#horse tales: emerald valley ranch

[dorianwolfforest]

Jesus on the cross (AD 30) colorized

[jorvikwildhorse]

Thoughts on Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch

Hey horse game blog. I played another horse game recently and had some Thoughts, so i decided to share just in case anyone else was still on the fence about picking this one up. I personally couldn’t find a lot of reviews on this game other than “Heyyy, this is coming out soon and it’s a horse game!!” so uhhhh here’s mine, i guess!

  [I’m very certain this cute, tiny gazebo isn’t supposed to be here and is actually a bug]

  Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch is a game where you can tame, breed, and race horses. Alongside your horse companion you can explore an island and rebuild your disused estate into prime equestrian property. 

  Right off the bat, I would caution anyone looking to purchase Horse Tales for the Nintendo Switch. I don’t know what it’s like on other consoles, I’ve heard it is an overall more stable experience, pardon the pun. On the Switch, the game is poorly optimized. It chugs when loading into just about any area, pop-in is ever-present and in handheld mode it degenerates to a blurry, pixelated mess. The game is quite buggy, and I’m not sure if this is just on the Switch or if the other platforms suffer in this way. Entire quest-lines can be bugged with certain features like genetic testing for your horses being locked behind them waiting for developers to patch the game. Even though building and crafting are one of the core gameplay aspects, sometimes the game will straight up forget where you placed an entire structure or tree and you’ll have to expend the materials to rebuild them.

         [Behold: an athlete]

  Beyond the bugs and performance issues, the game itself is a bit half-baked. I understand this is a smaller game from a smaller studio and even sports a smaller price tag, but questionable design choices really dragged down my experience overall. Once you finish your main quests, there isn’t much to do other than collect material to build decorations or expand stable capacity on your estate, breed horses and run around the environment. In most other games, I am happy to do these activities (really, I am not very hard to please! Gamers hate how little it takes for horsefolk to be happy.), but that really is all there is to offer once you’ve completed the handful of story quests.

  The explorable world is vast, but not sprawling. You’ll find many winding, yet restrictive and narrow paths to traverse, but you’ll be retreading that same ground often. There’s no fast travel beyond a reset to your centrally located estate, so if you need to go very far to talk to a character or collect some material for your next building then you could be in for a long trek. While I don’t mind meandering around these paths on a nice trail ride or even testing out the speed of a new horse, it can be frustrating that there’s never going to be such a thing as a ‘quick trip’ to fetch some wood or other material. You’ll always be making that long trip out of the valley that surrounds your estate no matter which shortcut you open up. There’s also no minimap or direct button for your map. It’s always: open menu, tab over, wait for the map to eventually load, and then plan out what route you’re going to take. You can only have one waymarker at a time and it does nothing for path-finding, it only shows you the distance remaining between you and your objective.

  Towns are eerily depopulated no matter how big they are or how many houses they have in them. I’m pretty sure there are only like, 6 people that live on the island, giving it a weirdly abandoned vibe, which I’m very sure was unintentional. The design of the world is almost entirely horse-centric, which is fine! And good! considering the theming of the game. But sometimes you’ll come across a random parking lot in a forest surrounded by wilderness and think, who is this for? Who actually lives here and needs this? (It reminds me of the paved suburban streets of New Hillcrest in Star Stable Online. Like, who needs this in an almost entirely rural horse-based infrastructure? lol) The cast of interactive characters that reside on the peninsula are less characters than they are quest-givers, their dialogue is bland and almost entirely to inform you about certain game mechanics making for quite an isolating experience.

  An unintuitive and stilted quest progression often leaves you in the dark about how to access useful features quickly. Basic features like washing your filthy, stinky horse (who will acquire grime every time you flub a jump, which for me was, uh, often) or building a house so your player character can stop living in a tent when your horses live in luxurious barns are often hidden down not-so obvious side-quests.

    [This was one of the first horses I bred. No, I didn’t get to choose her name. No, for some reason the “press Y to rename horse” button doesn’t work. No, her genetics and coat coloration aren’t even displaying correctly, they belong to her dam. Yes, it is really funny that she hates stallions. Butch horse daddy.]

 But I digress, the horses! That’s what this game is about! This is why we’re here. So far there is only one breed of horse that can be found in the base game, the Selle Français, with the Irish Cob being available as DLC. The animation of the horses’ gaits are fairly accurate and the animations that play when you pet and scratch your horse are super cute and endearing. I like that I could make little notes about each horse’s favorite snacks or places they liked to be scratched, but I could never fully enjoy looking them in the face as I found them quite hideous (lol). The games style is minimal and less focused on realism so less emphasis is placed on the conformation of the horses as bold coat coloration is, which I think is a shame, but I won’t fault them on it considering the scope of the game.

