Friends, Forage and Freedom: Why We Should Stop Normalizing Solitary Confinement in Horse Games and What Devs Can Do Instead

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?”

Recommended: Most animated horse assets you can buy are subpar in terms of anatomy and not good enough if your target audience includes "people who like horses"

Frustrated once again by indie game developers’ over-reliance on the massively flawed Horse Animset Pro, I have taken to Reddit like a proper “angry person online” and wrote a deep dive aimed at gamedevs on the gamedev subreddit showcasing why I can’t really recommend people use the most popular animated horse asset.

Horse Games – History of a Neglected Genre and its Untapped Potential – Talk from Devcom 2024

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!

analysisAlice RuppertDecember 10, 2024devcom, video, tmq, the mane quest, talk, recommended for clientsComment

Horse Animation: Guides, References and Resources

Horse Animation is really hard, I know. The purpose of this article is to summarize some common issues and provide helpful resources for how to do better. While I’m coming from a game dev perspective, I hope these tips and guides can also be useful to anyone animating horses for other media such as film or TV.

developmentAlice RuppertSeptember 7, 2024horse animation, animation resources collection, references, recommended for clientsComment

Adding Horses to your Game: Tips, Resources, Do’s and Don’ts

This article is aimed at game developers who want to include horses in their games without making the same couple of basic mistakes that make equestrians cry – to give game creators a starting point for further research and some ideas for how to add a bit of depth, variety and authenticity to their portrayal of horses.

5 Crucial Games Industry Tips for Horse Game Creators

This article is an add-on to my recent post about upcoming Indie Horse Games: These tips were compiled while gathering info on upcoming games and noticing a few common areas of improvement. They don’t necessarily only apply to horse games but I do see it in almost every new horse game project launched by new creators without industry experience.

8 Common Horse Mistakes I Want Game Developers to Stop Making

As a surprise to literally no one, I have a lot of thoughts on what the creators of games with horses in them could be doing better. Every horse game player has dreams and ideas and could start listing all the features that their ideal horse game would have in an instant. Let’s ignore the dream projects today and focus on a handful of fairly basic, relatively easily fixable* mistakes that horse game developers should really stop making.

Horse Care Mechanics: Why They’re Often Horrible and How To Get Them Right

Most horse-focused games feature brushing your horse and picking its hooves, feeding or combing mane and tail. Unfortunately, many of these horse care minigames quickly grow tedious or even frustrating: let’s take a look at why that is, what developers could do differently, and whether or not horse care mechanics are even necessary to begin with.