Two New Horse Games Headed for Steam — Bibi & Tina and MRS: Your Horse Breeding

Developer Independent Arts Software and publisher Familyplay have announced not one, but two horse game Steam releases for November 30th 2018:

Bibi & Tina: Adventures with Horses

My Riding Stables: Your Horse Breeding

Bibi & Tina: Adventures With Horses is based on popular German kids’ franchise Bibi Blocksberg and its horse-themed spinoff Bibi & Tina, whereas My Riding Stables: Your Horse Breeding seems to be a sequel to Familyplay’s 2014 release My Riding Stables: Life With Horses.

Judging by screenshots and features list on Steam, these are two entirely separate games, despite sharing a handful of mechanics like the ever popular hoof-cleaning minigame. I’m happy to see that both of them have ditched the genre-usual low-budget pseudorealism for a more stylized art style.

The titular “Riding Stables”

At a glance, Your Horse Breeding seems to share many mechanics with its 2014 predecessor, while making a lot of sorely needed improvements to user interface and 3D asset quality. Since the 2014 game did a lot of things right but suffered greatly from its overall lack of polish, I’m intrigued to see what the sequel will deliver.

Looking at the two games’ features lists on Steam, My Riding Stables definitely looks like the more promising of the two, with Bibi & Tina’s content coming off as rather limited in comparison: Where My Riding Stables offers long-term sounding goals such as “Create an extensive horse farm with stables, riding hall, guest house, therapy centre, fields and challenging racetracks“, Bibi & Tina lists “Collect 34 photos straight from the film for your album and photo story” as one of 6 defining features, with no farm buildup or management mentioned.

I cannot help but wonder what makes a developer release two games for the same target audience at the same time? Is Bibi & Tina simply a licensed reskin of some of My Riding Stables’ mechanics? Were the two projects developed by different teams within the same company? The Mane Quest has reached out to Interactive Arts Software for comment.

Bibi & Tina: Adventures With Horses and My Riding Stables: Your Horse Breeding will be released on Steam on November 30th 2018.

Horse grooming in Bibi & Tina

Hoof-cleaning in Bibi & Tina