Horse Riding Classic is a narrative-driven comedic collectathon developed over 3 weeks for Steam's 2026 Horse Festival in celebration of the Year of the Horse. The player takes control of a series of procedurally generated horses with absurd names, exploring a vast open world, collecting apples.
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Narrative Design
Narrative Design
I built the beginning and ending of Horse Riding Classic (the forest and the glue factory). As a result, I was responsible for establishing and concluding the narrative of the game. While much of the game's narrative focuses on one-off comedic moments, it was important to me that some meaningful story would come through to the player.
The primary example of this is the horses caged at the end. Throughout the game, the player breeds 16-19 horses to ride on. When a new horse is bred, the old horse goes away and is supposedly never seen again, but once the player reaches the glue factory at the end, they will find all their previous horses locked up, ready to be turned into glue. This creates an emotional moment, reminding the player of the funny or interesting horses they bred throughout the game and adding weight to the game's climax.
Dialogue System - Tech
Dialogue System - Tech
Horse Riding Classic has a significant number of NPCs for the player to interact with. To facilitate this, I created a simple dynamic dialogue system with built-in save-data support that was used throughout the entire game.
My priorities for this system were for it to be lightweight and understandable by all of our team members, since we were on such a tight schedule. It seems that I was able to succeed in this goal, as we can see the use of the system throughout every major area of Horse Riding Classic.
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