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Alice Ruppert used to make a self-deprecating comment when friends and colleagues discovered how much she thought about the depictions of horses in video games.
“People said, ‘Oh my God, I thought I was the only one who cared about horses at competitions.’
“No, it isn’t,” she replied. “There are dozens of us.”
Ruppert has never been completely serious about that calculation. She has been making horse-related games for happy players for years. And she writes about virtual horses via a blog, The search for moonsshe has gathered a community that has identified hundreds of developed horse games over the past five decades.
She certainly knows that from the makers of the online horse game Stars stable to boast more than 600,000 monthly players.
Nevertheless, it had been a good line, fueled by the frustration over the neglect many game studios had long felt for the virtual horses they designed.
It’s just not a phrase she can use so easily anymore — not since September, when she posted a 14-second clip that became the latest horseplay she’s involved in: Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimorito one of the most must-watch games scheduled for 2025.
“We’re making a game where you play a courier in 13th-century Mongolia,” she says wrote on Twitter/X two months ago.
“No battle, just you, the horses you tamed, bred and trained and the vast wilderness.
“Would you like to play this?”
The results: 140,000 likes, 15.6 million views of the clip and, Ruppert told me, a “very, very relevant number of wishlists” on Steam.
Ruppert has loved horses all her life. She rode them as a kid, grew up playing horse video games (along with Grave robber And The Sims) and in 2015 she embarked on a career in game development that she successfully parlayed into a career focused on creating her own horse video games and helping others make their horse games better.
A significant part of that work began in 2018, when she launched The Mane Quest and began publishing horse game reviews.
She wrote with the critical eye of someone who cares deeply. She could be unrelenting, as in her assessment from the original 2017 Windstorm game: “All in all, Windstorm is just the latest in a long line horse games where the driving itself feels stilted and awkward, despite being ostensibly the core of the game.
She collected her frustrations and published a list in 2021: 8 common horse mistakes I want game developers to stop making.
“It’s clear that game development is always complicated,” she told me recently during a video call from her native Switzerland. “Even as a game developer, you can’t always see from the outside what is easy or difficult to implement.”
The eight common mistakes that bothered her in horse games ranged from complex to confusing.
The animations kept going wrong in games with horses, she complained. They made horses’ front legs bend the wrong way, and they blocked players from trotting their horses. The animation issues were tricky, she admitted in a 2022 interview with Polygon, because of the complex ways in which horses move their legs.
Other issues, like games’ tendency to always keep the saddles on their virtual horses, seemed like repeated mistakes made out of ignorance.
She loved the moments in the 2020 PlayStation blockbuster Ghost of Tsushima when the main character samurai Jin Sakai dozes beside his slumbering horse. “That’s really cute,” she said. But it annoyed her that the horse was shown sleeping in the saddle. “Nobody does that,” she said. “It breaks the saddle. No! Hide that shit!”
The problem persisted. She recently played a new, fun game where the horses always wear a saddle, even when relaxing near their farm. “Why would you do this?” she remembers thinking. “No one puts their horses out to pasture like this.”
These inaccuracies in horses affected her, she said, “because I like to see horses being horses and seeing how they are: how do I say this? I also want horses to feel comfortable.”
Yes, even the virtual ones. “It breaks my suspension of disbelief,” she said when the details of the horse were incorrect.
Even worse, Ruppert believes that many developers may have good intentions, but simply don’t know any better. “Part of that frustration comes from the fact 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 approached her for expertise and advice. Aesir Interactive, the studio behind that scoop Wind storm game she hit ended up hiring her.
When Ruppert de Legend of Khiimori clip in September, the enthusiastic response confirmed her faith in horse games and, perhaps more importantly, indicated that the risk she and Aesir had taken with the game could pay off.
The legend of Khiimori is meant to feel different from the typical horse video game. It’s being designed as a period piece, an expensively rendered horseback adventure that’s as reminiscent of a specific time and place as an Assassin’s Creed or GTA. That’s a far cry from the “fix your family farm” framework of many a horse game.
“I was one of two or three people who made the call: you know what? For the next horse game we make, we’re going to Asia, to Mongolia, and we’re going to play as a courier,” she said, noting that it took some convincing internally.
“That decision was made sometime in the spring of 2023, and with that came the argument, ‘Hey, this will appeal to more people.’ This will appeal to people who wouldn’t play Riding Simulator 2025, but who want to play a historical game with little violence because it’s fun and beautiful.'”
She called the explosive reaction to the game “righteous.” (Ruppert was a creative producer on the game, but now works as a freelance consultant for the game and other projects.)
For the record, she confirmed that too Legend of Khiimori avoids her eight horseplay mistakes.
The game is scheduled for an early release next year on PC, with a possible console release to be determined.
A good time for horse games
There have been fallow times for horse games, especially in the 2010s, Ruppert said, but she sees the genre flourishing now.
“There has certainly been a lot of positive development since I started exploring this market,” she said. There are more horse games. Even better: “There is such a thing as indie horse games these days.” (Earlier this year, Engadget covered a bunch of horse indiesincluding the simulation management game Astridethe cozy, early access Rivershine Ranchand the choice filled Rampant.)
Ruppert also sees signs that some of the biggest studios are taking notes. She was very happy when she became a Rockstar game developer post-mortem on horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 quoted The Mane Quest.
Horse gaming is doing so well that there’s even a different kind of competition: a new horse gaming blog to rival Ruppert’s. In September a site called The riding trails launched with reviews and essays on the depictions of horses in TV, films and video games. The goal, the author states, is “to create ever better products for the benefit of all horse lovers.”
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 especially likes it The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as horseplay. He doesn’t clear dungeons or build structures. Instead, he starts up the game, dresses our hero Link in his most inconspicuous gear, sneaks through the fields, jumps on a horse, tames it, takes it back to a stable, gives it a name and trades it in for another horse, before repeating: loop. He was home sick the day I interviewed Ruppert and sat on my lap for much of the conversation. I asked Ruppert what she thought of the horses Tears. She played its predecessor, Breath of the wildand was especially praiseworthy.
“I think they have super beautiful models, with very efficient stylization,” she said.
“I also love that they are a little chunky. They look a bit like this draft horse, where they have a bit of mass. Players can feel that mass when they ride the horses, she said. It is “very tangible in the way they deal with it. You really feel like you’re sitting on a big animal and not just spinning around on its axis or something.”
And she likes that even a tamed horse sometimes ignores Link’s orders and doesn’t walk where he wants. “The horse has a mind of its own,” she said. “It’s a living being, not just a motorcycle. That was really cool.’ As for the criticism of Zelda’s horses, she didn’t have any major problems. Just a lament. A 2018 Zelda art book (page 160, to be precise) had shown some of them sketches of “pointless things I want the horses to do,” including eating tree branches and sticking their heads through open windows to check in on Link. “I would have loved all of this,” Ruppert said.