Game Announcement: Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure is coming to Consoles and PC in Summer 2021
Dreamworks and Outright Games have announced a new video game based on the Spirit: Riding Free TV show and its upcoming feature film adaptation, Spirit Untamed.
What We Know
Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and in the digital PC market in Summer 2021. Outright Games’ official communication promises:
Inspired by the upcoming DreamWorks Animation feature film, Spirit Untamed, this new open-world action-adventure game offers players a chance to go on a wild adventure and explore the wonders of the frontier with Lucky and her beloved wild mustang, Spirit. This original story celebrates themes of adventure, friendship and the special bond between a girl and her horse as Lucky teams up with best friends, Abigail and Pru, to embark on a fun-filled quest for hidden treasure in Miradero.
The game is being developed in Madrin, Spain by indie game studio Aheartful of Games. Publisher Outright Games is an international company, founded in 2016 and focused on family friendly franchises. Interestingly, the UK-based twin duo Nerd Pirates, who I’ve had the joy of meeting at a conference in 2019, are contributing to the game’s press and social efforts.
Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure promises an open world, grooming mechanics that help you bond with your horse, lots of customization options that you unlock over time, and quests about rescuing animals, helping the townspeople and competing in horse races.
What I Think
To us fans of the original 2002 Spirit movie and its gorgeous hand-drawn animation, there will never not be a little tinge of disappointment that Spirit: Riding Free doesn’t quite live up to our expectations. But I do my best not to let that nostalgia keep me from enjoying what I can get.
And honestly: Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure has a lot of things going for it that elevate it above the average kids’ horse game shovelware. The features sound relatively standard for the genre, but the production value looks significantly better than that of many games I’ve talked about on here.
The horse animation in the trailer is perhaps not mind-blowing, but neither does it get anything flat out wrong. That we can see Spirit being visibly dirty in one shot (at 0:13s) gives me a bit of hope that the grooming mechanics are handled better than what games like the My Riding Stables series have provided in recent years.
I consider it another plus point that publisher Outright Games is a relatively recently established company, unlike multiple German games publishers who dabble in horse games and have simply been producing the same mediocre crap for two decades. That the development is in the hands of an otherwise independent studio instead of a pure work-for-hire company speaks for the project’s potential as well.
I know better than to expect total perfection from a horse game for kids based on a TV show I don’t watch, but I’m definitely looking forward to this with a significant portion of cautious optimism. And I’ve already reached out to the publisher to find out more about their goals and ambitions with this game, so stay tuned for more!
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.