Unlike car racing enthusiasts, fans of horse racing don’t have many options when it comes to mobile phone games. Stallion Race is one of the few titles that exists as an option for such individuals and resultantly I had high hopes from the game.
It is available on the Android platform where it was released on 25th May 2021.
A Free To Play Title
Stallion Race is free to play and only a few advanced-level items are an exception. However, at no point, I felt being forced to purchase any option for enjoying the title.
The Loading Screen Is Unique
I loved the unique method adopted by the developers of Stallion Race in which the game’s loading is shown by a galloping horse making the overall experience extremely unique and apt for a game of this type.
Irritating Pop Up Upon Initial Loading
Before I could start my gameplay session, an irritating notification kept popping up. To add further to the agony, this notification kept coming up every time the game was launched.
An Extremely Irritating Initial Tutorial
Most modern-day games offer some sort of initial tutorial to players for making them conversant with the gameplay. However, I must say that Stallion Race takes the experience a step further by presenting a tutorial that lasts for 15 minutes or maybe more, it felt like an eternity.
This makes it extremely irritating in the sense that during this tutorial I was constrained to only a few choices. The inability to choose the options of my liking presented an unfavorable situation.
During the entirety of the tutorial, various notifications keep coming up. However, I liked the small arrows indicating the next option to be selected as they made the overall procedure quite simple.
I must mention that I couldn’t find any option to skip this long tutorial.
Free Items To Get Started
For getting started, I was provided with a jockey and a horse for free. However, for later parts of the game, I had to expend in-game currency for the purchases.
Stallion Race didn’t provide me a timer or any sort of restriction for the free gameplay and I was allowed to enjoy the title as long as I wanted without the need for any microtransaction.
Choosing The Character
Another feature of the game that I enjoyed was the option of personalizing the game by choosing a character of your choice. The customization options were by no means as diverse as other titles, the likes of Roblox, but the 10 different male and female options meant I had a great variety to choose from.
Home Screen’s Layout
I found the home screen a bit lackluster as somehow it didn’t captivate my attention in a way that other modern-day titles like PUBGM or CODM did. Even the icons seemed sort of childish to me.
Furthermore, I feel that the portrait mode of gameplay makes the experience less appealing, and had the game been in the landscape mode, it would have been more enjoyable.
Challenging Other Players
I quickly jumped to the “Challenge” section of the game by tapping the icon located at the bottom end of the display. By this time, I didn’t have high hopes from the title, keeping in mind its overall setting.
For proceeding further, I was required to choose the region in which I wished to race. In the beginning, the options were just a few. However, as I won more games, I was allowed to participate in races in other regions as well.
At this point, I assumed that selecting the region would make a difference in the gameplay. I expected it to change the overall setting in which the race takes place, or at the very least the loading screen would be somewhat different, but it brought no change at all.
So, it’s pretty meaningless whether you choose Dubai or Hong Kong, the race is exactly the same.
Preliminary Interface
It was still a long way to the race because I had to adjust the preliminary interface for the race. The first step, in this case, was choosing the jockey (the free one that I mentioned earlier).
Choosing The Horse
Following that, I was allowed to select the horse. I didn’t have a choice at first and had to take the free one. However, as I won more races, the number of options increased.
Participating In The Race
I feel that the game developers have put too much effort into everything but they forgot to hand over the controls of the race to the gamers.
I believe this because, after selecting the jockey and horse, the players have no control over the race and are only left with the option of switching between the various camera viewing options.
Once the race begins, the names of players are displayed, resembling an actual life-like setting. I liked how I got to choose the “Perspective View” which allowed me to view the race from 4 different angles.
Gameplay Visuals
The overall graphics quality during the races is highly impressive, as illustrated by the image below, however, as previously stated, the real stumbling block for hardcore gamers is the inability to control the movement and actions of the jockey and the horse.
This means that even when I chose the “Skip the Game” option, there wasn’t much that I missed.
Despite all of the effort put into the game, the game developers did not provide us with the one control that we truly required. In the absence of such controls, Stallion Race devolves into a game in which players can only select a few options and see how they function.
Final Verdict
My primary complaint is that players cannot control the jockey and the horse during the race. In this regard, there should have been a mechanism in place to make the game more engaging.
Furthermore, the tutorial can be condensed for allowing players to quickly get to the important stuff. Besides this, the game has an excessive amount of text on each screen, which is in complete contrast to the method used by other modern-day titles.
However, one positive aspect that I observed during the gameplay was how smooth the overall experience was. There were no lags or stutters, making the entire experience a breeze. Overall, I would rate Stallion Race as a game with nothing particularly noteworthy about it, and with much better games available on mobile phone platforms, players can easily pass this one. If you’re into the whole horse racing setting, this might be an interesting game for you but the game mechanics aren’t outstanding enough to attract someone else, in my opinion.
