Horse Game Development

I am stoked to share this interview with the thogli studios team and myself from Video Game Town: Bringing ‘Horses Of Hoofprint Bay’ To Life. Definitely take a look if you’re interested in a closer look at how thogli studios works, how Horses of Hoofprint Bay and some of its features came to be, and some teasers for what’s still to come.

The Horse Club game series by developer and publisher Wild River Games announces its third entry! I’ve been in touch with the Wild River team before, and even consulted on the latest title: Horse Club: Ride West invites the player on a Western themed ranch vacation with the Horse Club characters and their horses. To celebrate the announcement, I sat down with Stefan Kummer and Daniel Boos from the Wild River team to learn more about their development process.

Indie horse game developers who make games out of a passion for the subject matter are becoming more common these days. Many of these up and coming horse game devs make basic mistakes in marketing and publishing. This article is aimed at those passionate newcomers: Guidelines, basic do’s and don’ts and things to keep in mind for anyone planning to make, announce and distribute a horse game of their own. 

The Ranch of Rivershine stands out among the horse game niche. I’ve followed Rivershine and its creator Éloise Laroche of Cozy Bee Games for years and previously featured them on TMQ on multiple occasion. With the full release now a few weeks back, I sat down with Éloise once more to look back on five years of development, the lessons learned along the way, and of course, to learn what’s next in store for her one woman studio.

How To Market A Game is the website and blog of game marketing consultant and strategist Chris Zukowski. This week, Chris’ latest blog post is all about horse games, summarizing some insights into our niche from yours truly. Find and read the full blog post here.

Earlier this week I saw someone on Facebook claim that Red Dead Redemption 2 was the first video game to use motion capture for horses. While I was instantly sure that was not in fact true, the question of “What WAS the first video game to use motion capture for horses?” isn’t actually all that easy to answer.

Let’s take a look at what I’ve found:

I hope you’ll forgive me for what’s essentially just a “hey look, I’m doing my job!” post, but as it turns out I think my job (i.e. horse game consultation) is really fucking cool and I get to brag about it a little bit sometimes, as a treat.

Equinox: Homecoming combines dark mystery with horse-focused gameplay into one of the most promising new game announcements our genre has ever seen. Let’s have a look at the announcement trailer and dive into some juicy behind-the-scenes insight for how this game is getting made and why it took so long for someone to realize this potential.  

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 World Online is a free to play browser game about training and breeding horses. This month, the game celebrates its 20th anniversary, giving us an excellent opportunity to dive into a bit of living horse game history with its developers, and take a look at what running a profitable browser game can look like in 2024. 

Equestrian the Game is a mobile game about owning, training and breeding horses. Kavalri Games’ co-founder and CEO Molly Ericson sat down for a call with me to discuss some critical learnings about making free-to-play games and how to handle players and their feedback, about what’s left in store for ETG and what we can expect from Kavalri games in the future.

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.

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. 

There’s a brand new animated horse model available for Unreal Engine, and it looks like the best game-ready horse model I’ve seen to date. Let’s take a brief look.

Rival Stars Horse Racing is something of a rarity in our niche: it’s a polished game aimed at adult players, that’s generally well received and getting regular content updates. For the game’s five year anniversary, I sat down for a call with PikPok CEO Mario Wynands in order to talk about the game’s history, its position in the horse game market and why it takes different approaches to different platforms.

“By the 1990s, games were predominately designed with young male players in mind, featuring macho-adrenaline themes like violence, guns, and military simulations. Having never made a video game before, childhood friends Craig Laughton and Andrew Niere decided to do something different from other Australian studios by developing a horse riding game for girls.”

Foxie Ventures’ Founder and Director Dineth Abeynayake and Product Manager Steven Ready took some time before the release to show me a preview of what their newest game would offer, and to answer a few questions about Star Equestrian’s development and its future.

Gamescom 2022 in Cologne was an exciting event and meeting the team of Korion Interactive was one of my highlights: I turned to find about five people in matching Moorhuhn T-shirts standing behind me basically going “Hi, we’re so excited that we found you, we love The Mane Quest and we’re making horse games now.”

I’ve been eagerly following the development of The Ranch of Rivershine ever since solo game creator and TMQ community member Éloïse Laroche first announced she’d be tackling the horse game genre. Today, Éloïse releases a playable Demo for The Ranch of Rivershine on Steam. Let’s dive deeper into how she’s been building the Cozy Bee Games brand and business, and what new challenges she’s facing with her newest project. 

Popular Animated Horse Asset Pack Horse Animset Pro by Malbers Animations has become a bit of a thorn in my side, as someone who always keeps an eye out for new games that include horses. From its initially completely wrong walk animation to its current issues with wobbly bendy forelegs, the suboptimal asset pack is the direct cause for many game horses looking sort of wrong. With the release of Horse Herd by 3D Bear last month, it looks like HAP is getting some much-needed competition in the animated horse asset market.

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.

Equestrian the Game was just released in Europe will be out worldwide in May 2022. I thought this was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with Molly Ericson and share some insights with you all about what the work on ETG has been like and what is next in store for the team at Kavalri Games.

Astride is a horse game inspired by Scandinavian environments and horse breeds currently on Kickstarter. I’ve been watching the project with both excitement and a bit of scepticism throughout, so the crowdfunding launch is the perfect opportunity to take a closer look – and to have a chat with Raidho’s Co-Founder and Lead 3D-Artist Mathilde Kvernland.

It’s been over two years since I talked to former Product Owner Nika Bender about the making of SSO – I’m thrilled to give you all some delicious new insights. This time, I had two absolutely wonderful calls with two of the core people behind developing and managing Star Stable Online: Game Director Stacy Place and CEO Johan Sjöberg.

Solo game creator and TMQ Community member Éloise Laroche is officially announcing her newest project today: The Ranch of Rivershine is a horse ranch management game headed for a Steam release.

Anyone who follows Éloise’s Twitter or the gamedev channel on our community discord has already seen glimpses of the work in progress, but here is our first official trailer:

I’ve been meaning to give you all a look into the creation of Rival Stars Horse Racing ever since I first got in touch with the team for a review key in June 2020. I’m more than happy to finally present you all with some insight – just in time for the game’s much-anticipated Jumping features being released on mobile.

Lead Designer and Prodcuer Michael Hengst contacted me right after I first announced the relaase of Horse Club Adventures. Now that I’ve played the game myself, I’m thrilled to give all of you some additional insight into how Horse Club Adventures was made, what we already know about its upcoming sequel, and what Michael thinks of the horse game genre in general.

I sat down for a chat with Katrin Haase, has long years of experience making games for children at Markt + Technik. After the many frustrations that this company’s games has let me feel, I finally wanted to know: why do these games get made and how are they produced? And perhaps more importantly: how can they ever become better?

Join me for a fascinating insight into the world of low budget horse game production.

In January, we learned of a new upcoming horse game based on Dreamworks’ Spirit franchise and the upcoming movie Spirit Untamed. The Mane Quest reached out to its creators in order to learn more about the game’s development. Santiago R. Bedate from aheartfulofgames takes the time to give us some interesting insight behind the scenes of Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure.

We continue our series on what to keep in mind when setting out to create your own horse game: Let’s assume now that you already have a bit of gamedev experience in this field, be it as a hobbyist or as a professional.

Perhaps you are – like me – a game creator of some experience who finally wants to tackle their passion project, who finally wants to make “the thing” that you believe is missing: the good horse game.