Star Equestrian, a New Free to Play Mobile Horse MMO – Early Access Impressions

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Star Equestrian is a brand new mobile horse game with an online open world for you and your friends to play in. Brought to you by Foxie Ventures, the Australian studio behind Horse Riding Tales, Star Equestrian will offer cross country and show jumping, an open world to explore, story missions and daily quests to complete, and  quite a variety of horses and tack to collect and level up. The game is coming to iOS and Android. Star Equestrian will be free to play, with earnable and buyable premium currency used for unlocking new horses and tack items. 

A beta playtest has been underway since February. To get my feedback and give me an opportunity to ask a few questions, Foxie Ventures’ Product Manager Steven Ready invited me to a live playthrough and video call. Join me today for a preview of what the game has to offer, and stay tuned for further insight on Foxie’s plans for Star Equestrian. 

Welcome to Evervale

Welcome to Evervale, a land of stunning vistas and lush forests, where the culture is rich and vibrant. As a rising equestrian star, you dream of competing in the prestigious Star Championship. 

The game’s introductory quests are told in a mixture of text screens, gameplay and cutscenes. You, the aspiring Star Equestrian, meet a mysterious magical horse that you name Snowdrop – and promptly lose him again through an accident. The real game begins two years later, when you return to your home town of Heartside to participate in the Star Championship as you’ve always wanted. 

Your first meeting with the mysterious Snowdrop.

Joy welcomes you to Heartside upon your return.

The storytelling here felt a bit rushed in the version I’ve played, but it’s understandable that a mobile game would want to let its players get to the “actual” gameplay quickly. In addition, Steven from Foxie Ventures showed me how the team has been reworking the game’s intro to address a few common issues found in the playtests, so you’ll be playing an extended and tweaked version of these intro missions in the release version.

Star Equestrian lets you play as a male or female equestrian, giving you randomized name options and a handful of clothing items, hair styles and skin colors to choose from. The character creator is basic, but serves its purpose - especially since more hair and clothing can be unlocked later in the game. 

You can select a male or female character

Hair and clothing options depend on which model you’ve picked

Your next handful of missions gets you familiar with the map navigation in the village of Heartside and introduces you to some new (and old) friends that supply you with your first horse and tack, teach you how to participate in qualifying events for the Championship, and help you put up wanted posters for the mysterious Snowdrop, who’s been seen around town recently. 

Horses and Animations

Upon your arrival in Heartside, auction house owner Joy gifts you your very first Silver Key - an item that lets you unlock a door, behind which you will find your first horse, and with which you’ll have a chance to receive further horses or tack items in the future. You buy keys for gems and you can buy gems for real money, and each key is a gamble for tack or horses. This lootbox is the core of Star Equestrian’s monetization and likely what you’ll be saving any gems earned through quests for. But more on the premium model later. Let’s first have a look at the horses themselves:   

You (Mustang) vs

the guy she tells you not to worry about (Clydesdale)

There are twelve different breeds in the game at the moment, including one fantastical “Paradise Quarter Horse”, alongside real breeds such as Clydesdales, Shires, Mustangs, Arabians and Friesians. From the market’s preview screens I like the draft breed models significantly more, but the ones I’ve been able to take the closest look at so far are the Australian Stock Horse and American Paint. 

The models and animations are custom-made by Foxie, which blessedly means that we don’t see the usual HAP-related problems. The horse models and motions have a few issues of their own though: On the Paint and Stock Horse models, the eyes are bit forward-set and forward-facing for my taste (or as I call it “a mild case of predator horse”), the muzzle shape is a bit strangely slanted and the pasterns look slightly stumpy. The Mustang looks unfortunately wonky to me in terms of conformation and rigging, and several of the breeds strike me as having legs are too short for their body length. 

We’ve definitely seen worse cases of ‘predator horse’.

The Friesian sport horse has quite a long body, but I do like its luscious mane.

The back is a bit stiff and the head high, but all in all it’s a decent the walk animation.

The pasterns bend a tiny bit weirdly if you look closely, but ithe trot is perfectly fine overall.

One interesting error that completely went past me but was spotted in the game trailer by a TMQ community member – none other than our friendly neighborhood chariot racing expert, actually – is that the horses in Star Equestrian are cross cantering: their forelegs and back legs are on opposite canter leads, which means that the two right legs (instead of the right hind, left fore diagonal) meet the ground at the same moment. Foxie Ventures thanked me for my lengthy email explaining all this, and promised it would be fixed for the game’s release. You won’t see the faulty canter animation in the final game anymore, I am merely mentioning this as a lovely example of the TMQ community being able to help devs with horsie details. 

This canter animation from my preview build still features the faulty cross canter - this has since been corrected!

The saddle positions being so different makes it impossible to put the player in the correct location for different tack setups.

One other negative standout in my preview version was the rider and saddle position: The positions of different saddles are all over the place, and the rider doesn’t look quite right in any of them. The rider’s pelvis manages to balance somewhere on the cantle more often than not, instead of in the actual seat. The rider’s posture is somewhat hunched forward, their knees too high up and too far in front. This has been at least partially fixed before release, as you can see in the comparison below. 

