Rival Stars Horse Racing is a simulation sports title published by PikPok. In this game, your character is in charge of restoring a rundown ranch and bringing your family’s legacy back into the limelight through horse racing. However, there’s not a lot of interaction with other characters or even the horses, for that matter.

The story here is that you’re getting into horse racing and need to restore the ranch. The game has goals you’ll need to meet to move forward with the story and unlock further upgrades and areas. The goals are as simple as winning in the top three during a race in a specific location, building a new stable, or breeding a foal. When completing a goal, you’ll earn materials that will help restore the ranch. However, it’s done automatically.

At the start, you customize your character and give your ranch a name and logo. You never move your character around, though. Most of the gameplay mechanics are point-and-click or moving the horse when riding. Truthfully, I didn’t think the story bit needed to be included. The supporting characters were flat since there was no way to interact with them. I went through the motions of completing the goals to unlock new things for my horses and the races, not because I was trying to rebuild the ranch.

That said, I got weirdly addicted to Rival Stars Horse Racing. You can create your own horses, which was a delight. I visit a barn weekly, so I had fun creating some of the horses I know in real life. The farther you get into the game, you can begin breeding the horses. Genetics will play a role in what the foal looks like and also the stats and traits they inherit from the parents. Each horse has a grade level, meaning their stats are higher, allowing them to participate in tougher races.

The stats include strength, agility, jumping, and more. When you do anything with a horse (racing, shows, etc.), they’ll earn experience points. When they level up, you can upgrade their stats until they become maxed out.

Why bother maxing out their stats? Well, the purpose of Rival Stars Horse Racing is to race with your horses. There are many locations to unlock, each with about four or five different races to participate in. The horses have preferred terrain and will have the stamina to only go so far. So, when joining a race, you’ll have to take that into account. It’s not enough to choose your strongest or fastest horse and go all in. (Although, if you grind enough, you can easily get too OP and enter any horse in any race.)

The races themselves are fine. The horse moves on their own, and you can steer them slightly to get ahead of your opponents. They also have an energy bar for sprinting. I often saved my sprinting for the final stretch. Races are fairly easy to win, even from the start of the game. There were a couple of times I found myself lagging behind and not hitting first place, but overall, Rival Stars Horse Racing is pretty easy.

When winning races, you’ll earn money. Plus, you can place bets and earn more. Then, you can use the money to buy more horses or materials to use for upgrades. The upgrades, for example, can help you build more stables so you can house more horses.

Rival Stars Horse Racing has a variety of gameplay, though. Another race type focuses on jumping, and there are also horse shows. One show focuses on jumping, and the other is an obstacle course on a trail.

Over time, the game gets a bit grindy. I got to a point where I needed to upgrade one of the stats to improve my horses further. In order to do that, there were a couple of goals I had to meet, but my horses weren’t at a high enough level. So, I had to keep grinding older (and easier) races to get those upgrades.

I had fun doing all the races, practicing the jumps, and making plenty of money. However, I wish I could have done more with Rival Stars Horse Racing. I know racing is the main gimmick, but I would have loved to interact with my horses more.

For example, there is a free roam mode where you can ride a horse around a trail. The scenery isn’t anything special to look at and there aren’t many places to go. There is also a pasture. When you have no more room in the stables, you can either sell some horses or move them to the pasture. The pasture can hold sixty horses, so that’s what I started doing because I felt bad selling some of my babies. Unfortunately, you can’t interact with the horses in the pasture. You can just watch them wander and graze, but the camera only fixates on one horse at a time.

I would have loved to groom my horses, especially before a race or show. Even with the foals, you can click a button to feed them, but that’s it. You can’t even pet the horses.

So, the racing and shows were great. The controls ran smoothly and I did enjoy creating and breeding my horses and coming up with funny names for them. The game also created some interesting names, too. One of my horses is named Curious Case, which the game made up, and I love it.

I put a surprising amount of hours into Rival Stars Horse Racing. However, it gets repetitive after a while, and even though racing is the main mechanic, I wish there was more to do. That said, if you enjoy horses and horse games, this title is a solid choice. You will have fun with it, even if you don’t play it all the way through.