A small herd’s-worth of horses await you in the stable, each eager and friendly to meet their potential new rider. Simply select one from this dropdown. You can switch between horses at any time, and click the food and water troughs and drag the brush to care for and groom them here in the stable. You can also click on your horse to pet them! Read below to learn more about your horse’s personality and breed.
(Some images may flicker when interacted with for the first time.)
This horse is skilled in !
Much like the Wolf Girl, an archetype I have previously explored, the Horse Girl is an even more well known phenomenon. Perhaps it can be traced back to the myth of the unicorn bonding with an innocent maiden, or maybe the appeal of a “special bond” with a powerful animal is just universally enticing. There are plenty of movies and shows about horses being trained and rescued by young female protagonists to the point of parody- I think we’ve all seen that Tumblr post about “saving Ol’ Misery from the glue factory”. And this prevalence of horse girl media has also applied to games- though the options on the market have always left much to be desired. (This is likely due to games aimed for young girls being considered “less serious”, so many games like this are shovelware rather than AAA titles. I recommend checking out the blog The Mane Quest to learn more about the “curse” of horse games).
Video games seem like the perfect medium for horse girls, which makes this “curse” a real shame. Horse girls crave the interactivity that a video game can simulate; often video games are used as a way to make up for the inability to own a real horse. They’re expensive animals: a horse owner must have a good amount of land, the money to spend on food, farrier visits, and more; not to mention the time investment to go regularly riding and keep the horse groomed and healthy. While I was one of the lucky few who got riding lessons as a child (as well as the unique opportunity to volunteer with a therapy horse facility for a few months), I still turned to horse games to fulfill my equestrian dreams. And after the Flash shutdown, many of these avenues are now closed for good.
I tried out a few horse browser games while conceptualizing this project, like Howrse and Celestial Equine, and none of them scratched my itch. And I really do think this comes down to interactivity... There’s this emphasis on breeding and stats and getting the best horse genetics for racing and so on, but no way to stroke my faithful steed’s nose and watch it take an apple from my hand. No way to use my arrow keys to ride my horse around a game world, no matter how bare-bones. When I play a game, be it a browser game or otherwise, I want to be immersed in the world, and immersed in the artificial lives of those that inhabit it. Taking this into consideration, there’s nothing that makes me feel the same way Bella Sara did.
The horses that lived in my childish dreams live here now. I wanted to achieve at least some of the interactive immersion that modern browser games left me wanting- each horse has their own personality, quirks, and unique skills. I borrowed this approach from Bella Sara (as well as some horses’ design inspiration), where each horse is a pre-existing character rather than one generated by the player. I find this approach both more easy to immerse oneself in, and more easy to code, of course.
I hope you'll find a friend here.