8 Common Horse Mistakes I Want Game Developers to Stop Making
As a surprise to literally no one, I have a lot of thoughts on what the creators of games with horses in them could be doing better. Every horse game player has dreams and ideas and could start listing all the features that their ideal horse game would have in an instant.
A lot of these big dreams are understandably out of reach for most horse game developers. Common horse game enthusiast dreams such as “big open world with lots of quests!” and “realistic breeding!” and “horses with individual personalities!” are no simple requests, but huge and costly features.
Thanks to my experience as a game producer, I have a slightly more accurate perspective on what might fit into the scope of the average horse game if it’s considered from the beginning. Let’s ignore the dream projects today and focus on a handful of fairly basic, relatively easily fixable* mistakes that horse game developers should really stop making.
*I realize that there is often no such thing as “easily fixable” in gamedev, but come on, some of this stuff can really be avoided in the future with a bit of planning.
Note: This article is mildly condescending and mostly powered by spite; I had some pent up horse inaccuracy rage to let out.
Forelegs that bend in all the wrong moments
Seen in: Horse Club Adventures, Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure, Any other game using Horse Animset Pro
I’ve mentioned this in various reviews already and I’m hoping I won’t have to mention it again: A horse’s forelegs don’t randomly bend while they are carrying weight. Horse knees are straight when the hoof is flat on the ground unless the horse is in the process of lying down or getting up. One main culprit of “knees bent at random” is the popular Horse Animset Pro asset. Many developers rely on the asset for some or all of their horse animations and therefore perpetuate the issue.
I know I’ve been quoting these two Twitter threads at every opportunity, but I’ll keep doing it until devs/animators stop getting it wrong. I know horse legs are hard, but please, if your goal is to capitalize off of people’s love for these animals, try to do their joint functionality justice.
Straight Fetlocks on hind legs
Seen in: Rival Stars, probably others that I can’t think of right now
Watch the fetlocks lowering and then bouncing loose like a spring. Source
This is another one from the “please learn how horse legs work before animating them” category, and you should take another close look at Alice Walsh’s thread above: When a horse’s hind leg carries weight, the fetlock joint is lowered and the pastern becomes almost horizontal. This aspect of a horse’s biomechanics is one of the first things you’ll notice when admiring a horse’s movements in slow motion, especially when looking at footage of galloping, jumping or rearing.
The concept of lowered fetlock joints when bearing weight applies to both fore and hind legs, but the lack of it is especially noticeable in rearing animations when the horse’s entire weight is held up by those hind legs. Still image references are not ideal here, because they might capture a single moment in time where the joint looks straight, but if you then apply that to an animation lasting several seconds, it quickly looks super wrong. Using video references is the way to go!
This excellent documentary on the inner workings of race horses contains a bunch of “how horse joints work” footage from an autopsy of a dead thoroughbred. Highly recommended, if you have the stomach for it.
In Wildshade – the Fantasy Horse Racing Game I’m now working for, see all info on that here – we had the same issue, but after I pointed it out the animator was able to correct it, as you can see below.
Not letting me intentionally Walk or Trot
Seen in: Horse Club Adventures, Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure, Windstorm Ari’s Arrival
I know movie horses can leave people with the impression that horses have exactly two speeds: stand and gallop. As it turns out, horses can actually move at a walk or trot for longer distances too, especially if they’re trained and ridden.
I have slightly more patience for leaving out gaits when it comes to games that only use horses as a movement speed bonus. But for games that are supposed to be about horses? Please let me enjoy a leisurely pace. For all the “we want to give kids the feeling of having an actual horse” talk I’ve heard from publishers over the years, it sure seems like few of them want to acknowledge that moving slowly on horseback is an incredibly common experience and can be highly enjoyable for anyone who just… you know… enjoys riding horses.
Please give me an option to just ride at a walk ot trot without having to actively concentrate on moving my joystick just a tiny bit.
Not letting me unsaddle my horse at home
Seen in: Horse Club Adventures, My Time at Portia, Red Dead Redemption 2*
Not every game where you ride a horse can let you take off its saddle: many horses in games are mounts that are constantly at the ready, and when a game’s protagonist doesn’t sleep or rest or have a home, it’s sort of self-evident that their steed doesn’t either.
However: There are games where your horse has a home base or stable, and there is just no reason not to let the player unsaddle their horse while it’s there, or at least automatically make the tack invisible. Even if it has no gameplay impact whatsoever, I want to be able to remove my horse’s saddle and bridle when it’s in its home pasture. Let the poor animals take a break, damn it!
Some of y’all have never seen a horse roll in the sand after a long ride sighing and grunting in absolute bliss and it shows. Taking off the saddle and bridle is a nice thing to do and I want my games to let me do it, okay.
*Apparently, it is actually possible to take off your saddle in RDR2 without “losing” a horse in the process. The remove saddle option is only ever introduced as a way to switch horses and I couldn’t find any info on that anywhere, but players tell me it is actually possible. I update my gripes to “badly communicated” instead.
