I have written about The Ranch of Rivershine on this site on various occasions over the years, but what’s been missing is an actual review of the game. The time for that has definitely come, so let’s dive into my actual play experience with the most successful indie horse game on Steam.
Horse Club Adventures 2 – Hazelwood Stories was developed and published by Wild River Games from Germany and released on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox One in October 2022. With a few years’ delay, let’s finally look into how Horse Club Adventures 2 compares and what it offers.
Part of my joy in writing these reviews comes from telling you in excruciating detail about the games you don’t already know and care about. This game has 11 reviews on Steam in total, so I can actually add relevant insight here – and I personally was very interested in this game considering the history of its franchise.
My Horse: Bonded Spirits first caught my eye (and ire) when its CG-rendered announcement trailer released in Spring 2023. Today we’re looking at the actual game: What fresh ideas it brings to the table, what it offers in terms of content, how that compares to similar available products and of course: how the actual release compares to that initial trailer.
When the long hoped-for Sims 4: Horse Ranch expansion pack released in July 2023, I briefly thought I would be on time and relevant with a review for once. And then I got distracted and put on sick leave. My in-depth look at the Horse Ranch pack may no longer be timely, but it will be overly elaborate and familiarly pedantic about equine accuracy, because that’s what you all come to The Mane Quest for, isn’t it.
Ghost of Tushima is an open world action adventure game released in 2020 on PlayStation 4, developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
I don’t usually review AAA games on here, but I decided to make an exception. The fact that I started playing it in August 2022 and am uploading this review about 9 months later might give you a hint as to how that’s been working out for me. Let’s take a closer look at the horses of Ghost of Tsushima.
Star Equestrian is a brand new mobile horse game by Foxie Ventures. It will offer cross country and show jumping, an open world to explore, story missions and daily quests to complete, and quite a variety of horses and tack to collect and level up.
To get my feedback and give me an opportunity to ask a few questions, Foxie Ventures’ Product Manager Steven Ready invited me to a live playthrough and video call. Join me today for a preview of what the game has in store.
I am a big fan of peaceful “life sim” games that let me build up my farm or home base, explore a bit, meet some friendly NPCs and give me satisfying jobs to do like farming or crafting, especially if they include horses. With My Time At Sandrock now out in Early Access it’s obviously time to give this a try.
I figured I might as well put together some impressions and opinions on the horse-like creature that you ride in Elden Ring. And then I got sucked in and am now 30 hours into it with no intention of stopping soon.
If you’re not interested in detailed analysis of horse animation, then you’ve come to the wrong website. But this is The Mane Quest and complaining extensively about how horse legs work or don’t work is what we do. Let’s begin.
After some years of relative horse game drought, it’s quite astonishing that in Spring 2021, we got not one, but two moderately big horse games based on existing brands but with original worlds and gameplay. You already know I was quite fond of Horse Club Adventures despite some obvious flaws, so how does this one compare?
Horse Club Adventures is a multiplatform adventure game created by Wild River Games under the Schleich brand. Like many games in this genre, Horse Club Adventures is aimed at young girls and promises exciting adventures, thrilling races and solving mysteries with the power of friendship. Let’s take a look at how well it lives up to these claims.
Publisher Markt + Technik and developer Independent Arts Software have brought another horse farm buildup game to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Let’s have a look.
Windstorm: Ari’s Arrival, created by Aesir Interactive, was released along with the movie of the same name in March 2019. I’ve been meaning to review it basically ever since. I have to admit that we’ve all been sleeping on this one, because it really gets a whole bunch of things right, and deserves vastly more attention from horse-loving players than it has been getting.
Petz Horsez 2 – also known as Pippa Funnell: Secrets of the Ranch – was originally released in 2007. It’s been named as an all-time favorite by many TMQ readers. How does the horsie adventure game hold up without a lens of nostalgia to gaze through?
Rival Stars Horse Racing is a horse racing game developed by New Zealand based company PikPok. The “Desktop Edition” follows the releases of Rival Stars Horse Racing on Android and iOS. Can the Desktop Edition of Rival Stars offer the best of both worlds and become one of the rare few quality horse games available on PC?
When I first looked at Star Stable Online, I came away with a very critical view, and voiced my annoyance at many of its choices in my first review. This time around, I spent significantly more time with the game, and spent some Star Coins here or there. Let’s dive into new realizations, remaining gripes, minor nitpicks and major flaws.
Instead of a proper review, I tried a new format for playing Horse Isle 3: On December 5th, I streamed my first two and a half hours of gameplay, aided by some members from the TMQ Community.
I wasn’t able to record the whole stream, but I’ve edited the footage I have down to a 20min highlight video.
After the less than stellar experience with My Riding Stables, I would likely not have bothered with this game if the publisher hadn’t sent me a review code. Fortunately, Bibi & Tina auf dem Martinshof frustrated me a lot less than My Riding Stables did. Is that enough to make it a decent horse game however or is the bar just incredibly low?
Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind is a story-driven strategy game where you lead a clan of horse riders. The game is out on iOS already and will be released on Steam in October 2019.
I’ve had Six Ages on my list of games to review ever since The Mane Quest was launched, because the developers offered me a review copy early on. I’ve finally had a look and realized that I won’t be able to give this game a fair review after all.
Ostwind is a franchise of horse themed books, movies and video games. At their center stand teenage girl Mika and the stallion Ostwind, who form a deep friendship and supernatural bond.
At a glance, Ostwind quickly looks like having the highest production value of any horse game ever made, with its highly detailed environments and promises of a big open world. Does that impression remain after a closer? Find out below.
I spontaneously tried Horse Riding Tales after someone pointed it out to me as a new Steam release. Since I get instantly excited whenever I see anything that might turn out to be a good horse game on PC, I decided to give it a go.
At the time of writing I’ve played the game for about an hour and don’t much intend to return to it.
My Time At Portia is not a game about horses. To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t have particularly beautiful or well-animated horses, they occasionally glitch around a little and there’s not even really all that much to do with them. Despite all this, Portia still manages to be among the better choices for “a good horse game”, simply because there are horses in it and it is very much a good game.
I was cautiously optimistic: a remake of an okay-ish horse game, with a new stylized look? Surely, if this game went about improving the right things that bothered me about the last version, we might finally have a decent horse game on our hands.
At the risk of “spoiling” this review: this game is absolutely not decent.
Star Stable Online is a horse-focused massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. It is arguably the biggest and most successful game in the genre of horse games at the moment — if not ever. This article is not so much a conclusive review of the whole game, as it is a summary of my first impressions after a few hours of playing.
Farming Simulator was never a series that particularly interested me as a player - but I supposed that was because the subject matter of realistic farming wasn’t particularly up my alley. After all, a game series so successful had to be an essentially good game at its core, right?
So when you have a well-implemented and functional new entry in a long-running game series that adds horses, that has to result in a pretty solid game at least… right?
Alicia Online is an originally Korean MMO horse racing game. After some initial confusion as to how this game could possibly have regular players, I actually ended up finding a lot of things to like about it.
Vintage Story is a block-based survival game that one might summarize as “Minecraft with extra steps”. I’m obsessed with it and have played for 300 hours. There are horse mods already, and official horses are coming in the near future.