Horsey Game Review – Chaotic Horse Racing, Breeding & DNA Shenanigans
A gloriously weird indie sim where you catch, race, breed and genetically mangle horses (and things that may be horses). Funny, full of systems, and delightfully unreliable—bring patience and a sense of humor.
I didn’t expect to spend an entire evening breeding a horse with a Civic, but here we are. Horsey Game from Captain Games is a small indie experience that turns the wholesome idea of horse care into a delightfully deranged sandbox about racing, money and genetic experimentation. It’s equal parts gambling sim, buggy comedy and creative toybox—think breeding sims gone gloriously cartoon-Cronenberg. If you like absurd emergent moments and weird physics, this one will keep you laughing and occasionally tearing your hair out.
Racing, Betting and Ridiculous Outcomes
The core loop is simple to describe but chaotic in practice: catch horses, train or modify them, and race for money. Races are short spectacles where physics and weird morphology decide the winner as much as stats do; I’ve seen blocky champions and ten-legged abominations both cross the line first. Betting is baked into the economy, so there’s an enjoyable tension between min-maxing a stud and throwing a cheeky bet on your underdog. There are additional recreational events—high dive, sumo, circus stunts—that give second lives to horses that aren’t cut out for the track. I found myself experimenting more than optimizing: strap a rocket, glue a wheel, or hand a horse nuclear waste and see what happens. The result is emergent comedy and a surprising number of “how is this legal” stories.
The Gene Pool, CRISPR and Questionable Ethics
Zoning in on the DNA mechanics is where the game truly gets weird. You can breed animals, splice traits, and even use CRISPR edits if you’re impatient—this is not subtle genetics, it’s chaotic tinkering with beautiful consequences. The interface lets you push and pull traits, and the outcomes range from perfectly tuned racers to grotesque hybrids that nonetheless perform spectacularly. I loved how the system rewards creative curiosity: sometimes the “mistakes” are mechanically superior and laugh-out-loud funny. There’s also a dark humor layer—the option to slaughter, glue, or monetize your failures—that makes moral choice part of the loop. It’s messy, ethically dubious, and one of the main hooks that kept me poking at things for hours.
Looks, Sound and Technical Rough Edges
Visually Horsey Game leans into a charmingly rough aesthetic: models wobble, proportions are off, and that’s part of the appeal. The sound design is playful—whinnies, circus jingles and slapstick thuds make failures feel funny rather than tragic. Performance on my Windows box was decent for the most part, though reviews indicate save instability and crashes for some players; I experienced a couple of crashes after heavy DNA fiddling. Accessibility options are modest, but the UI is straightforward enough once you accept that trial-and-error is the tutorial. Overall the presentation matches the game’s personality: messy, joyful and unapologetically silly.
Horsey Game is a messy delight: equal parts toybox and dark comedy that rewards curiosity more than caution. I had belly laughs, creative triumphs, and frustrating crashes in equal measure—mostly the good kind of chaos. Pick it up if you want a streaming-friendly, emergent-sandbox about racing, breeding and moral ambiguity; wait for a patch if you need rock-solid stability.
Pros
- Insanely creative breeding & DNA toybox
- Endless emergent humor and memorable glitches
- Strong streamable moments—great to show friends
- Satisfying economic loop with betting and events
Cons
- Technical instability for some users (crashes/saves)
- Dark humor and options (slaughter/glue) may offend
- Tutorials are weak—expect trial-and-error
Player Opinion
Players are wildly enthusiastic about the game’s weirdness and creative systems. Common praise focuses on the DNA editor: people delight in making car-horse-rabbit hybrids, min-maxing grotesque champions, or accidentally inventing circus stars. Many reviews celebrate emergent comedy—selling exploding horses, cloning a champ that then faceplants, or strapping rockets to a stud. At the same time, a recurring criticism is technical fragility: multiple users reported saves becoming unstable or crashes after heavy editing. Others point out the thin hand-holding; some quests or population mechanics felt opaque. If you enjoy sandbox experiments (think UFO50-level granular weirdness) and like games that create stories from bugs, you’ll probably love Horsey Game; if you need tight polish and firm tutorials, temper expectations.