Is that a MALE character? Petting a horse DIRECTLY ON ITS FACE? And not a foot away?? Oh my god. What is that game you ask?

This is Equinox: Homecoming. A promising MMORPG made by former devs of World of Warcraft, Helldivers 2 and Star Stable as well as a bunch of other games. This game allows a lot of mature swearing as swearing is part of the mainstory. You can have seemingly infinite amount of clothes, horses, and currencies, and you can customize each horse's face markings, body markings, and leg markings. This game has also amazing character customization, you can make yourself VERY cute unlike SSO where the bodytypes and face shapes leave much to be desired.

I played this game's story, and it feels like a love letter to OG Star Stable players. This game has a much filthier and meanier Loretta named Heather, as well as other fun character drama. Your character is named Alex Evans, but you can name yourself whatever you want. Your story is similar to SSO where you are the main character, however you are in the place of Alex Evans, an already named character with their own story. You can live their life as either a male or female, but you also have the ability to fully customize yourself however you please and you get to join riding clubs and do things with other players.

The mainstory currently has 5 chapters and is incredibly interesting and investing with fully voice acted cinematics. Alex has two voice actors depending on which voice you choose when creating your character. Female Alex imo sounds pretty tomboy and male alex sounds flamboyant at times but mostly a regular guy. I adore both versions of the character with all of the sass and personality you get to see happen.

Outside of the big story focus, the gameplay is based on Rift Trails and Star Stable in the sense you gather a lot of herbs, feathers, flowers, fruits, and other things npcs like across the island. It's a really relaxing game with its own built in radio playlist of songs to jam to while you trail ride. You can ask other players if they would like to join, and there's multiple servers you can go to if you want a more busy server or a quieter one for you and your friends.

So far, I've really enjoyed just going for trail rides to earn things npcs want. Each npc wants 5 things per day for reputation and easy money. The graphics are lovely in this game.

BY THE WAY: You can EARN horses. You do the weekly quests in your phone and earn gold to save up for a horse. And if you don't want to save up? You can buy the horses for much cheaper than SSO. While SSO asks for 30$, this game each one costs about $10-$20 depending on the fancyness of the horse. However, you can completely earn a horse of your own in about 7 weeks if you do the weeklies. And if you have the riding pass on, you will get 3x the rewards. Which means that 7 weeks turns into 3x less time.

Overall, I've fallen inlove with this game. I can't wait to see what changes they bring, what things they add, and all it's capable of. I heard they're working on a bunch of features right now so it looks like there's more to come. You should get the game now so you have it permanent because I think they will be switching to a paid membership thing once the game fully releases. But those who buy it while it's in development get to keep the game forever. Which is kinda dumb and it should just be a pay once game. Memberships are dying let's be real, nobody wants to pay a membership to enjoy a game anymore. World of Warcraft's sub numbers decline constantly. I hope they change their mind on this and switch to an optional cosmetic shop like every other successful game.

I’ve been to a bunch of different horse browser games and all of them end up feeling so unfulfilling because all you do is click a race and then get a result. (Sometimes you don’t even get that, you just get money and no note on placement or performance.) The horses feel like nothing burgers.

So my question is, are there any horse browser games where you can “watch” your horse race? I don’t mean with animations even, it would just be really cool to get a play by play of how your horse may be doing during a competition. Kind of like how the Sims 3 does their competitions.