Here are 6 whole horse games you could buy for the same price as Diablo 4's £6.39 horse armour

Like lots of people in the RPS Treehouse right now, I've been squeezing in bits of Diablo 4 around the various Summer Game Fest streams happening this week. I'm having a decent, if mildly monotonous time so far, mostly because I haven't unlocked all my Druid's abilities just yet, but I'm keen to keep going with it, mostly because I just like turning into a bear and a wolf every three seconds to whack some evil skelly boys, innit. When I was logging off the other day, though, I had a fleeting glance at Diablo 4's shop. Not to actually buy anything, I should stress. I'm not one for cosmetics in any shape or form. But I just wanted to see what ludicrous things it was trying to sell me for real human money. And one item for sale was, of course, some fancy horse armour, and it cost six English pounds and thirty nine pence. £6.39! For a mangey rope bridle and a bone dagger on its side! (You can see it in the header image up top there). Ridiculous, I exclaimed, and promptly shut down my PC.

The next morning, I was talking about this daft bit of armour with the RPS Treehouse when Alice0 suddenly introduced me to the weird and wonderful world of cheap horse games on Steam. After all, why spend upwards of £6 on a pointless cosmetic item when you could feasibly put that money toward 6 whole horse games that have actually dozens of horses in them? So join me as we discover how many horse games you can buy on Steam for the same price as Diablo 4's horse armour.

I should stress, I'm not advocating people actually buy these horse games. I have not played them, nor can I vouch for their quality. This is merely an exercise in how far you can stretch your money, and also to go on a fun deep dive in a corner of Steam you may not have visited before.

Here are my findings, based on the highly scientific method of searching for the word "horse" in Steam's search engine.

Horse Rally Racing - 79p

Who needs horse armour when you can experience the thrill of racing around a 3D racing track against dozens of other jockeys eye-poppingly bright bibs? Sure, the lighting and the physics of your horse's jump might look a little off in the trailer, but tapping its big RACE, BOOST and JUMP buttons repeatedly feels like it should fit right in to the classic Diablo clickathon. I'm also very on board with the fact you can punt nearby racers to slow them down. At long last, my Mario Kart fly-by techniques can be put to good use in another game. And best of all, we still have £5.60 left in our budget.

Riding Horse School - 33p

With a simple Steam page description of "It's time to make new friends!", I am immediately enthralled by the prospect of Riding Horse School. I'm cheating slightly on the price front, as it normally costs £3.39, but it's on sale until June 17th at the moment, so I'm whacking it in anyway. This is much more of a horse riding simulator than Horse Rally Racing, but it's essentially a freeform gymkhana game that teaches you how to correctly approach jumps and bond with your horse. The Steam page also mentions there are ten different breeds to pick from, which immediately makes this ten times better than Diablo 4's horse armour. Don't knock the complete lack of lighting tech in it either. If someone told me this was a new horse-y corner of Cosmo D's Off-Peak City games (it's not), I'd probably believe them.

Far Away Horse - 79p

You have a single task in Far Away Horse. Walk until you reach its titular far away horse. That's it. That's the game. The developers say: "You might be thinking to yourself "Surely the horse couldn't be that far away! Well guess what. It is!" And if walking endlessly to achieve some far off, maybe slightly pointless goal isn't 100% emblematic of the Diablo experience, I don't know what is. Best of all, we still have £4.48 to spend on more horse games.

Cruise Ship Horse Racing - 89p

The trailer is absolutely worth watching for this one, if only for the brilliant line: "100 years ago cruise ship travel was boring, or WAS IT?" In this wonderfully impossible cruise ship, you're able to place bets, make wagers and race horses on a full-blown grass track (complete with hedges, trees and an audience stand) that's presumably located next to the all you can eat buffet and bottomless swimming pool deep inside the ship's belly. And your prize is some wonderful horse artwork. Instantly better than horse armour, wouldn't you say? And we've still got £3.59 to spend on more games.

Arrowpoint - 79p

Most of the screenshots for Arrowpoint involve a cowboy man riding a very bored looking horse down a narrow canyon shooting at targets with a bow and arrow. Your classic onrails shooter fare, it would seem. But then... But THEN. Look at that mad whale boy carving up the sky above, there? Arrowpoint has suddenly become the western cousin of Death Stranding, and I'm 100% here for it. Heck, this came out in 2017. This was before Death Stranding, and thus the only plausible conclusion we can possibly draw from this whole situation is that Kojima must have played Arrowpoint, loved it, and thought, 'Yeah, I'm having that whale in my game as well, mate.' Clearly, he was onto something here, as was Alec (RPS in peace), who clocked it on release as well.

Wildlife Park 2 - Horses - £2.79

I have £2.80 left to spend now, and I'm going to blow it all on the 2007 classic Wildlife Park 2 - Horses. There are dozens more 79/89 pencers I could list here that are vaguely horse-themed, but let's face it, the promise of "16 breeds of horses and varied missions" is simply too good to ignore here. As well as managing your horse farm, you'll need to take your horses out riding to complete missions, and build up your farm to create the perfect wildlife park. I bet these ranchers would positively scoff at the idea of spending £6.39 on a tatty bit of rope accessories. That simply won't do in this wildlife park, lemme tell you.

And the free ones...

Really, there is an actual bottomless pit of horse games when you go looking for them, especially if you start going down the free-to-play route with games such as Horse Riding Tales, Horse Farm, Horse Reality, My Strong Horse and the free prologue demo for upcoming horse stable simulator Horse Shelter 2022.

If we include all those on top of the six games I've listed above, that's a whopping 11 possible horse games you could enjoy for the same price as Diablo 4's horse add-on. I mean, you'd think Blizzard would know better by now after Bethesda got absolutely rinsed for doing exactly the same thing with their first DLC for Oblivion all those years ago, charging players what now seems like a paltry $2.49 for its horse armour, but clearly people's feelings towards cosmetic bridles and saddles haven't changed in, lawd, almost twenty years.

So keep fighting the good fight, horse games. You'll get your due one day.