I have to confess that I had a horse girl phase when I was in middle school. I had the horse figurines. I read Misty of Chincoteague. I did not, however, ride. I’m not saying that My Horse: Bonded Spirits is going to replace that experience, but it certainly offers the opportunity to explore a more sanitary version of all of the other horse-related tasks.
That being said, I’m not entirely certain My Horse: Bonded Spirits quite meets the mark as a horse game, but it’s great for horse-girl nostalgia, so long as you don’t mind that it doesn’t really go in for accuracy.
Plot Ahoy!
As with many simulators, you find yourself in possession of a run-down stud farm, and it’s up to you to rebuild it. However, in a departure from the usual simulator fare, you aren’t interested in dominating a market or branching out into new locations. Your end goals, as is explained early, are to return the stud farm to its former glory and make it a home for you and your horses. If the title didn’t give it away, there is a strong emotional component to My Horse: Bonded Spirits.
You’re not entirely confined to your farm, though. My Horse: Bonded Spirits offers you the opportunity to explore the neighboring Chestnut Glen, which is a sleepy village populated by eccentric characters who may or may not like horses. Ding, ding! There’s a reputation mechanic.
Review Notes
If you’re
a customization fiend, then this title offers you hours of entertainment. You can customize your character as you’ll actually see them. My Horse: Bonded Spirits isn’t a purely first-person game. You get to design your horse, choosing from some beautiful options. Once you’ve curated your mount, you can turn your attention to the horse farm itself, depending on your budget. You start off with an initial amount of money, but you very, very quickly learn that upkeep on horses is expensive. So far so good, right?
That’s when things start to take a turn for the worse. You’re running a stud farm here, so in theory, you’re going to feed your herd. In a perfect world, you’d be exploring different kinds of feed, which you do, but since your horse wilts faster than an African violet in the desert, you’ll find yourself relying on sugar as a way to keep the horse’s stats up. You’ll also be doing a lot of mucking out stalls, and while you do eventually get to hire people to take these tasks off your hands, you’ll still come back to it. Maintaining the happiness/cleanliness stats for your chosen steed quickly becomes monotonous, and once you unlock the vet, you have to start worrying about illnesses that appear seemingly out of nowhere.
Admittedly, Horsetok indicates that this is actually a thing. It begins to feel a bit like you’re running from catastrophe to medical emergency. There’s an option to grow your own carrot patch and apple orchard, which would be a great way to generate more revenue and reduce costs because horses like carrots and apples except you can’t reach these magic places and come back before your horse perishes of the bubonic horse plague or something. Honestly, it’s still the best and easiest way to generate income.
Speaking of income, your stable funds are separate from your own funds, which is an interesting choice. I say interesting because My Horse: Bonded Spirits does have a stable management system to accommodate your growing bank of studs, but you can effectively ignore the stable and focus solely on leveling your bond with your own horse and generating your own funds. Where the gameplay nexus between stable management and your sole horse dream lies is anybody’s guess.
Don’t expect the interactions with the NPCs to be terribly deep. I realize that this is a simulator, so you aren’t here for the plot, but while the dialogues can be funny, there’s not much to them. However, the personal animations are awkward and stilted, especially when compared with the horse animations, so if you’re prone to uncanny valley issues, you may want to give My Horse: Bonded Spirits a pass. That said, the horse animations are stunning, and the devs have clearly paid a great deal of attention to the vistas around Chestnut Glen. That attention has paid off because the title’s real appeal is the long rides that you’re encouraged to take in order to increase your bonding level with your horse.
The bonding mechanic is a bit odd in that you can only interact with your horse. You can purchase other animals, and the game forces you to acquire stable hands to help care for them. Once they’ve been transferred to the stables, you’ll never see them again. Sure, they could be out there winning competitions in the greater world, but you’ll play no part in it. Your entire focus is on the sole horse. You do get to compete in various races, which require certain skills if you want to be competitive. You’ll have to bond with your horse in order to learn new skills to use in competitions, so it makes a certain amount of sense that you’ll focus only on the one quadruped. The problem is that this mechanic just contributes to the overall feel of My Horse: Bonded Spirits being at least two simulators in one title without much connecting them.
TLDR
My Horse: Bonded Spirits seemingly tries to be a jack of all trades and ends up as a master of none. If you’re looking for a dreamy ride through bucolic environs, My Horse: Bonded Spirits shines. If you’re more of a simulator junkie and less of a horse person, you’re probably not going to find what you want here. Also, be aware that there are some performance issues.
Basically, My Horse: Bonded Spirits is a great idea that with some tweaking and additional patching could be well realized. We’re just not there yet.
My Horse: Bonded Spirits retails on Steam for $19.99.
Stray Thoughts From Behind the Keyboard
- I know nothing about actual horseback riding, but I’m pretty sure you don’t just mount in the stall.
- You jump before you canter. Is that a thing? Horse people, I need to know.
- There are just…so many horse diseases.