Equestrian: The Game — A Project to Keep Your Eyes on

UPDATE: find TMQ’s interview with the developers here!

Equestrian is probably the most interesting horse game currently in development. According to the project’s website, Equestrian is a “horse game without unicorns”, with an emphasis on realism:

“We realise that not every horse enthusiast is super into pink stardust, cartoons and unicorns. We're working on horse games for the rest of us. The people who like horses, dressage and jumping; the beauty and elegance of equestrianism.”

Now I have nothing against unicorns, but I see a lot of appeal in a horse game that does away with the glitter and magic and focuses on the more realistic parts.

Equestrian even promises to feature “The most realistic riding in a game, ever”. Needless to say, I am intrigued. The passion for horses and horse riding is evident not just in how the team presents its project, but also in a detailed write up about the motivations behind the development on developer Kavalri Games homepage.

Since Equestrian is a lot further in development than my own horse game prototype, I have hopes that this may be the horse game to show the game industry that riding enthusiasts are a passionate and viable target audience, provided game developers start taking their interests seriously.

I found out about this project’s existence shortly after launching The Mane Quest and I’ve been meaning to feature it and its developers for months. Since I have still not gotten around to that, I at least want to highly recommend following the development on Facebook or Instagram, where the Equestrian team posts WIP animations of their horses, and a hilarious new series of videos where their programmer draws a horse every day until he gets good at it.

Stay tuned for more information about the game and the team’s plans for it.

Equestrian is going to be a free-to-play mobile game with optional in-app purchases. It does not have a release date yet.