Game Announcement & Key Giveaway! My First Horse: Adventures on Seahorse Island
My First Horse: Adventures on Seahorse Island is a brand new casual adventure game released on Steam for PC on April 8th 2024. Have a look at its trailer right here:
My First Horse: Adventures on Seahorse Island promises an adventure about a young girl called Olivia that lets you explore the titular Seahorse Island, take care of and bond with your horse, take pictures and find hidden treasures.
What’s unique about the project isn’t its feature list or target audience though, but that it was made as a labor of love for a family member.
“I am a solo developer from Sweden,” Peter from Snick Snack Games tells The Mane Quest. “This game marks my first official release on Steam.” The originally intended target audience for My First Horse was Peter’s niece. “I have designed the game so that you don't need to worry about health, timers and violence,” Peter explains.
The game’s website further reveals that said niece is not quite as into horses anymore now that the project has released 3.5 years later, and that Peter hopes for other players and their children to find joy in the project instead.
While the game’s premise and unfortunate Horse-Animset-Pro animations are common characteristics of horse games for kids, the trailer shows a few charmingly unique features such as carriage driving and hobby horse riding. It also appears to use AI-generated narration instead of human voice actors, which I’m not a fan of for ethical reasons.
We’ve seen horse games for kids (some examples here) and we’ve seen horse games by solo developers (some examples here), but this is the first time I see the two explicitly overlap. The kids’ horse game market is usually quite firmly dominated by traditional publishers, and focused on the retail and console space, while indie passion projects tend to try and fill those gaps by making games for grown-up audiences. Considering my issues with many of those traditionally published horse games though, I can hardly object to someone tackling this part of our genre from a new perspective.
I have not given the game a try myself yet, but Snick Snack Games has generously provided me with a review code, so I hope to take a look soon. Until then, you can already find some impressions by community members on our Discord.
If you want to try the game for yourself, you can win a free Steam Key right here!
To participate in a raffle for three free Steam keys provided by Snick Snack Games, simply leave a comment on this article. Make sure to provide your email when commenting so I’ll have a way of contacting you. The email will not be shown publicly if you do this right - Don’t put it into the body of the comment, just in the email field. Three winners will be chosen at random among all commenters with a valid email.
The giveaway will be open until April 19th 2024.
Giveaway has been concluded! Three winners were chosen at random and received an email from me for how to receive their key. Thanks to everyone for participating and sharing this article!