Horse Whisperer

After more than 30 years, the Comp has accumulated a body of folk wisdom, tips and tricks, and helpful pointers about how authors can best position their work for a successful reception. Sadly, this store of knowledge is built atop the broken debris of promising games that demonstrated what not to do, and sadder still, Horse Whisperer, which boasts an engagingly oddball premise (you’re a horse psychologist trying to fix a race for the mob) and more than its share of solid gags, must join this host of fallen exemplars, offering an illustration of the lesson that if the phrase “untested alpha build” appears anywhere in your game or blurb in a non-diegetic context, you should withdraw and resubmit next year (or to Spring Thing! There’s always Spring Thing!)

It would feel mean to catalogue all the errors I ran into trying to play Horse Whisperer, but there are a lot and they’re obvious – none more so than the dialogue options currently marked with asterisks, which when you click them take you to a “sorry, coming soon” passage. The logic linking the results of your actions to an ending appears either broken or absent, since the outcome of the race ignored that I’d psyched up one horse, demoralized another, and disqualified a third (the disqualified horse came in second place). Oh, and the race happened a day after it was supposed to.

Again, this is a shame, since this dark, absurdist take on Mr. Ed has some comedic potential that’s occasionally well-realized, and the author clearly has a lot of fun ideas for how to elaborate on the premise. But it’s not spitting-distance to done, even for a horse. Hopefully in addition to being a warning sign to others on the dangers of submitting an incomplete game to the Comp, Horse Whisperer will also be fodder for the author to come back next year (or again, this coming spring!) with something that lives up to the promise that’s on display here. Until then, the game isn’t stable enough to… be able to make much hay? These horse puns are harder than they look!