A HORSE GIRL IS BORN
Equestrians are a peculiar breed. While the unsuspecting population sleeps peacefully, on those cold winter mornings, these elusive specimens don their waterproof coats and rubber boots (a far cry from the glamourous plumage of their more social-oriented subspecies, the Instagram Equestrian) and soldier on. Possessing remarkable strength and resilience, they are perfectly adapted to haul hay, straw and supplies over long distances and on any terrain. They are impervious to the weather, undeterred by the everyman’s definition of common sense and absolutely fearless, brushing off even the most grievous injuries like dirt out of a curry comb. But even more fascinating than their stalwart dedication, is their anomalous reproductive cycle.
While the Old Money, New Money and Heritage varieties share several traits that make for optimal hatching rates, another strain of this genus prefers to hide in plain sight, waiting patiently for the right time to reveal itself – a malady known as Horse Sickness. The first signs of infection are subtle, often presenting as wide-eyed looks of wonder and unbridled excitement whenever hoofbeats echo in the distance, but don’t be fooled – it’s only a warning about things to come. Parents all over the world, blissfully unaware of the consequences, signed up their children for horseback lessons, perhaps hoping to quell the Sickness before it got out of control. By the time they realized the error of their ways, it was already too late: a new Horse Girl is born.
Despite their common moniker, Horse Girls are not at all defined by gender; in fact, as illustrated below, boys make up a sizeable chunk of the population, although they are seldom recognized as such. The reasons behind this disconnect are fascinating, and way overdue for more research; for now, however, I would like to focus on one specimen of this particular breed, whose story will hopefully resonate with many other Horse Girls.
Myself.
You can spin it any way you want, but these are all Horse Girls. No, I don’t make the rules.
The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers © New Line Cinema | The Hunchback of Notre Dame © Walt Disney Productions | Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron © DreamWorks Pictures | The Witcher © Netflix
THE QUEST BEGINS
Like I mentioned before, the Horse Sickness is not something to be trifled with: quick to take root and almost impossible to eradicate, it can lay dormant for years before unleashing its destructive potential. For six years old me, that awakening came in the form of a small horse buggy passing right under my windows every other Sunday. The onslaught of model horses came shortly after, until my parents, wanting to be supportive, eventually agreed to let me try actual lessons at a local barn – a decision that haunts them to this day. There is no better breeding ground for the Sickness to spread beyond containment than a riding school full of likeminded youth, where the thrill of popping over a small crossrail is instantly magnified into the final clear round that will seal your victory at the World Cup, as the crowd cheers and trumpets rings in the clear summer air. With so many books and movies centred around the underdog winning the Big Show against all odds, it’s perhaps to be expected. But as time goes by, the cold cut reality starts to come into view.
You see, while Horse Girls are created equal in passion, they are hardly created equal in cash. Ask any self-sustaining Equestrian and you’ll soon realize that, for most of them, the biggest hurdle is to break even at the end of the month: liveries and feed alone cost a pretty penny, and a single off season can make hay prices skyrocket. Then you have to account for lessons and, in some cases, show fees; but if you think competing is going to pay the bills, think again – at lower levels, the earnings amount to pocket change. To top it all off, horses are surprisingly accident-prone, and the expenses associated with emergency veterinary care (and often, a lengthy rehab) can wipe your savings clean. In times of economic hardships, it’s not unreasonable to prioritize the whole family’s well-being and stability over such a daunting commitment, regardless of your offspring’s Olympic ambitions. And while I can count myself to be extremely lucky – as getting lessons is still a massive privilege, even in this time and age – I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t pining for something more than just watching from the sidelines.
The Author in 2012, braving her first show jumping competition. For the life of me,
I cannot believe how my parents saw the bill and still allowed me to ride.
Thankfully, Equestrians have many great qualities: they are hardy, resilient and surprisingly crafty – and Horse Girls are no exception. While toys, books and movies did their part in scratching that ever-present horse itch, the early 2000s saw the rise of a new avenue of entertainment, with nearly limitless potential: videogames. Instead of just going along for the ride, players could now take the reins of the adventure themselves: whether it was hunting colossi atop Agro in Shadow of the Colossus, studying at the Sycamore Academy with Flora in the Pippa Funnell series or fighting the forces of darkness in Starshine Legacy and Star Stable Online, Horse Girls everywhere discovered a realm that went beyond purely imaginative play. And in that realm, the Horse Sickness thrived once more.
