New Features in Rival Stars: Quick Ride, Horse Types, Jumping Stats

When I reviewed Rival Stars Horse Racing for the release of its Desktop Edition in June 2020, I already came away with a fairly positive view on it: as “only” a horse racing game with most interactions being click-based, there are certain horse game needs it cannot fill, but it has its place and its appeal. 

I certainly did not expect the game’s scope to significantly expand beyond Racing. But as it turns out, PikPok games will be doing its best to make a lot of horse game fans very happy in the near future.

Quick Ride

In November 2020, Rival Stars released a new feature called Quick Ride in its mobile version, a new feature that lets you explore an open world on horseback. First billed as “temporary”, the feature has stayed around since then and was added to the Desktop Edition a few weeks later. 

Quick Ride gives you a vast area of fields and forests to explore, though with very limited functionality. It definitely has an experimental feeling to it, with no interactions in the world around you, and some awkward collisions when you meet invisible walls. 

Being able to run up against walls and gallop in place just looks weird.

Please note: the ears. They are very cute. Thank you.

That being said, the beautiful environmental assets and lovely horse animations mean that this comparatively simple feature is already serious competition in the realm of open world horse riding gameplay. I only got around to trying it months after release, but found myself enamored with the animations and gait transitions, the way the horse’s ears react to your speed, the way the rider model posts the trot in an appropriate rhythm… There are a lot of details to love already! 

This bush looks a bit glitchy, but apart from that everything is gorgeous.

Look at that, the rising trot animation actually fits the horse movement!

Unfortunately I also have some issues with it: I find the controls fairly awkward, as you have to constantly press space in order to speed up. This makes it almost impossible to maintain a walk or slow canter, effectively reducing your gaits to trot and gallop. Which is a shame, because the animations for walk and canter are there and no less gorgeous! 

My second peeve is that I cannot rotate my camera around the horse to see it from the side. I assume this is because of limited control options on mobile, but on Desktop it would add a lot to let the player rotate the camera with the mouse. Considering Quick Ride’s experimental character, these issues may well be fixed in the future.  

Updates to Come

Now in March, Rival Stars has released a new developer update video that confirms the Quick Ride feature was only the start of something bigger: Coming soon, your Rival Stars horses will have Agility and Jumping stats, in addition to the previously available Speed, Sprint Energy and Acceleration. 

The video teases what looks like a Cross Country course, though so far no actual jumps are shown. Horses will now be either the Racing or Riding type, which determines whether you’ll be able to use them for flat racing (as all horses previously were) or for riding courses around the ranch. The first changes will be released on Mobile next week, with no announcement for the Desktop Edition yet. 

So far, it’s not quite clear how much is really to come and how drastically this will change the core gameplay of Rival Stars, with Racing having very much been at the heart of the game experience so far. Even so, I am incredibly excited for these changes and to learn what’s in store for the game. 

I’m confident that as usual, the updates will come to the PC and Mac with a bit of a delay, although there hasn’t been explicit confirmation of that yet. 

I’ve always found the Desktop Edition worth its 40$ since I vastly prefer to pay upfront and then not have microtransactions pushed at me, but I completely understand that it’s a steep price tag for many players. With this latest update promising fairly fundamental feature additions though, it looks like Rival Stars might be growing into its price tag on Desktop. 

That these investments are considered worth the effort by PikPoks speaks to Rival Stars’ success and suggests a realization that there is more profit to be made from horse-loving gamers and our hunger for good horsie content. And with the beautiful horse animations and solid gameplay loop that the game already offers, I am very much eager for more.