Schleich and Wild River Games announce Horse Club Adventures for PC and Consoles
Toy model manufacturer Schleich has partnered with Wild River Games to announce a horse-themed open world adventure game for PC and Consoles. Let’s have a look at the announcement trailer, the already existing mobile game of (almost) the same name, and what to expect from the game.
The trailer for Horse Club Adventures, set to a cheerful pop song, shows a colorful open world, a handful of female characters and their horses, and some customization options for rider and mount. “You are invited to spend your vacation at Lakeside and become part of the Horse Club™ clique revolving around Hannah, Sarah, Sofia and Lisa”, promises the video description.
The game’s website mentions 40 main quest missions and 30 side quests as well as 90 race courses and some optional horse grooming minicames.
Not too much of that is to be seen in the video, which instead focuses on showcasing a handful of different game world areas such as the stables, a beach, a forest and a riverside jumping course. The horse animations look quite alright at a first glance, though I’m a bit distracted by the tail model looking a little bit out of synch with the rest of the horse.
The open world and the assets in it make a very positive first impression on me though, in their colorful cartoon style that has thankfully started to replace the weird low budget realism that horse games used to go for.
Schleich Horse Models enjoy a popularity in German speaking countries that’s comparable to Breyer Model Horses elsewhere. They are lovingly collected, modified and repainted by enthusiasts, though Schleich models’ lower price tag and higher durability also makes them popular as a more conventional “children’s toy”.
As for publisher Wild River Games, attentive TMQ readers may recognize them from my reporting on Windstorm: Ari’s Arrival. Wild River Games, a label within EuroVideo Medien GmbH, had orginally published the second Windstorm game, although the rights have in the meantime been returned to developer Aesir Interactive.
Schleich and Wild River have previously collaborated on games featuring two of Schleich’s other toy brands, Eldrador Creatures and Bayala the Game. Both have been largely ignored on Steam review-wise, but got a fairly positive reception in the Amazon product reviews at least.
The one available store page for Horse Club Adventures lists Wild River as the developer (and not only as publisher) for the new game, though these store pages are not always accurate before release. The two previous Schleich/Wild River games have – according to their Steam pages – been developed by Independent Arts Software, whose track record in making horse games I can only describe as “not good, but slowly getting less bad”.
UPDATE: An employee of Wild River Games has reached out to me to clarify that this game has infact been developed by Wild River internally.
A Schleich mobile game by the name of Horse Club: Horse Adventures (yes, horse is in there twice) already exists and has been out for a while on iOS and Android. While its premise is basically the same, that game was completely 2D, with the riding missions and races boiling down to switching lanes to pick up stars along the way.
The new 3D world is and its horses and animations are a definitive improvement in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen of both.
This new Horse Club: Adventures will be out by the end of May 2021, on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC (Steam). So far, only the Nintendo version has a store page. The price tag is 40$, which puts the game into more direct competition with Phar Lap (the console version of Rival Stars) , rather than other kids’ games like the My Riding Stables or Bibi & Tina series, which are usually sold for 30$.
Whether the increased price is justified by the game’s scope and playability remains to be seen of course, but I do think the feature list sounds somewhat more promising than many of the games I look at here, even though it looks like the target audience is once again very young. At the very least, it’s something to keep an eye on.
Horse Club Adventures will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam in May 2021.