I stumbled into this world on Christmas Day of 2007, when my parents gifted me Secrets of the Ranch, also known as Petz Horsez 2. I’ll be completely straight with you: if you were to check its Steam page, I would not blame you one bit for being turned off by its strangely textured horse models (would you believe the first Assassin’s Creed was released in the same year?), repetitive gameplay and clunky controls. But for a young girl without any gaming experience, it was revolutionary. Featuring a dynamic overworld populated by a well-rounded set of characters, a strong focus on player-driven storytelling and a nice touch of realism thrown in the training and competition loop to keep players on their toes, Secrets of the Ranch still stands as one of the more competent games the genre has ever produced, and a fond memory for many Horse Girls who got to lose themselves for a while in the cozy Provence countryside.
Life in the small village of Béléou is an integral part of the game: the player can attend the town market,
chat with the other inhabitants and even rent a house for the main character to live in.
Pippa Funnell: Secrets of the Ranch © Ubisoft / Screenshots by Steam users bird, InquisitorAles and ShimmyDance
To say that I was blown away would be an understatement: with a setting so close in flair and aesthetic to the one that shaped my upbringing, Secrets of the Ranch made me feel seen and represented like never before. As soon as the game was over, I knew I had to learn more, find more, play more. And my poor parents, who were already suffering through countless rides to the barn (and would be stuck doing that for many more years to follow), never knew an ounce of peace since or after.
The floodgates had been opened. The Quest had begun.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Imagine yourself as a newly minted teen, armed with nothing but her weekly allowance and the steadfast determination that drives every true and tested Equestrian to wake up at the crack of dawn. In a time where the massive marketplace of people, goods and services known as the Internet was just starting to spread its wings, where would you go to find gaming content pertaining to a very niche hobby when you’re not even old enough to have an independent Facebook account free of parental controls?
For me, the only reliable answer at the time was the nearest GameStop which, as you can probably imagine, wasn’t exactly overflowing with loot. Because yes, while the first decade and half of the third millennium saw the release of many mid and low budget games that still hold a special place in the heart of many Horse Girls, to acquire them is a whole other problem – especially in a genre rife with regional trademarks and abysmal marketing practices. In short, depending on where you land on the map, you may find yourself with very little choice, if any at all.
Of course, as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. The scarcity of focused releases, and the necessity to thrift around for something within reach of my shallow teenage pockets, led me to broaden my horizons beyond the label and scope of ‘horse games’. Adventure and management became a personal favourite of mine, thanks in no small part to Secrets of the Ranch and the titles that followed in its tracks; later on, Deus Ex, Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher, God of War and The Last of Us solidified my preference for a strong narrative focus and deep, vibrant worldbuilding. But as my gaming library kept on growing, I started to realize that something fundamental was missing from horse games: and that something, was heart.
Red Dead Redemption 2 not only features some of the best looking horses in modern gaming,
but its grooming and bonding mechanics further prove that even the toughest outlaw can be a Horse Girl at heart.
Red Dead Redemption 2 © Rockstar Games
Heart is more than a simple declaration of intent – it’s the fire powering the engines of every story worth telling. Look back at the games I’ve just mentioned and ask yourself this: what was that drew you in, and then hooked you up until the final credits rolled? Was it just their graphic and artistic presentation? A well-balanced, structured or simply fun gameplay? A finely crafted, immersive overworld? Or was it because, at some point, you became so invested in the story that player and character became one?
When I first started gaming, I didn’t immediately recognize the trend; I assumed that this was just how things were. But there comes a moment, in the life of girls everywhere, when you start to notice that not all is well with the world – and that the world is not at all well with you. Girls don’t know what makes a game a good game, after all; so, even if the blatant lack of polish, incoherent vision and sheer ignorance grinds your gears and makes you want to scream, remember to smile and be grateful – after all, getting scraps is still better than getting nothing. You learn that what you love doesn’t deserve much consideration; and if what you love doesn’t matter to anyone, then you don’t matter either. Horse games are a facet of this problem, but they are certainly not the only one.
