in your browser for free on itch.io. It was developed by TMQ Community members Maskeovo and Jessi – the latter of whom you might recognize from her main project, Fernhoof Grove.
In true Tiny Horse Game Spirit, the two creators got together for about two weeks to create, finish and release Roly-Pony to the community. The result is a mechanically straightforward, cute and polished cozy puzzle game that lets you aim for high scores without any time pressure. You combine mints, apples, treats and hay bales to get horses of increasing size – from Roly the Shetland Pony to Bourbon the Shire – to maximize your score before overfilling your pasture. Every horse you unlock comes with a paragraph or two of backstory explaining how this horse has found its way to Roly’s pasture.
On how the game came to be, Jessi says: “After my summer break I needed something low pressure and simple to ease back into game development. And right at that moment I saw a conversation in TMQ's Discord server throwing out ideas for tiny horse games and one message about a suika game going from miniatures to drafts caught my attention. Maske and I had often talked about making a relaxed side project together one day, and we felt this was the perfect opportunity to do just that. And since we are both huge horse game enthusiasts of course our collab project had to be filled with all the horsie details!”
I find Roly-Pony a wonderful little game – I may have spent more time than strictly intended trying to improve my high score this past weekend – that’s worth reporting on here for a handful of reasons:
It’s a small, finished horse game. I keep seeing hopeful amateurs in this community wanting to launch their own projects and hopelessly overscoping, when the Roly-Pony approach is how a first horse game should be tackled: Taking a familiar, simple mechanic but re-theming it for the horse fans is perfect for a practice project, and I would love to see more examples like this.
Despite its simplicity, Roly-Pony manages to ooze a love for horses out of every pore in a way that I often miss even in bigger horse games that explicitly aim at this audience. With its horse intro screens, the game demonstrates just how little technical or mechanical complexity is needed to portray horses as characters with individual personalities and as herd animals who want to run around with their friends. I absolutely love it and I wish other games would take a leaf out of this game’s book in that regard.
I posted Roly-Pony on Bluesky on Friday. That post has led to two separate press outlets discovering the game and writing about it, most notably the tech news site Engadget. If you’re paying close attention to horse game coverage, you might recognize the outlet’s weekend editor Cheyenne MacDonald from her article about making Indie Horse Games last year. Both outlets emphasize the delightful change of pace that the game has given them in days otherwise spent doom-scrolling.
Roly-Pony is the kind of game I can use to keep my hands and eyes busy while I’m watching video essays or listening to audiobooks, or to simply use it as a little treat for myself when I need a break from work. I know that the idea of small simple puzzle games with a horsie theme may be less exciting than yet another “I’ll just make my own horse game, like Red Dead, but just about horses!” type of project, but personally I’d much, much rather see this kind of self-contained, polished and finished horse game project than the alternative.
And if the reception that Roly-Pony has gotten over the past few days is any indicator, I’m not alone in that. On the community’s reaction, Maske adds: “We are extremely grateful for all the love! We didn't expect the game to be so successful outside the horse gaming community, but we are happy nonetheless. Frankly, it's been a bit hectic, but we love how the game turned out, and would like to return to improving it time to time! We also want to thank everyone from the horse game community for the warm reception.”
I highly recommend you give Roly-Pony a try yourself right here!