Preview: I tried the VR Edition of Rival Stars Horse Racing and it's Looking Pretty Good

Between my talk at devcom and a ton of interesting horse game related conversations, I’ve had an absolutely splendid time at gamescom in Cologne last week. One highlight that I want to tell you all more about is this though: I got to try the upcoming VR Edition of Rival Stars Horse Racing! 

Background

If you’re not already familiar with Rival Stars Horse Racing, I highly recommend checking out my previous articles such as my initial review of the Destkop Edition and my recent interview with PikPok CEO Mario Wynands: 

With the VR Edition, Rival Stars Horse Racing is breaking new ground: While they’re not the first VR game to feature horse riding, they are the first proper “horse game” – meaning a game experience that focuses on horses rather than just including them – on the platform. 

Initially announced for late 2024, the game’s release date is now scheduled for Q2 2025 to give the team a bit more time for adding content, polishing and bug fixing. I was thrilled to have a chance to visit the PikPok booth in the gamescom business area and try the game in its current state. 

Impressions

Note: While the PikPok team was kind enough to take some pictures of me playing the game, I don’t have in-game screenshots from my own play session. The in-game images you see above are from the official Press Kit, but I can confirm that they represent the playable game! 

The gameplay demo places me at the entrance to my horse racing estate – an area PC and mobile players are roughly familiar with, but which has been built from scratch in 3D for the first time. Foaling stalls, warehouse, pastures and stable are actual buildings to walk into – or well, teleport into, because that’s how we tend to get around in VR – and look around in. 

Note the screen in the background where you can see that I'm grooming my horse. Also note that I'm stupidly grinning about it because I was actually having a lot of fun with it.

Under the guidance of PikPok’s communications director Iain Scott, I enter a stall, meet my first horse, and take my time to play around with apples, carrots and brushes. What I find interesting about this is that the sort of horse care interaction that frequently annoys me in other games in this genre gains a whole new appeal when actually executing the motions in free-standing VR. 

Whether that novelty holds up during regular play I have some doubts about, but I have to admit I was immediately engaged and intrigued by the simple joy of using my actual hands to pick up treats and grooming implements and apply them to my virtual thoroughbred. To the point where I was actually mildly disappointed that I couldn’t pick up my horse’s hoof for cleaning by standing at its shoulder and running my hand down its foreleg. 

I should note here that the grooming and feeding appeared to be completely optional elements of play rather than a chore I had to do before moving on. Starting a race remains a UI interaction, much like in the PC and mobile version: there is no tacking up or mounting or travel to the track. Instead, I select a button and then find myself sitting on my horse – the team guided me to a chair for this after I wanted to explore my horse’s stall standing up – in the starting box, ready to run. 

In the race, I move my hands up and down to charge my sprint, and then activate said sprint by moving my hands back and forth, and I pull my left or right hand backwards to steer. Realistic, horse-friendly, jockey-accurate rein aids? Probably not, but the simplification works well enough and feels good, which understandably has to be prioritized. 

I look like a dork in all of these photos but I think that just comes with the job.

A glance at Cross Country riding in the game

After easily winning my first race or two, I tried the game’s Cross Country riding and found it simultaneously much more interesting but also significantly more frustrating: I enjoyed the challenge of steering my horse to approach obstacles, but found the turn radius and controls a bit finicky. What doesn’t help is that when I try to use my reins for steering in the absence of leg aids, my muscle memory makes me open the rein to the side rather than pulling it back, which isn’t how the game wants me to give input. More importantly though, I missed an option to properly reposition my horse at a walk or trot before approaching the obstacle once again. Trying to align get my angle of approach right with only “stop” and “canter” as possible speeds made me give (obviously useless) “whoa” voice commands to my sadly deaf VR horse. 

On the flip side, actually managing the jumps was incredibly satisfying and I feel much more inclined to spend more time practicing my Cross Country obstacles than merely flat racing. The Free Roam option to ride around the countryside wasn’t functional in the version I played, but I’m overall stoked to see the options to do more than racing in the VR edition as well. 

Reflection and Outlook

In my forty minutes or so of playing, I encountered a few technical issues that forced me to restart the game and the foal I bred looked a bit dead inside due to its animations not being implemented yet. These struck me as entirely understandable problems for a game still at least half a year from release. From what I’ve seen and from what we know of the other Rival Stars versions, I am optimistic that the product will be polished and functional by the time it releases next year. I’m also happy to report that I did not experience any motion sickness during my playtime, even though I am usually prone to it.

After various calls and exchanges ov er the years, gamescom gave me the opportunity to meet Mario Wynands (left) and Karah Sutton (right) from PikPok in person, which was lovely!

Once I’d laid my headset aside, I was able to chat some more with the team about my impressions and possible improvements, from a weird bend in the horses’ neck rig, to bouncing some ideas about how we’re generally portraying (and normalizing) horse stabling, single stalls and pastures in video games and other media. I’m well aware that game design iteration is never quite as straightforward as just pointing out an error or possible improvement and having it be implemented right away. Still, it was lovely to discuss some options and give that feedback at a stage where there is actually still room for changes. 

All in all, I’m coming away from this preview of the VR version with a positive impression: I had fun trying it out and I believe PikPok is building a very solid, polished game here. What’s decidedly hard for me to judge however, is how well the gameplay fun holds up over a longer amount of time, and how Rival Stars will compare and compete on the VR market in particular. 

PikPok is treading on new grounds here, which makes success harder to gauge, but which obviously also gives them the edge of being the first product of its kind. 

I can’t yet say if I’ll ever be playing much of Rival Stars Horse Racing VR Edition, but I remain very curious about how it will land, how many of our horse game community members it can motivate to get VR hardware or how many VR aficionados it can turn into horse game players. 

At the very least, it looks like the first proper horse game that the VR market gets will be a quality product – which might well be a ‘first’ among all platforms to ever get horse game releases. What a wonderful sign of times changing for our little niche.