Unfortunately, there’s often a stark difference between ‘horse games’ and ‘games with horses’.
By the way, all four titles were released in the same year.
My Riding Stables: Your Horse Breeding © Independent Arts Software | Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey © Ubisoft | Darksiders III © Gunfire Games | Kingdom Come: Deliverance © Warhorse Studios
Needless to say, this revelation left me shaken. I was just a young teen who wanted to learn, to understand, to improve. After all, even the worst games I’ve ever played had some redeeming features that, could, with enough care, turn into decent gameplay – I saw no reason why I couldn’t give it a try. But above everything else, I wanted to connect: humans are social creatures, after all, and we all want to feel seen, recognized, supported in our endeavours. Even though I’ve been a part of the equestrian world for many years now, I’ve yet to meet someone (in person, might I add) who shares my gripes about the subject; and with many old online forums falling into abandon and disrepair, it seemed that my big dream of a little corner of the Internet dedicated to the care and rehab of horse games was never going to get its feet off the ground. For the most part, Star Stable Online did its duty in keeping me occupied as far as horse-related entertainment went so, I tucked away my notes, my projects and forgot about the whole thing… or so I though.
Because remember, Horse Girls are as though as they are persevering. And the Horse Sickness is never tamed.
THE PATH FORWARD
In the years that followed, I kept myself busy: I ran an online pen-and-paper RPG for many years, graduated high school, went abroad, started University. I even went as far as to move to France for a couple of months to be a working student in a racing stable. Still, horse games remained a topic very near and dear to my heart, so I was happy to keep up to date on new projects and future releases; and that’s how, on a November afternoon in 2021, I stumbled upon Alice Ruppert and The Mane Quest.
Finally, someone had put into words many of my grievances about horse games and, perhaps most importantly, pointed out that many of those came from subpar design choices and a deep disconnect between the developers and the final audience. It wasn’t a matter of hurt feelings or pickiness, like I’ve always thought, but the outcome of consistent, noticeable flaws in the very design of the final product. As a Game Designer herself, Alice was in a uniquely qualified position not just to point out what went wrong (and believe me, there is plenty to say about that matter alone), but how it could be improved and why, and I cannot praise her enough for giving her invaluable insight to a community that still struggles to be taken seriously in the gaming world. And the more I thought about it, the more the idea of getting back to write about something I’m very passionate about felt right. Only this time, I was armed with the knowledge that someone cared about it; and with that newfound awareness, came a new, bigger vision for what this project could actually become.
After many years of drought, horse games are facing a resurgence, with the indie scene leading the charge.
The Ranch of Rivershine © Cozy Bee Games | Astride © Raidho Games
Here’s the thing: having been chronically plagued by insufficient budgets and uninspired visions, horse games ended up getting a reputation as a niche market for people without too much money or demands for overall quality, feeding the same vicious cycle over and over again. However, I don’t think it’s fair to throw all the blame on lazy developers and soulless corporations. After all, the vast ocean that is the equestrian way of life these games are supposed to represent remains largely uncharted to most people, and even veteran Equestrians may not know everything about treading its waters. But what if this could change? What if there was a way to bridge the gap and bring justice to a world so complex and yet so fascinating? Horses have carried entire civilizations on their backs, and shaped the collective imagination of countless cultures across the globe; why not delve beyond the surface, beyond the same old tropes and stale plots, to reach into the heart and soul of what it means to be an Equestrian – and a Horse Girl?
And with that idea, The Bridle Paths was born.
You see, life has both a wicked sense of humour and an even weirder sense of timing. Sometimes, you may feel like you’re always stuck in the same old place, only to look back and realize that you have gone farther than you ever imagined. And sometimes, the only way forward is to take a leap of faith – even if the idea of making the wrong choice, or any choice at all, scares you beyond belief. On that November in 2021, I found myself stuck at one of those crossroads: I cannot say with absolute certainty where I’m going, or what am I going to find on this journey – and surprisingly enough, the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it used to. All I know is that whatever lies ahead is much more than I could possibly imagine. And that, for me, is enough.
Are you ready for the ride?
The moment (and the mare) that changed everything. Her name was Gina.
