The Mane Quest 🐴🎮 Horses in Video Games 🎮🐴

There's several new videos up on the TMQ Tiktok today if you're inclined to go have a look 🥰

it's funny I did absolutely not expect this article to be popular, I thought at this point it's only relevant for devs making horse games but nope, turns out it made a bigger spike in my site traffic than even the Witcher 4 horse reveal two months ago ^^

I choose to believe that I caused this to happen until anyone from Steam explicitly says otherwise

Important news

"Horse Fest" – Steam Announces Horse-Themed Game Sale for February 2026 — The Mane Quest In an announcement post for Steam Developers on July 31st 2025, Valve revealed its sales and events schedule for the first half of 2026. Among other genre-specific and focused thematic sales Steam a...

NEWS ARTICLE: "Horse Fest" – Steam Announces Horse-Themed Game Sale for February 2026 ✨✨

www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/8/...

Steam is having a racing game sale, and because the only racing game I own is Umamusume, I'm getting the funniest reccomendations ever.

Like, "Hey bud, you've tried the anime girl version, you want the real, hardcore, full-bore shit? You want the uncut goods?"

The Mane Quest Everything About Horses in Video Games. The latest news about video game horses, reviews of horse games and horses in games, Analyses about which are the best horses in video games, developer insight ...

Also, shout out to my favorite niche video game resource, @themanequest.com, run by an equestrian video game developer/consultant who runs what is by far the best website around for games that feature horses. Absolute legend.

www.themanequest.com

eyooo the shout out is much appreciated!! 💖💖💖

oh neat! A deep dive into the Horse Club Adventures series and its commercial success (translated version linked in replies)! 💖

good news the horse game website has a tiktok account now

I spontaneously set up a Tiktok account for The Mane Quest this week! Any likes/comments/follows/reposts to help me get started are hugely appreciated 🙏💖

www.tiktok.com/@themanequest

love the numbers this did thank you aftermath

I love this thank you

umamusume is, by many measures, already one of the most popular horse games ever. except… it’s not really about horses. this has left gaming’s premiere horse consultant and advocate, @malicedafirenze.bsky.social, in a bind

Umamusume

Video game horse expert on Umamusume: ‘I have supremely mixed feelings’
aftermath.site/umamusume-hors...

New Gameplay Trailer for the courier horse game 🎉🎉🎉

Aesir also announced their gamescom presence today!!! We'll have a cool horse game booth in the public area y'all!!!!

I'll be at the booth on and off, so if you wanna meet up to talk about Khiimori, please let me know, or let my colleagues know when you schedule something 🙏🙏

gamedevs everywhere like "it's so hard to market games, nobody cares about the games I make"

meanwhile:

I have my issues with modern day Zelda games (I'm a Twilight Princess girlie), but I'll immediately agree that the horses are stellar

“I Hope the Horse Game Genre will Continue to Grow” – Reflecting on Five Years of Making The Ranch of Rivershine with Éloïse Laroche — The Mane Quest The Ranch of Rivershine stands out among the horse game niche. I’ve followed Rivershine and its creator Éloise Laroche of Cozy Bee Games for years and previously featured them on TMQ on multiple occas...

✨NEW ARTICLE ✨ “I Hope the Horse Game Genre will Continue to Grow” – Reflecting on Five Years of Making The Ranch of Rivershine with Éloïse Laroche

www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/7/...

“I Hope the Horse Game Genre will Continue to Grow” – Reflecting on Five Years of Making The Ranch of Rivershine with Éloïse Laroche — The Mane Quest The Ranch of Rivershine stands out among the horse game niche. I’ve followed Rivershine and its creator Éloise Laroche of Cozy Bee Games for years and previously featured them on TMQ on multiple occas...

✨NEW ARTICLE ✨ “I Hope the Horse Game Genre will Continue to Grow” – Reflecting on Five Years of Making The Ranch of Rivershine with Éloïse Laroche

www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/7/...

Screenshot from The Ranch of Rivershine, showing the Character Creation screen

Screenshot from The Ranch of Rivershine, showing an illustrated intro screen with the text "I'll never forget the days when this town thrived, with our champion taking home countless victories"

Screenshot from The Ranch of Rivershine, showing a dialogue box and the character art of a brown named River telling me about how to bond with my horse.

Screenshot from The Ranch of Rivershine, showing my player character on her horse, a flaxen chestnut called Vanilla

I have finally started playing The Ranch of Rivershine - I haven't touched it since the first Demo in early 2023 and am stoked to jump into the full version now 💖

I'll point out once again that this is not how horses sleep, see linked posts for better examples. This is how a dog curls up to rest and lays their head down. I severely doubt that reference footage of horses was used for this. bsky.app/profile/mali...

They've released 20min of new Ghost of Yotei gameplay so naturally I went and made a 1min horse-only version for myself to overanalyse here you go

is it weird to have a favorite horse animation tutorial clip? Anyway here's my favorite horse animation tutorial clip, now on bsky from its original creator, make sure to leave a like and follow 🙏🙏🙏

wait it is absolutely not new. It's old. Still, it's pretty good at avoiding tons of the common horse animation mistakes!!

Animated Horse Pack | Characters | Unity Asset Store Get the Animated Horse Pack package from Cerulean Cat Studio, LLC and speed up your game development process. Find this & other Characters options on the Unity Asset Store.

someone posted this in my discord weeks ago and I completely slept on it but there's actually a pretty decent new animated horse asset for Unity? 😱

assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/...

It's not hyperrealistic or free of issues, but it sure beats HAP in at least some aspects!

Now's your time to catch up on this weekend's horse* game news 🎉👇

*horse-adjacent? horse-inspired? horse girls but different?

Oh God. And I thought the "What counts as an indie game?" problem was complicated.

The "should a horse girl game count a horse game" issue feels like it was designed to cause headaches.

several people asked me for my opinion on this game so I figured I'd turn my supremely mixed feelings into a short article, enjoy 😄