Everywhere I look at the moment, I see Umamusume: Pretty Derby. My favorite streamers are playing it, the ads are all over my Instagram feed, and it’s topping the charts across Android, iOS, and Steam. I’ve known for a while that I would play Umamusume as soon as it released in the West, but I wasn’t expecting this. Why is everyone so obsessed with the silly horse game?
If, somehow, you’ve never heard of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, it’s an idol raising simulation game for mobile and PC in which you play as a trainer to ‘Umamusume’ – the reincarnated spirits of race horses that take the form of humanoid horse girls. If you’re thinking to yourself, “That’s a bit bizarre,” that’s exactly why I wasn’t expecting this obscure gacha game to take off worldwide. To be honest, I also believe that Cygames, the series’ creator and game developer, felt the same, as Umamusume: Pretty Derby launched in Japan four years before the company decided to bring the free mobile game to the rest of the world.
As I mentioned before, I’ve had my eye on this game for a while because I’m in the exact target demographic for it. I already love idols and idol games (yes, the Umamusume are idols as well as race horses), I’ve been meaning to watch the anime series for a while now, and, as a TCG collector and player, I own some of the Shadowverse cards already. It’s not hard to market anthropomorphised horse girls to me, but this level of popularity is unprecedented. At the time of writing, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is the best-selling game on Steam, number one in both the free and grossing simulation game charts on Android, and in the top five on iOS.