  Breeding horses and playing with their genetic traits is a big draw of Horse Tales, and I did get a kick out of seeing a neat coat color crop up on my own homebred projects. I did think it was weird there was no horse raising or training aspect, however. Foals pop out as fully grown horses overnight and if you didn’t get the specific combinations of genes you were hoping for there’s really no incentive to bond with that horse anyway. There is a neat feature to train specific behavioral traits into your horse, but it serves only to make them hate water less, or be less afraid of the dark or heights. If your horse is born with sub-par stats there’s no way to train them to make them speedier or boost their endurance unless they were already born with a personality trait that makes them faster on certain terrain.

   There are races for you to compete in, of course, but there’s no real intensive for you to breed your own horses with perfect stats when you can just capture wild horses with just as serviceable stats as you progress and explore more areas. Any wild horses with high endurance will win you races just fine and with the narrow pathways and tight corners of the racetracks (and compounded with the willful and shaky camera that fights you at every turn), super fast horses will just have you careening wildly into walls and jumps. Other than these races, there’s really no specific “jobs” you can breed for. It’s either cross country champion or, if your horse isn’t fast, pretty trail pony. I felt a bit cruel selling off my breedject horses that didn’t make the cut, but I really had no reason to keep them around, so it was off to market they went.

  OVERALL, Despite what I’ve written sounding overwhelmingly negative, I did enjoy my time with this game! But between poor design choices and the copious amounts of bugs I found little reason to continue playing it. The game feels unfinished at worst and unpolished at best. If $40 is a lot of money for you, I wouldn’t pick it up just yet. That amount of money, while better than a full $60 AAA game price tag, has been a lot for me to swing in the past and I would be majorly disappointed to have used my hard-earned money on a game of this quality, even if it does have horses. I would wait until it goes down in price or if the devs fix it up and add anything worthwhile to it in future patches. If $40 isn’t a big deal to you and just desperately need a new horsey-game fix, then perhaps pick it up on a console that isn’t the Switch.

[obsidiannebula]

Heaven help me yous all I just created the fan wiki for a horse game that launched today and I have no wiki management experience

[juni-ravenhall]

horse tales emerald valley ranch is 50% off on steam, i dont own it myself and havent heard the best things about it but heads up anyway!

[gosh-darn-sucking-vacuums]

So I started playing Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch (I wasn’t a horse girl as a kid but I do have nostalgia for horse video games), and the mailbox I woke up to in game is killing me.

Four. Different. People.

Sent me “hot single horses in your area” letters.

[horsegirlz]

New & Upcoming Horse Games! 🏇

(Updated from my old post on my SSO blog! Thanks to those who helped link stuff to add to the new list!)

Games that are playable now:

Equestriad World Tour (mobile, free with premium options)

Equestrian the Game (mobile, free with premium options)

Horse Club Adventures (pc, purchasable)

Horse Club Adventures 2: Hazelwood Stories (pc, purchasable)

Horse Reality (browser, free with premium options)

Horse Riding Tales (pc & mobile, free with premium options)

Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch (pc, purchasable)

Horse Valley on Roblox (pc/mac & mobile, free with premium options)

House Flipper - Farm DLC (pc/mac, purchasable DLC to House Flipper)

Rival Stars Horse Racing (pc/mac & mobile, free with premium on mobile, one-time cost on pc)

Spirit - Lucky's Big Adventure (pc, purchasable)

Star Equestrian (mobile & pc, free with premium options)

Star Worm Equestrian (Minecraft mod)

The Ranch of Rivershine (pc, purchasable as Early Access)

The Sims 4 Horse Ranch EP *July 20th 2023. (pc/mac, purchasable DLC, TS4 basegame is free)

Wild Horse Islands on Roblox (pc/mac & mobile, free with premium options)

Wildshade (mobile, free with premium options)

Upcoming projects, with or without demos:

Astride (very small demo available in Early Access on Steam)

Horse Life Simulator

Horse Project (demo available)

Horse Shelter 2022 (demo available on Steam)

My Horse: Bonded Spirits (beware: this game may be a lie)

Rising Star: The Horse Game (pixel art!!!)

Tales of Rein Ravine (demo available on Patreon)

Unbridled: That Horse Game (old riding demo available, horse creator demo coming out soon)

Feel free to add more new games/projects in reblogs or replies! I know there are definitely more Roblox horse games, but I haven't tried them and don't know if they're worth mentioning.

[asynchpod]

New episode! Join us for a very special episode with Tori and Noah of @press-startpod in which we talk about video games, because this is a video game podcast about video games

[gaydelgard]

what if we were rival horsegirls and i trapped you in my hedgemaze 😳

[rachelkaser]

2022 Games in Review: My favorite customizable avatars (of me)

Several games of 2022 had character creators. I made myself in each one. How different do they all look?