Rider position and posture before…

…and after improvements. I received these preview images from Foxie, I haven’t played an updated build yet.

Beyond that, the animations are solid, though the walk is a bit stiff in the back, with a head carriage that I’d call a too high for a relaxed horse. Alas, there’s always details to improve, but compared to many animated horses, the Star Equestrian steeds are doing quite well, and I’m at a point where I’d much rather see devs make their own new mistakes with horse animations instead of everyone using the same asset pack with all its flaws. 

Quests, Events, Systems

Apart from the main quest about finding Snowdrop and training for the Championship, Star Equestrian offers side missions, as well as repeatable daily tasks related to feeding and training. Most of the missions I’ve seen so far reward the player with valuable Gems, including the Dailies. 

One daily quest gives you 10 gems, a silver key costs 200 gems. You can get 70 gems from dailies every day.

Reaching 56% main story progress took me somewhere around 3 hours.

After the live playthrough with Foxie Ventures, I played for another 2-3 hours and soon reached 50% completion in the main story - what I’ve seen so far is engaging, but it’s fair to assume that eager players will run out of story content fairly quickly upon release. After that, it’s Dailies, Events, Levelling and Ranch Building that will keep people busy. 

One early-game quest requires the player to gather clues from several NPCs to then guess which horse is the culprit.

Apart from main missions, various NPCs offer dialogues or side missions.

Star Equestrian currently features two riding disciplines: Cross Country and Show Jumping. Both feature the same timing-based challenge for getting jumps right, but the cross country courses are a bit more about managing your stamina well while show jumping asks you to follow the ideal path between obstacles. Neither implementation is particularly innovative, but they’re solid and satisfying to play. I’ve repeatedly found myself motivated to try again after finishing a suboptimal round, sure that I knew what I did wrong and could do better next time. Individual races are always brief enough to stay interesting, and the cross country courses do an excellent job of showing off the game’s lovely environments. 

You get bonus Stamina for well timed jumps in XC for events with the “Inspiring Jumps” challenge

Taking shortcuts when jumping results in a “line penalty” for events with the “Line Riding” modifier.

To proceed in the events, you will need to level up your horse, or you’ll quickly be under-equipped for the next qualifying race in the Championship. Participating in events provides experience, and you can boost individual stats by giving your horse different food items, which you pick up in the world. 

Riding around the open world to pick up carrots, pumpkins, wheat, heads of lettuce and more therefore becomes a decent investment of your time if you just have a few minutes to kill, which is of course perfect for the type of short-session playstyle that many mobile games strive to provide. It didn’t take me too long to explore all of the first region, but I have at least one more map region to unlock through mission progress.

Your horse’s overall level limits how far you can boost each stat with food items.

Through the “Mastery” system, you can unlock additional perks as well as mane and tail styles by aquiring several horses of the same breed.

In addition to the levelling of stats, you can also slowly build up your bond to your horse through riding, petting and feeding. Bonding unlocks cute new petting animations and a few new tricks such as a faster sprint and a sliding stop. Higher level stats give you better control over your horse, though I have not played enough to really test that in depth. I imagine that those differences become noticeable particularly once you level one horse up high and then get yourself another one through the key system. The difference in a level 20 horse vs a level 1 horse are still quite subtle, which is understandable considering horses can reach levels as high as 100.

Merging tack items increases the main tack’s stat boni, but costs significant amounts of gold.

The horse reacting to you when you pet it is an early perk of upgrading your bond.

Through the gems and keys you also get tack items, which you can then either equip directly, or strip for parts to improve your main tack. That process costs significant amounts of gold though, which has put a bit of a damper on my motivation for it, particularly since I’d rather spend that gold in Ranch customization. This balance evens out later in the game as quest and event rewards increase.

Ranch Building

It takes a handful of missions until Star Equestrian lets you in on one of its most interesting features: You can purchase empty slots of land, place buildings on them and then decorate your stables and houses in detail, The Sims style. It’s a concept that I am incredibly excited for in theory, but haven’t been quite convinced by in practice. 

I imagine some players will spend a lot of time perfecting their ranch setup.

You need to ride about three or four competitions to earn gold for one of those Kallax shelves.

Earning enough gold in events to afford furniture and decorations is a relatively slow process - I assume players will be kept busy for a while to build their dream home one potted plant at a time. 

In addition to the Beta app, the Foxie team also provided me with a special preview build of the game with generous amounts of gold and gems in my coffers – I therefore had opportunity to play around with the ranch building in more detail, and I’m a bit torn. 

Decoration items are unlocked as you level up, and are bought for gold.

Every item you place adds building points, which then unlock perks for you and for stalled horses.

