rating my childhood horse games

When I was a kid, I really wanted my own horse. This, unsurprisingly, was not a goal I ever managed to achieve. Instead, I made do by reading any and all horse-related books I could find, accumulating several stables worth of plastic horse toys, and generally being annoying about how many Horse Facts I knew. These days, I'd like to think I am significantly more normal about horses, but traces of my past obsession still linger. I still have a few horse toys and figurines I couldn't bear to get rid of. Most of my childhood book collection (which included a significant number of Horse Literature classics) was cleared away years ago, but for some reason I seem to have felt a need to hang onto a volume entitled "1000 FACTS ON HORSES". And, most impressively, I have in my possession three (3) different horse-themed game cartridges for the Nintendo DS.

Seeing as I have only vague memories of playing any of these games, I thought it would be fun to revisit them and see how they hold up to my current standards. So, I will be playing each title for an hour, and then reviewing them. Each will also be rated according to how well they meet HORSE standards, a system which I have just made up because I wanted a set of criteria that spelled HORSE:

• Heart: Do these horses— and by extension, the game— feel like they have a soul? Did this game charm me, or does it feel empty? Could I convince myself this digital horse is my Best Friend Forever?
• Originality: How does this game distinguish itself from others? What kind of horse mechanics are present, and do they feel interesting or meaningful?
• Replayability: Did I enjoy revisiting this game with an actually developed brain? Would I actually want to play more of it outside of this project?
• Style: Do the graphics and design of this game do justice to the majestic beasts they are depicting? Is the game nice to look at? Are the horses fabulous and beautiful, or at the very least, kind of cute?
• Engagement: Overall, how immersive is this game? Did it actually hold my interest? And, most importantly, did it make me feel like I actually had a beloved pet horse?

Now that we've established the definitive method for reviewing horse-themed DS titles, let's see our first game...

Horse Life (2007)

I may have set myself up for a bad time with this game. Upon starting up a new save file, I was asked what breed of horse I would prefer: French Saddle, English, Arabian, or Unicorn. Obviously I had to pick unicorn. I thought it was hilarious that unicorn was even an option. Little did I know that choosing unicorn would bypass all the horse customization options, the opening cutscene, and the tutorial.

As far as I can tell, the unicorn is supposed to be a sort of New Game+ reward for winning the championship with your regular horse. However, checking my childhood save file revealed I had only completed a single competition; evidently I was unimpressed with Horse Life, even as a child. The most likely explanation is that the unicorn option unlocks if there is a preexisting save file, without bothering to check if that file actually "cleared" the game. This is unfortunately on par with the rest of the game, which endlessly repeats dialogue that really only needs to be said once. On the plus side, this meant I didn't even notice the lack of tutorials, since things were constantly being re-explained to me. The downside is that it still got annoying incredibly quickly; even a child probably doesn't need to be told how to brush the horse with the stylus more than once, and as far as I can tell, Quentin from the gear shop will keep re-introducing himself to you no matter how much horse feed you buy from him.

While the regular horses may have slightly more customization options than the unicorn (including the ability to name them instead of just calling them UNICORN), they still feel fairly limited. I was hoping the shop would at least let me accessorize, but although you can buy new riding gear for both yourself and the horse, all of it looks incredibly basic. While this may be realistic, it's not really what I want from a video game, especially one that feels so limiting already. To the game's credit, this realism also extends to the horses, which are pretty detailed and well-animated for the DS.

Horse Life is primarily a management sim: you have a certain number of activities you can do each day, and have to try and keep your horse's various stats up while also making your way through competitions. Petting the horse raises their Happiness, taking them for rides raises Fitness, and cleaning them or their stall raises their Cleanliness. None of these activities are particularly complicated, and you have more than enough time to do them once a day; the focus is clearly supposed to be the competitions. Competently riding requires passing a series of touchscreen QTEs: tracing arrows and pressing points. This isn't particularly difficult either (although I only made it to the "Amateur" level events), but given the fact that this game is aimed at children, that's probably fine.

