Alice Ruppert used to tell a self-deprecating joke when friends and colleagues discovered how much she thought about representations of horses in video games.
“People said, 'Oh my God, I thought I was the only one who cared about horses at the games.'
“No, you're not,” she replied. “There are dozens of us.”
Ruppert has never taken that calculation very seriously. For years it has created horse-related games for happy players. And, through a blog he runs about virtual horses, The Mane Quest, he has gathered a community that has identified hundreds of horse games developed over the past five decades.
You no doubt know that the creators of the online horse game star stable They have more than 600,000 monthly players.
It had been a good line, though, fueled by frustration over the long-perceived neglect of the virtual horses they designed by many game studios.
It's just not a phrase she can use as easily anymore, not since September, when she posted a 14-second clip that turned the newest horse game she's involved in. Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimoriin one of the most essential games scheduled for 2025.
“We're making a game where you play as a messenger in 13th century Mongolia,” he wrote on Twitter/X two months ago.
“There is no combat, just you, the horses you have tamed, raised and trained, and the vast nature.
“Would you play this?”
The results: 140,000 likes, 15.6 million views of the clip, and, Ruppert told me, a “very, very significant number of wishlists” on Steam.
Ruppert has loved horses his entire life. She rode them as a child, growing up playing horse video games (along with tomb Raider and The Sims) and in 2015 began a career in game development which he successfully led into one focused on creating his own horse video games and helping others improve their horse games.
A key part of that work began in 2018, when he launched The Mane Quest and began publishing horse game reviews.
He wrote with the critical eye of someone who cares a lot. He could be unforgiving, as in his evaluation of the original 2017 game Windstorm: “Overall, Windstorm is just the latest in a long line of horse games where riding feels forced and awkward despite supposedly being the core of the game.” . “
Pooling his frustrations, in 2021 he published a list: 8 Common Horse Mistakes I Want Game Developers to Stop Making.
“Obviously, game development is always complicated,” he told me recently, during a video call from his native Switzerland. “Even as a game developer, you can't always tell what is easy or difficult to implement from the outside.”
Those eight common mistakes that bothered her in horse games ranged from the complex to the confusing.
Games with horses continued to generate erroneous animations, he lamented. They showed the horses' front legs bending the wrong way and prevented players from letting their horses trot. The animation problems were difficult, he acknowledged in a 2022 interview with Polygon, because of the complex ways horses move their legs.
Other problems, like the games' propensity to keep their virtual horses saddled at all times, seemed like repeated mistakes made out of ignorance.
He loved moments from the 2020 PlayStation blockbuster. Ghost of Tsushima when the protagonist samurai Jin Sakai sleeps next to his sleeping horse. “That's really nice,” he said. But it bothered him when the horse appeared sleeping in his saddle. “No one does that,” he said. “The chair breaks. No! Hide that shit!
The problem persisted. He recently was playing a cozy new game in which the horses carry saddles at all times, even while relaxing near his farm. “Why would you do this?” remember thinking. “That's not how anyone puts their horses in a pasture.”
These inaccuracies about horses would affect her, she said, “because I like to see horses being horses and say: how do I say this? — I also want the horses to be comfortable.”
Yes, even the virtual ones. “This breaks my suspension of disbelief,” he said, when the details of the horse are incorrect.
Worse yet, Ruppert believes that many developers may have good intentions but simply don't know any better. “The source of some of that frustration is that it's so easy to fix and it wouldn't have cost you more.”
While blogging about horse games, Ruppert heard from people working in the genre, who came to her for experience and advice. Aesir Interactive, the studio behind that first one wind storm game that she slammed shut, he finally hired her.
Image: Aesir Interactive/NightinGames/Mindscape
When Ruppert published the Legend of Khiimori In the September clip, the enthusiastic response affirmed her faith in horse gaming and, perhaps most importantly, signaled that the risk she and Aesir had taken with the game could pay off.
The legend of Khiimori is meant to be different from the typical horse video game. It's being designed as a period piece, an expensive horseback adventure that's as evocative of a specific time and place as Assassin's Creed or GTA. This is a far cry from the “fix up your family farm” framework of many horse games.
“I was one of the two or three people who made the call of: you know what? For the next horse game we're going to do, we're going to Asia, to Mongolia, and we're going to play messengers,” he said, noting that it took some internal convincing.
“That decision was made sometime in the spring of 2023 and with it came the argument of, 'Hey, this will attract more people.' This will attract people who wouldn't play Riding Simulator 2025, but would choose a historical game with little violence, because it's fun and beautiful.'”
She called the explosive reaction to the game “vindictive.” (Ruppert had been a creative producer on the game, but now works as an independent consultant on it and other projects.)
Furthermore, for the record, he confirmed that Legend of Khiimori avoid his eight mistakes in the horse game.
The game is scheduled for an early access release next year on PC, with any console release TBD.
A good time for horse games.
There have been fallow times for horse games, especially in the 2010s, Ruppert said, but now he is seeing the genre flourish.
“There have definitely been a lot of positive developments since I started researching this market,” he said. There are more horse games. Even better: “Independent horse games exist today.” (Earlier this year, Engadget covered a bunch of horse indies, including the management simulation game Astridethe cozy early access Rivershine Ranchand the election full Rampant.)
Ruppert also sees signs that some of the biggest studios are taking notes. He was excited when the autopsy of a developer of Rockstar games about horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 cited The Search for Mane.
Things are going so well with horse gaming that there's even competition of another kind: a new horse gaming blog that rivals Ruppert's. In September, a site called The Bridle Paths launched with reviews and essays on portrayals of horses in television, movies, and video games. The objective, states its author, is “to create increasingly better products for the benefit of all horse fans.”
Image: Nintendo via Stephen Totilo
I discovered Ruppert's viral. Legend of Khiimori tweet after I started looking for horse games for my kids to play. My seven-year-old son, in particular, tries The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom like a horse game. He doesn't clear dungeons or build gadgets. Instead, you start the game, dress our hero Link in his stealthiest gear, sneak across the fields, jump on a horse, tame it, take it back to a stable, give it a name and change it to another, before repeating the process. loop. He was home sick the day I interviewed Ruppert and sat on my lap for much of the talk. I asked Ruppert what his opinion was on horses in Tears. She played her predecessor, Breath of the wildand above all he received praise.
“I think they have super pretty models, with very efficient styling,” he said.
“I also love that they are kind of thick. “They’re kind of like this workhorse, where they have a little bit of mass.” Players can feel that mass when they ride horses, he said. It is “very tangible in how they handle it. You really feel like you're on a big animal and not just spinning on its axis or something.”
And he likes that even a tamed horse sometimes disobeys Link's orders and doesn't walk where he wants. “The horse has a mind of its own,” he said. “It is a living being, not just a motorcycle. “That was really cool.” As for a criticism of Zelda's horses, she had no major complaints. Just a regret. A 2018 Zelda art book (page 160, to be exact) showed some sketches of “useless things I want horses to do,” like eating tree branches and sticking their heads through open windows to see Link. “I would have loved all of this,” Ruppert said.