“Horses 2025” on PlayStation 5 and The Massive Red Flags in its Trailer and Screenshots

For years I have been talking on this website about how I wish the games industry at large would take note of the untapped market that is horse game fans. Well, the monkey paw finger has curled, and scammers and asset flippers have obviously received my message. 

A PlayStation 5 game by the name of Horses 2025 has recently appeared on the PlayStation Store. A Cinematic Trailer was posted today via the official PlayStation YouTube Channel. Let’s take a quick look at why I have serious doubts about the legitimacy of this listing and why I consider it highly unlikely that anyone will get a quality experience out of this. 

Trailer Oddities

The “Cinematic” trailer shows no concrete gameplay, but alternates between real life film footage and in-engine renders. That the trailer does not distinguish between these two in any way strikes me as very intentional. The drone-captured film footage includes wild horses running across open plains, a top-down shot of an equestrian arena with riders and a close-up of racehorses’ feet on sand. Cut in between are digital renders such as an extreme close up of a horse’s eye (no horse movement), and two shots of far away horse herds with minimal movement, both of which are further obscured by leaves drifting across the screen and lens flare. A brief sequence of first person horse riding footage is the only part of the video that could possibly represent gameplay, but isn’t very informative by itself.

Pretty floating leaves conveniently distract from the somewhat jittery head movement of the horses in the background

This doesn’t look too bad by itself I suppose, apart from the head movement being a bit extreme.

UPDATE: Actually, turns out that several of the short “gameplay” shots in the Horses 2025 trailer, including the first person horse riding here, were taken directly from this trailer for an Unreal Asset called Ultimate Horse System. Which has some incredibly shoddy horse anatomy as its “IK Solution” as seen at 1:19.

finally the long awaited sequel: Very Near By Horse. But also: very weird to show such a closeup where it looks like the horse’s head is covered only in skin.

Is it just me or does the shading of those grey horses make no sense in that light?

Basically: this trailer aims to leave you impressed and inspired with grandiose music and slow-mo, but it mostly uses real film footage to do so and doesn’t actually show anything like convincing horse models or animations at a distance or lighting where you can actually see them. 

Neither live action trailers nor early concept trailers are entirely unheard of in games, but you usually get the former when the game’s looks itself have already been shown, and the latter from very well established studios who you know and trust to follow through.

AI-Generated Screenshots

But wait, it gets worse: The screenshots on the PS5 Store appear to be entirely AI-generated, bearing a lot of the usual image-generation nonsense, which can be distinguished from people-don’t-know-how-horses-work nonsense if you have a bit of experience with both. Essentially, all of the images contain telling artifacts and evidence that no human thought was put into them, some vastly more egregious than others. My favorite example is this image of a horse running through the forest, with a saddle and rider’s legs visible, but the rider’s hips are melting into the horses head instead of including a person’s torso. 

The remaining examples are slightly less blatant, but still contain quite clear indicators of being the result of image generation rather than human artistry, with tack elements randomly sticking out into the air, reins and hands ending at nonsensical places and stirrups having extra straps. Many thanks to Reddit user Lukeyy19 for uploading these screenshots publicly, because there’s apparently no way to access the full PS store listing via a PC browser. 

Note the nonexistent thumb on the person’s right hand, the reins disappearing into the horse’s nostril, the cheek piece not connecting to anything and there being a strap along the nose in the front.

The rider’s hand as well as the horse’s head seem to disappear into the background

Where are those reins going to?

Somehow the entire foot seems to be placed on the stirrup bar from toe to heel.

Store Description

The description of Horses 2025 sure sounds like a horse game, promising bonding, care, training and competitions. It unfortunately also sounds a bit like if you asked ChatGPT to please write you a store description for a horse game, because well, there are plenty of similar ones out there. Text-analysis tools to recognize LLM-generated text are notoriously unreliable, but it’s also getting harder for human eyes and brains to distinguish between “sounds like AI” and “sounds like what AI gets trained on”, so we can’t prove it either way. What is distinctly missing from the store description is any hint of unique features or selling points beyond the ‘standard’ for this niche. 

I also can’t help but notice that while the trailer primarily features wild horses running free, the store description teases competitive equestrian daily life.

Experience the ultimate horse care and riding adventure! Discover the joy of building a special bond with your own horse through daily care, training, and exciting riding challenges.

Key Features:

Complete Horse Care: Groom, feed, and nurture your horse in detailed, interactive activities

Build Real Bonds: Watch your relationship grow through dedicated care and attention

Master the Ring: Take riding lessons, perfect your technique, and compete against the clock

Dynamic Challenges: Test your skills in jump courses and explore scenic countryside trails

Learning Experience: Discover essential knowledge about proper horse care and riding techniques

From daily grooming sessions to thrilling riding competitions, every moment strengthens the connection between you and your horse. Perfect your riding abilities, set new personal records, and become a true equestrian champion.

Whether you're a horse enthusiast or dreaming of your first ride, Horses 2025 offers an authentic and engaging experience that brings the joy of horsemanship to life.

Your horse is waiting - begin your journey today!

Instead of a studio or publisher, the author of the store listing appears to be an individual named Md Adnan Hossain. Searching for other titles by Hossain leads to something called Bodycam Unrecord Shooter, which has 1.18 out of 5 stars in PlayStation Store Ratings and appears to mash up the titles of similar games called Bodycam and Unrecord. Similarly, Hossain has recently published TCG Card Shop Empire, which bears noticeable similarities to the successful and well received TCG Card Shop Simulator and enjoys a PS store rating of 1.96 our of 5 stars. 

While Horses 2025 is not an exact copy of a successful or highly anticipated Steam game, I daresay that Mr. Hossain’s publishing history does not exactly inspire confidence in his future projects. 

Ironically, the planned release date for Horses 2025 is February 2026.

What to make of this?

Why does this exist? From cases like My Horse: Bonded Spirits and the rest of PlayWay’s portfolio, you may be familiar with the publishing strategy of throwing cinematic trailers at the wall and seeing what sticks, i.e. what gathers enough wishlists and attention to invest an actual budget into, with the rest getting quietly cancelled. With a stock footage trailer and AI-generated screenshots though, I highly doubt that Horses 2025 will gather a particularly impressive amount of attention, even among horse game fans. 

In summary: I believe this listing is highly misleading and that if something playable is ever released, its quality will be low even by our standards. I don’t think AI-Generated screenshots should be allowed on the PlayStation Store to begin with, to be honest, and I wish there was stricter quality control for this sort of thing.

As always when I explain my scepticism of upcoming horse games, I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong. I guess we’ll see in February 2026.