I was bored of this game well before my first hour was up, and while part of it is that the gameplay is not very interesting, I also found the game did a poor job of providing any sort of motivation. There's no particular reason for entering the competitions beyond wanting to win. You do receive prize money, but there's not much worth spending it on besides feed for your horse. Entering a new level of competitions also gives you some unique (for once) dialogue, hinting at some sort of story involving Gear Shop employee Quentin and your competition rival Melanie, but whether or not that actually goes anywhere is beyond me. I feel like it would've been easy to at least insert some sort of cliché "win to save the farm!"" storyline to make competing feel more purposeful, but what do I know.

Instead, simply gaining prestige is the primary goal, and your horse's well-being is explicitly presented as secondary. I was honestly offended when my in-game Grandpa (owner of the horse farm, and the game's mouthpiece for essentially everything) informed me that I had to keep my horse's happiness up in order to win. First of all, I'm doing my best. Second of all, my beautiful UNICORN's happiness is more important than any trophy. Grandpa was honestly not doing this game many favors. Though he does frequently toss out an "I'm proud of you" for winning trials, he also constantly tells me I should be currying faster (why? I'm trying to make sure he's clean, right?), and informed me on the first day of the game (aka before I'd had enough time to raise my stats higher) that I needed to take better care of UNICORN. This seems pretty harsh to all the sensitive horse girls who played this game. Luckily, I am not a sensitive horse girl myself, but I did still think he was a bit of a jackass.

Overall, I was not terribly impressed with Horse Life. The fact that I dropped it so quickly, even as a horse-obsessed kid, means it's probably not worth recommending to literally anyone... and may also explain how I ended up with additional horse games. Hopefully the next one is better?

My Horse & Me: Riding for Gold (2008)

This game impressed me more than Horse Life almost immediately. Though it has the same basic premise of working your way through equestrian competitions, it provides a lot more variety, and a more compelling story. The story in question is, funnily enough, the exact cliché plot I mentioned in my previous review. I'm writing these as I play through the games, so I had no idea when reviewing Horse Life that the next game would fulfill my wish for a "win to save the ranch" story line. Like Horse Life, I have only vague memories of playing Riding for Gold as a child, but my original save file shows that I actually did play this one to completion and successfully save the ranch by becoming a champion.

There isn't much customization to speak of in Riding for Gold: you play as a premade character named Emma, and you pick your horse's color and name. The outfits aren't much more exciting than the options from Horse Life, but I did appreciate the ability to set different outfits and equipment for different events. A dressage rider is going to dress differently than a cross country one, so the game actually reflecting that was a nice touch!

In addition to differing outfits, the events (dressage, jumping, and cross country) also had distinct gameplay. I found both the variety and the execution of these much more engaging. Unlike Horse Life, which had me constantly following circles around the screen, Riding for Gold's controls allowed me to spend more time actually watching my horse run around. Even the dressage event, which had similar QTE-based controls, still allowed you moments to watch your horse do their thing. Given that the main appeal of these games (at least to me) is to let you look at horses, this is a pretty crucial design choice.

Ironically, despite having more Horse Viewing time, the horse models in this game are not quite as impressive as Horse Life. They're still perfectly serviceable for a DS game, though, and the improvements in other areas more than made up for it. Additionally, the game has more detailed graphics for other areas; most notably, the ranch is fully 3D, instead of a static image. There are also pre-rendered cutscenes, featuring much more detailed models of the human characters. This deeply confused me while playing, because it looked like a ridiculous waste of budget, but after some research it turns out the console version of this game looked VERY different.

It turns out that Riding for Gold, also released as My Horse & Me 2, was available on Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, and PC, and then seemingly crammed onto the Nintendo DS as quickly as possible. The unreasonably detailed cutscene models are just the regular models from the console releases, which also included voice acting, much more character customization, multiplayer, and various other gameplay features that were unceremoniously cut from the DS version. As a port, this is pretty obviously the worst version of the game.

Putting the superior console versions aside, however, I still enjoyed a lot of what the DS version did have to offer. Even during my childhood Horse Phase, I was more interested in the details of proper horse care and biology than riding or competitions. So I was a bit impressed by how much detail went into the "stable" portion of Riding for Gold: there are six different care tasks for your horse, including brushing, picking their hooves, and mixing their feed properly. There's also a task that requires you to determine your horse's mood, which provides a fair amount of information on reading equine body language. Again, this is the kind of shit I loved learning about as a kid, plus it's nice the game has a way to signify your horse's emotional state that isn't just a number or a health meter.