With many games I’ve played in the past, I would make an effort to create a unique character, someone with a name, story, and appearance all their own. However, in 2022, I made most of them into variations of myself, in appearance and name. I tried not to cheat, but to get as close to my real appearance as possible -- I even included glasses were I could, as I wear those quite often.

I could tell you that it was part of some experiment or longterm project . . . honestly, I just got lazy. Every time I entered character creation, I just made a version of myself (with one exception) because it was easier. That means that, by the time I was done playing my games of 2022, I had several versions of me off on adventures. Now I want to compare and contrast how they look.

“Why?” I hear you ask. Because it’s interesting to see the differences in style across the different genres of games? Because it’s instructive to stretch the limits of what these games are capable of to best represent our true selves? Why not?

These are in no particular order, except the one at the very bottom, which is basically an honorable mention.

Disney Dreamlight Valley: My time as a Disney kid/adult

Disney Dreamlight Valley was surprisingly good as these games go. I thought it was just going to be a cheap cash-grab title banking on Disney’s good-but-increasingly-overused name. But no, it’s actually a somewhat charming life sim where you, the player character are the Only One Who Can Save the World. I can totally see its appeal for kids and the kid-adjacent adults who need a serotonin fix (ahem).

For that reason, I was surprised that the player avatar is not more cartoonish, for lack of a better way of putting it. I thought it would be an animesque, bug-eyed kid character (though my eyes are on the big side). But no, they’re at best a young adult who’s very into Disney fashion. Honestly, this version of me looks like the one who beat feet all over Disney World with my family between the ages of 15-25. According to my husband, it looks a lot like me -- I just think it’s a younger, thinner version of me.

Pokémon Legends Arceus: My first monster hunt

See the above? This is what I was expecting with Dreamlight Valley. But perhaps it is better suited to Pokémon. What I enjoyed about Arceus in particular is that -- unlike certain other Pokémon titles (see below) -- the character is not a fresh-faced youth who just wants to catch ‘em all. No, in Arceus, they’re a hardened hunter in a world where everyone seems to think Pokémon are dangerous.

But even so, the version of me in Arceus still looks so adorable. They’re like a tiny terrier: Adorable, but a deadly serious hunter. Admittedly, I can’t pull off the scarf-kerchief combo in real life as elegantly as my in-game avatar did. But considering I have no real influence over the character’s features, this one still looks like a decent representation of my inner child.

Coral Island: Living my crunchiest life

Full disclosure: I messed the eyes up in this one, because mine are not almond-shaped. So we’re just going to ignore that and look at the rest of me here (because I’m actually not sure if it’s possible to adjust your facial features post-creation in-game at this point in early access). Admittedly, out of all of them this one probably best captures my general dorkiness, especially with the glasses.

What amuses me about this is that this avatar looks how I would probably look if I did hard labor on a farm. She’s definitely the most willowy version of me that’s still supposed to be an adult . . . and yet her head is still as wide as her hips. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got an enormous noggin in the real life, but I’ve got the hips to balance it out and then some.

Harvestella: Not sure why I even bothered

From one cozy life sim we move on to another -- or at least I thought Harvestella was a cozy life sim. Turns out it’s a Bravely Default game wearing a cozy-life-sim hat. If I’d known that when I started, I wouldn’t have bothered to even try and make myself in the game, because the customization is undercooked. It’s not the worst character creator this year, but it’s a good example of how shallow they can be. Why even have one at all?

Still, I managed to get her to look superficially like me. She’s still not as thin as the Coral Island avatar, if only because she’s got some thighs on her (as do I IRL). Actually, this version of me is kind of the inverse of Coral Island, in that she’s got a tiny head and shoulders on an absolutely stacked pair of legs and hips. Neither one bears a strong similarity to reality, but it’s still fun to see a version of me that aligns with the art style of both worlds.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns: My most optimistic cheekbones

To be fair to Midnight Suns, Hunter already comes with a defined name (sorta), backstory, and personality. So making them look like me was actually going against my natural inclination as a player. But by the time the game launched in December, I was committed to the bit, so I went for it. It was kind of fun to see my in-game self dillydally with the Marvel heroes, if a bit disconcerting.

Funnily enough, this version comes the closest to getting my lips and nose right -- in that they look like actual parts of a human face. But goddamn me to hell and back, I do not have cheekbones that nice. I might attribute those good looks to Hunter’s demoness mother, but I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be human and I’ve never cut glass with my cheeks.

Need for Speed Unbound: My failed attempt to look cool

Need for Speed Unbound was another game that had, at best, a token character creator. Since your in-game avatar basically spends the majority of their time in a car, their appearance really doesn’t matter because it’ll never be as fancy or familiar as that of your favorite ride. But I tried anyway, because I felt like I could at least look like the streetwise badass I shall never be in real life.