On the one hand, I absolutely love that this is a thing – I find the concept of decorating a virtual space for myself quite satisfying. At the same time though, I’m not one to do it solely for the aesthetics. By upgrading your ranch, you unlock a variety of perks for yourself and your stalled horses, so there is a mechanical benefit here. The Star Equestrian Ranch Builder also lets you enter your custom built ranch in the game’s regular third person mode, which is very cool, but it’s also where you realize just how little you can actually do with any of the items you spent all that hard-earned gold on.

I can build stalls for my horses, but I cannot take off their tack while they’re in them. I can buy brushes, feed troughs and saddle stands, but neither I nor my horse can interact with the items in any way. I get it, this isn’t The Sims, and living in my Ranch isn’t a core feature, but it still made the whole building experience feel a bit shallow to me very quickly, which is a shame. 

Then again, I am far from the most creative player in such matters – my Stardew Valley farm and my Animal Crossing island are not exactly inspirational material – and I can well imagine that the ranch building will bring more joy to others. Especially once using it to brag about your progress to fellow players becomes a thing.

Currencies

One of the main points of criticism in my review of Horse Riding Tales was its aggressive monetization. I’m happy to say that my impression of Star Equestrian’s freemium model is a lot more positive so far: Spending gems on a chance of getting a horse isn’t exactly a lot of fun, and people take issue with lootbox mechanics in games for good reason. But this is a free to play game, and all things considered, it gives you a lot of its content to play for free. There are no paywalls on world, events or quests, nor does Star Equestrian limit players in participating in one race after another to earn more gold and gems.

Some main missions give you enough gems to buy a key, which means a chance of getting a new horse.

Using keys provides you with gem dust, which you can use to unlock new clothing options - the colors of which can be customized.

Buying and using keys quickly gets a bit tedious when repeatedly receiving tack items, especially since using those for upgrades consumes significant amounts of hard-earned gold. The huge variety of horse color and marking combinations – several of the breeds have millions of possibilities – means that getting a specific breed or color is going to require a massive investment of either time or money. 

It’s hardly my favorite type of game monetization, but it is certainly a huge step up from Horse Riding Tales, and I am vastly more forgiving towards the concept of grinding for currency in a game where the grinding itself (i.e. the eventing) is actually fun and enjoyable.

Performance and Platform

Ignore the cracks in my phone screen, those are not Star Equestrian’s fault.

I came away from my initial live playthrough with an uncomfortably cramped neck and a big desire to put my phone away - I am not one to play for extended periods of time on a small smartphone screen. 

The first time experience was made significantly worse by performance problems – a low framerate and input lag made navigating the game world a lot harder than it needed to be. Fortunately, I’ve since realized that keeping my play sessions short to keep my phone from overheating does wonders for the game’s performance, and I’ve had a significantly better experience only playing 10-20 minutes at a time. 

The gameplay is very much suited to such short sessions, and I can easily imagine players tackling a quick event or two in their coffee break or collecting and feeding a few carrots while waiting for the bus. 

When you tap the gold, you get invited to go to the events screen where you can earn gold. It’s a detail, but it’s convenient.

I’ve spent more time playing the mobile game than I initially thought I would, but I can’t deny that I’d be vastly happier with a PC port – unfortunately though, that is not something Foxie plans to release any time soon. (Edit: this is out of date, a PC version is now available!)

I imagine that the game fares better on newer phone models – I play on a six year old iPhone X – and that tablet users and players more used to playing on mobile will have a better time with it. 

I’ve encountered a handful of minor technical issues such as quests not continuing until I restarted the game, or running into somewhat awkward invisible walls at the edges of accessible areas, but all in all the game feels polished and functional. The controls, menu navigation and overall user experience are fluid and intuitive. The game even offers a multitude of “shortcuts” for convenience, like letting you collect and interact with everything from horseback while exploring, showing pick-up items on the minimap, and offering direct access to other menus wherever they’re relevant.

Closing Thoughts

There is no doubt that Star Equestrian is a more mature and well-rounded product than Horse Riding Tales, and one that offers significantly more gameplay fun to players who aren’t looking to spend large amounts of money on it.  

With its ranch building and mobile open world, Star Equestrian already brings a few novelties to the table that enrich our genre, and I know from my contact with the Foxie team that the game will be further expanded from here. Our interactions have also made it clear that Foxie takes the horsie target audience seriously, that they’re eager for detailed feedback and willing to improve what doesn’t quite work yet, rather than settling for the minimum. 

More on the game’s development – and what the Star Equestrian release means for Horse Riding Tales – will be covered in an upcoming article, you’ll find a link to it right here once it’s up. 

I can’t yet say how much time I personally will be spending with Star Equestrian, but my hesitation is more about personal taste for platform and business models rather than widely applicable criticism. 

All in all, I’m excited to observe the game’s initial reception and further development, and optimistic that it’ll turn out to be a worthwhile addition to the growing horse game canon. 

UPDATE 16.04.2023 I feel like I need to add that I’ve ended up playing Star Equestrian on a pretty consistent daily basis in the weeks following release, and that I’m still having fun with it even as I’m slowly running out of new content.