{"id":1040793,"date":"2026-01-17T02:46:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=483009"},"modified":"2026-01-17T02:46:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:46:34","slug":"a-horse-game-went-viral-and-a-horse-game-expert-feels-vindicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/a-horse-game-went-viral-and-a-horse-game-expert-feels-vindicated\/","title":{"rendered":"A horse game went viral, and a horse game expert feels vindicated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Game File is a thrice-weekly newsletter about the culture and business of video games, written by longtime gaming reporter Stephen Totilo (Kotaku, Axios, MTV News, The New York Times). Subscribe here<\/a> for scoops, interviews and regular updates about gaming with the author’s nearly 8-year-old twins.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Alice Ruppert used to tell a self-deprecating joke when friends and peers discovered how much she thought about the depictions of horses in video games.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were like, \u2018Oh my god, I thought I was the only one who cares about horses in games.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cNo you’re not,\u201d she replied. \u201cThere are dozens of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruppert has never been quite serious about that calculation. For years, she\u2019s been making horse-related games for happy players. And, through a blog she runs about virtual horses, The Mane Quest<\/a>, she has gathered a community that has identified hundreds of horse games developed over the past five decades<\/a>. <\/p>\n

She certainly knows that the makers of the online horse game Star Stable<\/em> boast more than 600,000 monthly players<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It had nevertheless been a good line, fueled by frustration of the neglect she long perceived that many game studios were showing to the virtual horses they designed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just not a line she can use as readily any more \u2014 not since September, when she posted a 14-second clip that turned the newest horse game she\u2019s involved in, Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori<\/em><\/a>, into one of the most must-watch games slated for 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re making a game where you play a courier rider in 13th century Mongolia,\u201d she wrote on Twitter\/X<\/a> two months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo combat, just you, the horse(s) you’ve tamed, bred and trained and the vast wilderness.   <\/p>\n

\u201cWould you play this?\u201d<\/p>\n

The results: 140,000 likes, 15.6 million views of the clip, and, Ruppert told me, a \u201cvery, very relevant number of wishlists\u201d on Steam.<\/p>\n

Dozens of us, indeed.<\/p>\n

Constructive criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ruppert has loved horses all her life. She rode them as a kid, grew up playing horse video games (along with Tomb Raider<\/em> and The Sims<\/em>) and in 2015 began a game development career that she successfully steered into one focused on making horse video games of her own and helping others make their horse games better.<\/p>\n

A key part of that work commenced in 2018, when she launched The Mane Quest and began publishing critiques of horse games. <\/p>\n

She wrote with the critical eye of someone who cares a lot. She could be unsparing, as in her assessment<\/a> of the original 2017 Windstorm game: \u201cAll in all, Windstorm is only the last in a long line of horse<\/a> games<\/a> where the riding itself feels stilted and awkward despite supposedly being the core of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gathering her frustrations, in 2021 she published a list: 8 Common Horse Mistakes I Want Game Developers to Stop Making<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously game dev is complicated, always,\u201d she told me recently, during a video call from her native Switzerland. \u201cEven as a game developer, you can’t always tell what is easy or hard to implement from the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those eight common mistakes that bugged her about horse games had ranged from the complex to the confounding.<\/p>\n

Games with horses kept getting the animations wrong, she lamented. They showed horses\u2019 forelegs bending the wrong way, and they blocked players from letting their horses trot. The animation issues were tough, she acknowledged in a 2022 interview with Polygon<\/a>, because of the complex ways horses move their legs. <\/p>\n

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