Not to repeat myself, but at least the features on this face look somewhat like mine. Those are definitely my eyebrows. I won’t deceive you, though: I don’t look anywhere near this cool. I don’t have piercings in my ears, let alone other appendages. And I look forward to the day I can dye my hair that shade of purple, so I guess this is me living my ombre dreams through the game.

Saints Row (2022): I’ve got everything but the tats

I might not have believed it, but the one game I played this year with a halfway-detailed character creator was Saints Fucking Row. And yes, before you ask, the game’s quality really is this bad. Also, for some reason the game wouldn’t let me soften the shade of blush I used, so I look literally clownish and not metaphorically here. I’d also never where Santo Ileso fashion personally.

But I’ll say this for Saints Row, it’s the only game this year were I could accurately represent my own thickness. I’m a chunky lady, no denying it, and this is closest I came all year to looking like myself, round of face, thigh, and chest. I don’t have those clean, Southwestern-style tats, but that’s more aspirational than reflective of reality.

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet: My back-to-school look

My hair isn’t actually purple, but I felt that, in the spirit of playing the Violet edition of the game, I should go full color here. Who knows -- maybe my hair will look like that someday! As for the rest of me, well . . . if the Arceus version of me is a seasoned (but adorable badass), this one looks like the most boring student in the entire school. She’s just here to catch ‘em all.

Still, this game’s photo mode is probably out of any I played this year. Posing with various pocket monsters was adorable, and completely in-character for a young student discovering the world. This version of me is not bad at all -- it just suffers by being not as interesting as the rest of my avatars this year.

Horse Tales Emerald Valley Ranch: What even am I?

I don’t know what to say about this one. I’m already on record as labeling this game my least-favorite of 2022. This wasn’t because of the obviously piss-poor graphical quality. Not at all -- there’s nothing wrong with a bit of a graphical lowgrade, especially in a horse game where the intent is depict the rider as an extension of the horse.

No, I hated it because this is not a depiction of a horseperson. These are acceptable street clothes, but I’m not wearing headphones and loafers to ride over mountainous country and beaches. Also, leaving all that aside, why can I not change the colors of my eyebrows and lashes, which are stuck on “auburn?” I do think it’s ironic that they ask you to select a masculine or feminine character while the default hoodie is in the colors of the non-binary pride flag. 

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands: My average D&D character

Now presenting my Tiny Tina character, a.k.a. the one time I resisted the urge to just make myself in a game. She still looks close-ish: She has my hair and eye color, but she doesn’t share my name or pretty much anything else about me. But honestly? This was as close as I was reasonably going to get within the context of the game. Because I play Dungeons and Dragons (or Bunkers and Badasses, I suppose) IRL, and I balk at the notion of making someone who looks like me.

Most D&D characters I’ve made have are a far cry from myself and my lived experience. Even when I incorporate elements of myself or my appearance, it’s usually by accident or with a particular goal in mind. I can’t make a version of me 1-to-1 and engage with the game’s premise in good faith. So here you have it: My unbelievably ugly Wonderlands character.

And that’s it! All the versions of me I made this year! No, I’m not going to give an actual pic of myself for comparison -- this isn’t really about realism, but more about how best I feel I’m represented in the worlds of these games. But if anyone has any other in-game avatars they think look better, or if you just want to show me your creations, feel free to tag me below or on Twitter!

[kaidagreenscale]

My copy of Horse Tales Emerald Valley Ranch has arrived just last night and I'm so excited to play.

Haven't had a lot of time due to work, but so far it's so cute, and I love how pretty the horses are

[dorianwolfforest]

Hello here's 15 minutes of me showing you the worst funniest Astride and Emerald valley ranch has to offer. For people who don't want to watch a whole 3 hour vod.

[furbocious]

My other starter horse, Queenie. Girl has sass and will 100% refuse to touch sand, and I can respect that

[obsidiannebula]

Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch is getting an update 1.1.5 (date TBA) in which your stabled horses will actually roam around your pastures and I am vibrating with excitement. I cannot wait to see my beautiful beloved horses relaxing and enjoying themselves.

And ALSO a teaser image suggests the next DLC will add Arabians! Even the devs weren't expecting to be able to add another breed but it looks like they got the go-ahead to add some great stuff and I am so readyyyyyy

[juni-ravenhall]

new horse game announcement i didnt notice until now. worked on by alice from TMQ ( https://www.themanequest.com/blog/2022/7/15/announcement-trailer-for-horse-tales-emerald-valley-ranch-an-open-world-horse-adventure-game-with-breeding-building-racing-and-more )

the graphics arent much my personal taste at least as they look in this trailer, but i’m always happy to see more horse games

[sweetberryworld]

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Guess this is where i live now :’D