It would have been SO easy for HCA to just stop displaying the tack once you’re done for the day.
Portia could really have added a “remove saddle” option when your horse is near its stable.
RDR2 has a “remove saddle” option, but it’s mechanically tied to switching horses. Img Src
Not letting me look at my horse while moving
Seen in: Horse Club Adventures, Windstorm Ari’s Arrival, My Riding Stables 2, Rival Stars (free roam especially!),
News Flash game devs: horse game fans like looking at horses! Not all of us may be constantly waxing poetic about the inherent majesticness of equine locomotion (some of us totally are, don’t get me wrong), but one of the many reasons we seek out digital horses is because we like to look at them and watch them move.
And the only thing anywhere near as frustrating as a badly animated horse is a well-animated horse that I cannot fucking look at. Let me rotate my camera please, and let me actually rotate it to an angle where I can see my horse move from every direction, even while moving. Not only will you make your players happy, you’ll also greatly increase the shareability and word of mouth marketing potential if you let people take pretty screenshots of their horses!
Watch me try and fail to find a camera angle where I can see my horse.
And yes I mean the whole horse, not “everything but its feet”
Making me pick Individual hooves
Seen in: Horse Club Adventures, Windstorm 1, any My Riding Stables title
I debated whether or not I should be including this one: I still believe that horse care being annoying 99% of the time is an issue of implementation and bad UX rather than an inherent flaw with the concept of “digital hoof picking”. More on that in my analysis article on the subject.
But until any game can prove to me that picking individual hooves by scraping a cursor over different patches of dirt can be fun, actually, I’m putting this feature on my shit list. Please don’t make me scrape individual hooves unless you’re really convinced you found a way to make that mechanic engaging and satisfactory.
Look I'm not opposed to this concept entirely, but every implementation of it I’ve seen is annoying in one way or other.
Open Mouths For No Reason
Seen in: Rival Stars, Ashes of Creation, Red Dead Redemption 2
Here is a fun fact: Horses cannot breathe through their mouths. They do not randomly open or close their mouths while running. There are a couple of reasons why a horse may open its mouth, such as neighing, biting, eating, yawning, flehmen or trying to evade an uncomfortable bit. Including any of those in a game would be perfectly fine of course, but some mostly realistic horse models have a very bad case of “uuh we modelled this horse’s mouth interior so now we kinda have to show it sometimes right?”
No. No you do not.
Hors go 😮
I did a lil analysis twitter thread on this game two years ago I have no idea how up to date this is.
It doesn’t help that most horse models have mouths that don’t actually open far enough, so it’s this awkward in-between thing.
Tortured Neighing when you Brush the horse Wrong
Seen in: Definitely Windstorm 1, but probably also just about any horse game released between 2005 and 2010.
When you brush a horse, you need to be careful not to touch any part of their legs or heads with a rough brush or curry comb, otherwise your horse will scream in pain and not let you ride it anymore. At least that’s what horse games have been trying to teach us: playing a shrieking neighing sound and lowering the “trust” stat when you touch the wrong body part is about as firmly entrenched in horse game tradition as the “you’ve mysteriously inherited a farm” trope.
In reality, horse preferences for “where do I enjoy being brushed” are a lot more individualistic between different horses, with some tolerating everything everywhere and others giving you side eye even at the most careful touch of the softest brush at their flanks or belly buttons. A more appropriate expression of disapproval would be pinned ears or perhaps a snort, rather than the pained whinny we often get to hear.
On that note: neighing is hilariously overused as a sound effect in any horse media, not just games. Horses don’t actually neigh all the time. Neighing is generally reserved for a few specific situations such as calling out to other horses at a distance. There’s a lot of other fun noises horses can make though, from snorting to sighing to nickering to groaning to squealing… Horses can be pretty vocal in real life – you may just need a tiny bit of research to appropriately represent that.
What I didn’t Include
So are these things the “worst of” what horse games tend to get wrong? Nope, far from it. Most horse games have some degree of awful user experience issues, from whack control schemes to bad tutorialization to various unintuitive choices all around – more about that in my review section.
I figured it would make more sense to keep this list “horse-specific” and actually teach people something instead of pointing out yet again that the majority of games in this genre have bad user experience, bad gameplay balancing and lack basic respect for their player base. I know those things are a bit more complex to fix than the matters listed above.
These common mistakes though? I feel like they are not coming from a lack of resources, but from simple ignorance that these are even an issue.
“But Alice!” you may ask, “What else is wrong about horses in games and how can I, a game developer who doesn’t know that much about horses, avoid such mistakes in the future when I’m not even sure what to google for?” Well, dear reader, you are in luck, for I am available for consultation opportunities about all things horses and video games. Do reach out before you embarrass yourself. I swear I’m less condescending in a one-to-one conversation, I am just so tired of seeing games make the same handful of bad decisions over and over again.