I had fun revisiting Riding for Gold, but it still felt a bit repetitive by the end of my trial hour. Judging by my original save file, though, this game did keep me entertained as a child, at least through the end of its fairly short story. Despite that, now that I know the DS version was stripped of so much content, I feel like I can't possibly recommend it. Onto the final game!

Bella Sara (2008)

I must admit to some bias here: this is the only game on the list with true nostalgic value to me. Though I may not remember much of the DS game specifically, it's impossible to fully separate from my more distinct memories of playing the browser game, and reading the books, and trading the cards, and spending my allowance on various pieces of merchandise. As a kid who was majorly obsessed with both horses and fantasy stories, this franchise was like crack to me. I'm pretty sure I played the DS game quite a lot, too, but unfortunately my original save has been lost to time.

Bella Sara, like the previous two games, features the now-familiar gameplay loop of "ride horse, clean/care for horse, and repeat". The stable section of the game was more or less the same as the previous titles I played (and the Bella Sara browser game), although I appreciated the more gentle approach to picking their hooves compared to Riding for Gold, because I am the sort of former(?) horse freak who cares about that stuff. The riding sections, however, are much less competition focused: while you can compete in jumping competitions, I spent the majority of my riding time exploring the game's scenic trails while picking up collectibles or completing the sidequests which regularly appear on the farm's bulletin board. Out of all the games, this was probably the most fun I had with virtual horse riding.

The true standout feature of Bella Sara is collecting the franchise's trademark cards, which the game hands out at a pretty generous pace. They can appear randomly on the overworld, are guaranteed to show up when you take your horse out on a trail, and to my own surprise and amusement, I even picked one out of my horse's hoof. As if that isn't enough, you can also purchase them from the in-game shop, instead of blowing your real life actual money on them like I did. Aside from presenting you with a steady supply of pretty horse artwork to look at, completing certain card sets also adds new horses to your stable, allowing you to eventually collect a total of six magical equine friends. Some in-game achievements also grant website codes, which presumably unlocked more horses on the browser game, but since the site has since shut down those are sadly useless now.

Interestingly, Bella Sara was also noticeably more inclusive than the previous two games. With six preset character options, it was the only game to allow you to choose between different skin tones and hair colors: Horse Life only offered a choice between playing as a (white) boy or girl, and Riding for Gold's character customization was entirely cut from the DS release. In addition, while the first two games both had ranches run by an older male relative, Bella Sara's stable is owned by a woman. Of course, neither of these changes are incredibly groundbreaking, and I am speaking of an incredibly small sample size, but it did call attention to a pattern I may not have noticed otherwise.

While it offered the most character customization, Bella Sara was also the only game to not allow you to customize your horse's name or color. On the other hand, you do get six horses, they are all magical beings, and you can accessorize them pretty thoroughly by buying nose bands, leg bands, saddles, and ribbons. The shop continued to expand its selection of products as I played the game, offering not only new styles of horse accessories, but also better quality brushes and hoof picks to make caring for the horses easier. There are also a fair amount of human clothing options available— though they aren't nearly as comprehensive as the horse-related ones. Clothes in this game tend to be more colorful and fantasy-style, as opposed to realistic. I personally found this to make dressing my character up more fun, especially with the DS's graphical limitations. Overall, I found the game's graphics to be really charming and cohesive. The horses could've used a bit more detail, but I still loved them.

In my probably-very-biased-but-still-correct opinion, this was the best of the horse games I played, and the only one I would actually consider continuing outside of this project. If memory serves, collecting enough cards will get me a pegasus, and I kind of do want a pegasus. The card/horse collecting, quest board, and expanding shop options give Bella Sara a greater sense of progression than just trying to win trophies, and its colorful, fantastical aesthetic is more appealing to me than the more realistic games. Despite this, though, I can't see myself playing this game for more than a couple hours (or while very, very, very bored). Perhaps I've grown out of horse sim games? Or perhaps there are some really, really good horse sims out there that I just haven't played. I kind of hope it's the latter.