When it was announced this June, Horse Club Ride West immediately looked and felt different from other entries in the series. While still drawing from the core aesthetic of the titular Schleich brand, this new chapter is heading into a different direction—one that appears to be much more character-driven than before. From the new art direction to no longer having a personal horse, instead getting six pre-made steeds with their own quirks and personalities, the studio has made considerable strides in improving their craft over the years.
In my news article, I also teased something special brewing regarding the game—and now I can finally reveal what is it! The Bridle Paths and Wild River Games have officially teamed up to offer you an in-depth coverage of this new entry in the series, spanning from dev talks to a retrospective on the first two Horse Club Adventures and tons of special content! Joining us today is Daniel Spangler, animator at Wild River Games, who will share some exclusive insights about his work and the philosohophy guiding the development of Ride West!
Q: Hi Daniel and welcome to The Bridle Paths! For starters, can you tell us a little about yourself and your job at Wild River Games?
Hi there! Thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate the opportunity!
I have been a gamer from a very young age. My first console was a ColecoVision in 1983, and I have also always had a strong interest in art. That combination eventually led me to work in art departments at game studios, originally with a focus on 2D art and illustration and later branching out into 3D and animation.
I started working at Wild River Games in 2021, when the studio was in the middle of producing Horse Club Adventures 2. I was initially hired to create some additional animations that were needed for the horses.
For Ride West, my role involved creating and animating the human characters and horses. This included modeling the low-resolution in-game meshes, creating high-resolution meshes for baking normal maps, rigging and skinning the characters, and creating blend shapes for the human characters’ facial expressions.
Q: Let’s delve into that! Upon releasing its first teaser, Ride West immediately looked and felt much different from previous entries in the series. Can you tell us what was the driving factor behind the change?
After releasing two games and one DLC in the series, we felt it was time to give the visuals a complete overhaul. The games are based on the Schleich Horse Club brand, which already has a very distinctive visual identity across its toy packaging, comic books, and other media.
We wanted the game to reflect that identity more closely, which led us to adopt the new cell-shaded art style. To make the most of this direction, we decided to create all the assets and characters from scratch and design them specifically for the new look. I hope that fans of the franchise will agree that the characters are pretty close to the original Schleich designs this time around.
I think the style suits the game very well. It gives this entry a clear visual identity, and you can immediately see that it is something different from the previous games.
Aside from the toy line, the Horse Club cast is featured in several comics, audiobooks and other media.
The style used in most promotion materials is now much more present in ‘Ride West’.
Horse Club © Schleich
Q: We can see in the teasers that both horses and riders look much more fluid and life-like. Can you tell us more about how Wild River approached the challenge of fundamentally redoing the animations and rigs, while keeping true to the overall look and aesthetic of the Horse Club series?
As some of your readers may know, many horse games, including our previous titles, use the Horse Animset Pro plugin for Unity. It is an extremely useful tool for small teams like ours, as developing a complete horse-riding system from scratch can be both challenging and time-consuming.
At the same time, relying on a plugin can limit what you are able to do. For this game, we therefore decided to invest the necessary time in developing our own underlying system. We still use some animations from the plugin, although most of them have been adjusted or refined, but the system that controls them is entirely our own.
One of the most important changes is that our riding rig now includes both the horse and the rider. This allows me to animate them together in Blender and know that the result will appear exactly the same in the game. Because they are part of the same rig, the horse and rider remain perfectly synchronized at all times.
Our system also allowed us to add much nicer mounting and dismounting animations this time around, for example. I am sure observant horse gamers will also appreciate the little details in the rider animations, such as visible leg and rein aids.
While functional, riding sections in previous games had to contend with stiff animations and lack of camera controls.
Horse Club Adventures © Wild River Games
Q: A question for all our aspiring horse game designers—is it harder to build a game from the ground, or to take parts of previous entries to create something new?
This is a tricky question. I guess it depends on your definition of “hard” in this case. If you mean “time-consuming,” then sure, reusing assets or code from previous projects may speed things up. Then again, it may also cause problems you do not immediately anticipate, especially if the new game is supposed to set itself apart from the previous ones.
In that case, adjusting things you have already built may take as much time as building something new, or perhaps even more. You may end up creating workarounds for your workarounds. Then it becomes “hard” in a different way.
In my experience, the idea of “taking the long shortcut” often proves true, both in game development and elsewhere. Given enough time and budget, I would always prefer the opportunity to build something new, use the knowledge gained from previous projects to improve things, and create something original.
Horse Club Ride West © Wild River Games
Q: Horses are notoriously very hard to animate. What is the part that proved the most challenging to get right, and why? As an Animator, what was your favourite part to work on, and why?
I think the toughest challenge is not the animation itself, but the marriage of the animations with the systems and code inside the game engine to create something that feels good and looks natural. Since the animator is rarely the same person who implements the controls, this requires a lot of communication and oftentimes trial and error. In some cases, you may also have to settle on a compromise between “look” and “feel.”
A good example from Ride West would be the corner-sliding feature we have in the game. Our game designer had a very specific idea of what the sliding should feel like, and that did not necessarily match how horses perform a barrel turn in real life. So, it took a lot of back and forth between game design, programming, and myself.
In the end, we used two different animations: one very sharp corner turn and one in which the horse drifts further outwards. The game blends between these animations and adjusts their playback speed based on the horse’s type and level. The final result is not entirely realistic, but it feels more responsive and is ultimately more enjoyable to play.
In Barrel Racing events, speed is everything—but so is agility.
Every knocked barrel adds seconds to the final time, making tight turns and excellent stride control a necessity to win.
Q: It may sound incredible, but the horses themselves are often hardly counted amongst the ‘playable characters’, despite being the focus of the entire experience. In Ride West, Wild River is giving us six pre-made steeds, with their own characterization. Can you tell us more about them, and what steps did the studio take to make them feel like a living, breathing part of the adventure?
Horses in most games may not be “playable characters” in the strictest sense. However, in Ride West, we consider them to be much more than “furry cars”. While Horse Club is very much a story-driven experience, with many human characters moving the story forward, the horses also play a central role.
They appear in dialogue screens and have their own emotions and reactions to the events taking place. Also, the horses in the game this time around are already part of the world. They have specific breeds, coats, personalities, and names.
This is a different approach from the “create your own horse” system in our previous games, and we think it will make for a more interesting and immersive experience. You will, of course, still be able to customize your favorite horse with lots of items and styles, but it will be a horse that is very much part of the story and the world.
My personal favorite is Amber, the first horse you meet. She is an older lady who is a little sleepy most of the time, which is really adorable.
The six horses are quite varied in their appearance and personality, so hopefully every player will find one they form a particular connection with.
The first two horses have been revealed! Meet Amber and Boo!
Horse Club Ride West © Wild River Games
Q: Free space! If there’s a question you really want to answer, or some insight you wish to share with us, this is the right place!
One aspect I am particularly proud of is not directly related to the horses. As I mentioned earlier, staying as close as possible to the characters’ original designs was a major focus. This allowed us to also use the 3D character models directly in the dialogue screens, where they can react to each situation through custom animations, body language, and a wide range of facial expressions created with blend shapes.
It required a considerable amount of work, but I hope longtime players of the Horse Club Adventure games will agree that it makes a real difference in bringing the characters and their personalities to life.
Daniel, it’s been a pleasure having you here on The Bridle Paths! Thank you for your time and see you all very soon! Happy trails, Pathfinders!
Horse Club Ride West will become available to purchase on October 9, 2026, on Steam, Nintendo Switch 1, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. You can also learn more about the game on the official Wild River Games website!
