Steam Horse Fest is Now Live – Here's What I Recommend Buying or Looking Into

Steam is currently hosting a themed sale called “Horse Fest”. Through front page featuring, this event brings a whole lot of eyes onto our niche genre, and hopefully demonstrates the potential of this type of game to a larger audience.

There are so many new and exciting things happening in horse games right now that I can’t possibly provide in-depth coverage for all of them, but I want to chime in with some recommendations to the best of my knowledge nonetheless!

Discounts and Bundles

That’s the hottest deal in Horse Fest if you ask me. If you want two absolutely solid horse game experiences, get this bundle.

• The Ranch of Rivershine and Rival Stars Horse Racing have teamed up for a heavily discounted Rivals of Rivershine bundle. I highly recommend both games (reviews here and here, though note that the latter is quite outdated), and this is a fantastic deal for them if they’re not already in your library.

• The original My Riding Stable: Life with Horses (also known as Gallop & Ride) is 70% off. I didn’t love it when I reviewed it years ago, but I know it’ll scratch the nostalgia itch for some folks!

• The Early Access passion projects Unbridled: That Horse Game and Astride are each 20% off! I haven’t spent much time with either, but I recommend taking a close look at user reviews on Steam to see what each game offers!

• All of Aesir Interactive’s horse games that I either reviewed or worked on are heavily discounted, check out Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship (or its remaster), the imo superior Windstorm: An Unexpected Arrival (review here) or snatch up Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch for 75% off.

• If your budget is limited, consider getting some classics like Let’s Ride: Silver Buckle Stables or Petz Horsez 2 (review here) for cheap!

New Releases

Tobiano is a sport horse simulator focused on breeding with realistic genetics, management and training horses. I haven’t really tried it yet, but I’ve seen solo developer Ida Meyer work tirelessly to get this game out and react to a lot of player feedback along the way, so I’ll say this project deserves some folks taking a chance and writing a steam review!

Nightsoil is a story-driven adventure game about a carriage driver and his horse set in 19th century London. It only just had this pop up on my radar, but I LOVE the concept, it’s a super fresh take on the horse game genre and a direction that I’ve wanted someone to explore for years. I highly recommend giving the second trailer a look, where the game shows the horse care mechanics that accompany its nightsoil collecting mechanics. Whether the execution of it is any good, you’ll have to tell me!

Demos to try for Free

Our very own Horses of Hoofprint Bay is one of the top demos in Steam Horse Fest, which I am very excited about and also I have been insanely busy with it this week. Did you see we have about 370 Very Positive reviews? Did I mention that “taking a deep breath” is on my todo list?

Potion Pony is an adorable pixel art RPG where you take care of your pony while crafting and delivering potions. The concept is absolutely fresh and lovely, the art style is very cute, and this one is definitely high on my own list of games to try. (Idk why the embed below doesn’t show an install button. The Demo is available!)

The horsie murder mystery MMO Equinox: Homecoming doesn’t have a discount going on, but they did just release a free Demo for anyone hesitant to commit at full price. I’m not really much one for MMOs, but it’s been wonderful to see the Equinox team’s regular updates and content drops and their best attempts to react to community wishes, so this one gets a recommendation from me! (Disclaimer: I have done consulting work for them)

Resolute Bay gets points from me for being a really fresh take on ‘horse game’, being a side-scroller JRPG where you play as a horse and confront other wildlife. The fact that its description includes “Play as a horse in search of their lost herd. Graze grass. Spook at an umbrella. Roll in the mud. Let those legs run wild!” tells me this was made by someone who gets horses. Try it and let us know how it is in the communities or in Steam reviews!

Newly Announced Games to Wishlist

The most interesting project here is no doubt Horses of Gavarnie by French dev team Mischief Studio. This game still is quite early in development, but the latest Steam trailer shows some adorable in-engine art and animation as well as a first glimpse of how dialogue and gameplay will look.

Along with their Steam Page, the team also launched a Kickstarter campaign that I recommend supporting if you’re eager to take a chance on new teams with big ambitions and fresh ideas - I do really like a lot of what this game aims to do in terms of setting and story and I love the painterly art style.

We’ve already covered Fernhoof Grove here, but if you’ve missed it so far or want to use its inclusion in the Horse Fest as your opportunity to add it to your wishlist, check it out right here:

And so much more

And honestly, that’s just scratching the surface, there’s a dozen more curiosities and projects that I haven’t mentioned here. It’ll probably take me months to catch up with everything that was announced and released for this event, but fortunately you can all make use of the TMQ Communities to exchange tips and experiences rather than having to wait for my opinions! I’ll also call back to my recently posted guide about red flags in new games.

In short: There’s a LOT going on, and you’ll have to see for yourself which games to experiment with and which to commit to. For now I’ll say that while this is obviously a super exciting and promising event for horse games, and that our genre is obviously in a vastly better place nowadays than just a few years ago, I still find it quite noticeable how much additional room there is for polished, quality-looking titles to stand out among the mass.

Let’s hope Steam finds this event profitable enough to repeat it in the future, because I’m sure the entire genre can still get so much better.

What are YOU looking forward to trying out and snatching up in Steam Horse Fest?

Can I also just quickly point out how cool and lovely it is that the top two popular upcoming games here are the ones I’m working on 🥹💖