Horses has become the current face of the fight against video game censorship and what becomes art. After being banned from Steam and the Epic Game Store, the narrative horror game became a bestseller on GOG.com and gathered gamers of all stripes to support it. But as a game, Horses doesn’t deserve all of this – neither its bans nor, having played it myself, all the glowing praise.
Horses is a collaboration between independent studio Santa Ragione and Italian filmmaker Andrea Lucco Bolera. Bolera wrote the game, starred in it, and directed the FMV cutscenes that are interspersed throughout the game, while developers Santa Ragione worked on the technical aspects. It is a brief experience, taking approximately three to four hours. But even though it’s mercifully short, by the end I was desperate to get it over with.
In Horsesyou play as Anselmo, a 20-year-old slacker sent to a farm for two weeks by his father to learn the value of good old hard work. Guided by the farm’s authoritarian owner, Anslemo is tasked with a number of tasks that you complete with a single mouse click. Water the garden, feed the dog, and care for a herd of titular horses – naked humans with horse masks permanently attached to their faces with a collar. Over the course of 14 days, Anselmo learns about the horses, their master, and how much suffering he – and by extension the player – can endure.
In every conversation about this game, from how its ban from Steam and Epic is ruinous for the art and gaming, to Horses‘ deserves as a narrative horror experience, I haven’t heard much about its funny side. After reading the detailed content warning and knowing some of the unpleasant surprises the story had in store for us, my first visceral reaction to the game was to laugh out loud.
Examination of the cemetery revealed dead equines named Bojack and Artax. After the farmer, the next character you will meet is a dog and, of course, you can try to pet it. I found it extremely funny that the developers of something as dark and upsetting as Horses I always felt indebted to the unwritten rule of game development that “if a dog should be petted.” Even if he growls at you if you try, well… he’s Also a human in an animal mask.
The first seven days passed in a hilarious atmosphere enhanced by the FMV action and lofi graphics, animations and interactions all of which I found charming. Every time the farmer speaks, the game zooms in on his face as his lips conform around teeth that don’t move. When Anselmo wants to express an opinion or make a choice, you have to choose between a thumbs up or down or smiling faces that look like the pain charts you see in hospitals while his impassive face moves or shakes depending on your choice. In a horse race against the farmer, using the WASD keys to move created a tilting motion as if the human beneath me was reacting realistically to the weight of a grown man on his shoulders.
I even found the explicit stuff funny. And because of some of the game’s design choices, these moments aren’t graphic at all. Sex between horses looks like two models ragdolling their pixelated waste against each other while barely making a sound. When you catch the farmer late at night watching his dog and horse go at it, his jerky movements make it clear that he’s supposed to be masturbating. But because of the limitations of animation (and his chastity cage), his hands slide wildly into his abdomen. This is the game banned from Steam while this one Standing sex features uncensored close-ups of full penetration, moans and all.
But as much the involuntary hilarity of Horses disarming me, it brutally undermined the game’s message. Horses randomly jumping into it are meant to reinforce how the depth of their dehumanization has reduced them to their baser, most animal instincts. But the use of revolutionary animation and graphics during the Dreamcast era transformed these moments of horror into comedy. This isn’t to say that we humans don’t often laugh when we’re supposed to be horrified, or that a more serious, realistic conception would be better (hell, No). But emphasizing the funny created an ironic distance between me and the more appropriate emotions that the rest of the experience was trying to evoke.
As each new day passed, moments of increasing brutality began to appear as scares. Rather than bothering me, it felt like I was watching a comic book drive the same piece into the ground. One of the least effective narrative devices is shock for shock’s sake and while I’m sure that wasn’t the intention, that’s what it feels like.
I quickly got bored. Perhaps this is exactly what the director was going for, emphasizing that when there is so much ugliness around you, you can’t help but relegate it to the background noise. But that only happens when you have no choice (or choose to do nothing) and this game was designed to give the player very little choice. In some moments where Anselmo can say “no”, he is forced to do anything anyway. How am I supposed to stay in the uncomfortable tension of what my action or inaction caused, if my participation was predetermined by the game’s code? A more interesting game would have allowed me to make my own decisions and forced me to live with the consequences. But as the game is, I have to live with the consequences of playing it.
Steam ban Horses, even though it got all this positive attention, it’s still a tragedy. Eventually the focus will fade and the gaming community will turn to a new cause du jour, leaving Horses on platforms that have much less reach than Steam. I’m glad I played it. Horses worth playing – if only to appreciate games that do better than what Horses failed to do so.
Horses is now available on GOG.com, Humble and itch.io.
