Horse Games That Should Exist – Vol III

We sometimes talk about “horse games” as if that term described a specific genre. In reality, while many classic horse games do fit into the farm buildup and simulation genre, the concept of “game that features horses prominently and has lots of mechanics relating to them” is not tied to that setup at all. In this article and the two previous volumes in this series, I try to broaden people’s horizons a little as to what could be cool horse games. 

Welcome, friends, to another fun round of Horse Games That Should Exist.

Caravan Outrider

Caravan in Red Dead Redemption 2

Stock Photo by Wendy Corniquet from Pixabay.

As a caravan outrider, you protect goods and people. You scout ahead, secure the trail, hunt for supplies. Your horse is your most valued possession and of course your most treasured companion. 

Perhaps this game has management aspects like having to choose routes based on environmental factors and resources, balancing risk and reward of trails that may be faster, but more dangerous. 

In mountain passes and forests, you defend your caravan against bandits and make sure no one is left behind. In settlements, you get your rewards for delivering travellers to their destinations and invest the spoils into better equipment for yourself and your horse. 

At the end of the long day on the road, you take care of your horse and settle down around campfires with other travellers, hearing their stories and songs.

Ever since someone gave me this idea, I’ve been briefly annoyed whenever I saw any news of the game “Outriders” because it has nothing at all to do with this.  

Herd Survival

Stock photo by Jeremy Zero from Unsplash.

Considering the hundreds of horse games that were made in the early 00s and how many successful concepts spawned a dozen copycats, it’s actually sort of noteworthy how few games we have where you actually play as a horse. 

This concept grows all the more interesting if you remove it from the setting of a domestic barn and apply it to wild horses instead: How about a game where you play as the lead stallion of a wild herd, gathering mares, protecting your foals from predators and fighting off competing stallions? 

Perhaps you’d also have to find water and good grazing land and find shelter from storms… or at least consult with your lead mare on where she wants to take the herd next. 

The mechanics could even include the aspect of finding mares with beneficial traits to increase your herd’s survival chances, along the lines of Niche – a Genetics Survival Game.
The browser game Wild Horse’s Valley is based on this concept, and as far as I know the 2002 Spirit: Forever Free fit the mold to some degree as well, though I’ve never played it myself. But a modern, 3D herd survival game with nicely animated mustang type horses? Sign me the hell up.

Fantasy Horse Photography

Why yes, making bad photoshop mockups is half the fun of writing these articles I’m glad you asked. Horses from Star Stable, screenshot from New Pokémon Snap.

Imagine Pokémon Snap, but with horses: You go on a safari through one biome at a time, moving on a fixed path and taking pictures of the animals you see along the way. You start out a mere observer, then eventually unlock ways to interact with the wildlife like different food items and sounds you can make – maybe you also unlock new zoom settings on your camera or different movement speeds? 

These are wild horses that live in some sort of horse paradise, and there’s wild ponies and wild drafts and wild thoroughbreds because we’re not gonna care about the realism here as long as they all look nice and display a cool variety of behaviors. 

That’s not enough different animals for a Pokémon Snap type of game you say? Fuck it, we’ll add zebroids and donkeys and mules. Or make it totally fantasy and have like… Arabian-looking fire horses living in the volcano, and heavy draft looking earth horses living in the swamp and fluffy little ponies living in the tundra… Look, I’d be on board for any more games that use this excellent interact-with-wildlife-to-get-good-photos formula, so I’d sure as fuck be up for it with horses. 

Mad Max but Horses

Shameless appropriation of the Wildshade horse and a Borderlands screenshot here.

Idyllic farm life is good and nice but it’s also been done a lot. Let’s take horse girl media to the post-apocalypse: Give me a base building survival game in a Mad Max style setting, but instead of cars everyone has horses. Give me that batshit dieselpunk aesthetic, let let me strap rusty spikes to my horse’s flanks to ride into battle. 

I’ll build stables for my horses out of whatever society left behind, and ration my water carefully in my base and while out riding. I’ll craft weird tack contraptions out of leather and metal that let me carry more supplies when I’m out gathering. 

Let’s also throw in some settlement management, like choosing which new people to accept into the group and which tasks to give them. They all have horses, of course, and all the horses need to be fed, outfitted and cared for. 

Stable Dating Sim

This idea has been brought to you by someone who would definitely date Tori from Horse Club Adventures, who by the way, did nothing wrong.

Horse stories have a set of well-defined character archetypes that keep reappearing: you have the handsome stable boy, the spoiled rich girl, the snobbish trainer who’s a bit too ambitious for his own good, the juvenile delinquent who’s just at the barn because someone thought they’d learn something there, that one girl who practically lives at the barn but can’t afford her own horse yet, the rich girl’s dad who owns lots of horses but doesn’t ride them himself, the barn owner with financial troubles… For this game idea, we’re taking all of those characters but you can date them. Yes, including the rich dad. 

So this one would fall more into the dating sim / visual novel genre, but in between picnics and trail rides with your various love interests there’s still plenty of room for actual horse-focused gameplay. Perhaps your role at the barn is to groom or train horses and you need to make time for horse care in between your many dates? To keep it a bit more feasible, we can keep this one in 2D and keep the horse gameplay a bit simpler. Someone should probably get the devs of Dream Daddy onto this…

And More

Which of these would you like to play? What’s your ultimate “horse game that should exist”? Or which game studio could you see making one of these? 
I know I’m not done with horse game ideas, so rest assured that there will be a Vol. IV to this series at some point.