Alice Ruppert 🐴🎮

might as well repost our celebratory booth pic for #ThisIsWhatAGameDevLooksLike 🥰🥰

I've been thinking about that too tbh. Anyone interested in organizing a panel with a topic like "How to Leverage Niche Interests for Commercial Success"? Who does similar stuff as I do for horses in games?

Let's see if they have anything to say about this

Link to post: www.linkedin.com/posts/alice-...

alternatively, is there anything in particular you WOULD like me to give a talk about?

I'm convinced that the knowledge and strategies I've used to build up The Mane Quest & the horse game communities over the years could be useful to people with lots of other genres, topics, niches, passions, but I'm not sure if the people who WANT to build up that stuff aren't already just doing it

I'm outlining a speaker application for gamescom dev and I wanna do something like "how to build thematic/genre-specific communities about things that genuinely interest you so you can provide genuine value AND promote your games there in the future". Is that anything? Is that interesting?

I instantly believe this wasn't intentional. I think many people's disdain for all things girly are subconscious and not being reflected. That doesn't make it okay and it imo deserves correction.

„Draw & Guess“ von Acureus ist ein Online-Zeichenspiel für bis zu 16 Spieler, in „Sixth Force“ von EdenSpiel müssen sich Vater und Sohn aus einem Neuronetzwerk befreien, in „Oku“ von Irox Games geht es auf eine spirituelle Reise durch Japan und in „Crimson Spotlight“ steckt man als Detektiv in einer Zeitschleife der 1940er-Jahre fest. Dann ist da auch noch ein Pferdespiel mit eigens dafür entwickeltem Pferde-Controller und noch vieles mehr. Damit ist in diesem Jahr „fast jede Form von Spiel“, jedes Genre vertreten, wie Robin Rottmann bemerkt, der Teamleiter der Initiative Games/Bavaria, die die Gaming-Messe veranstaltet. Einige der Games, erzählt er am Telefon, werden diesmal auch auf der Hauptbühne präsentiert, damit sie noch mehr Aufmerksamkeit bekommen.

"a horse game", while every other game is mentioned by name, really? 🤨

I appreciate the shoutout but it's hard to imagine a reason for this particular oversight that's not just our genre not being taken seriously.

www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/gam...

that is lovely to hear!!!! And absolutely, you know where to reach me for any horse game discussions 😁

(also in case you find the excellent performance of the Hoofprint Bay demo in this often underserved genre newsworthy.... 😇)

please direct any official inquiries to borrow the saddle controller to info at thoglistudios dot com 😌

yeaaah like I wholeheartedly embrace the term "horse game" and don't object at all to the game being described that way in general, but it's VERY noticeable when literally every other game mentioned in that paragraph and the one before gets their name spelled out

(there's another entire paragraph before this one that mentions four games by name, in some cases along with studio name and region of origin or brief pitch)

Fortunately, other media manages to mention us by name 🥰

www.tagesschau.de/inland/regio...

www.antenne.de/nachrichten/...

„Draw & Guess“ von Acureus ist ein Online-Zeichenspiel für bis zu 16 Spieler, in „Sixth Force“ von EdenSpiel müssen sich Vater und Sohn aus einem Neuronetzwerk befreien, in „Oku“ von Irox Games geht es auf eine spirituelle Reise durch Japan und in „Crimson Spotlight“ steckt man als Detektiv in einer Zeitschleife der 1940er-Jahre fest. Dann ist da auch noch ein Pferdespiel mit eigens dafür entwickeltem Pferde-Controller und noch vieles mehr. Damit ist in diesem Jahr „fast jede Form von Spiel“, jedes Genre vertreten, wie Robin Rottmann bemerkt, der Teamleiter der Initiative Games/Bavaria, die die Gaming-Messe veranstaltet. Einige der Games, erzählt er am Telefon, werden diesmal auch auf der Hauptbühne präsentiert, damit sie noch mehr Aufmerksamkeit bekommen.

"a horse game", while every other game is mentioned by name, really? 🤨

I appreciate the shoutout but it's hard to imagine a reason for this particular oversight that's not just our genre not being taken seriously.

www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/gam...

in The Legend of Khiimori you can lead a horse to water and you CAN make her drink and I think that's beautiful 👩‍🍳🤌

Finally someone has threaded the needle between survival game and horse girl sim The Legend of Khiimori is a surprisingly detailed horse courier sim that I'm actually loving more than just in solidarity with my horse girl gamer friends.

I think Khiimori might finally be the horse girl game I can wholeheartedly get behind. Once it makes it out of early access, anyway.

excerpt from the linked article: Horse games have a reputation—a fairly earned one, I'm sad to say—for being bad. If they're horse-accurate, they're ugly. If they're pretty, they're boring. If they're highly anticipated, they're buggy and unsupported. Horse enthusiast gamers have been burned before and often left half-fulfilled by the latest horse games. Horse courier sim The Legend of Khiimori launched in early access this week and this might finally be the equine experience that horse gamers deserve. Normally I'd go to developer and critic Alice Ruppert, known horse gamer spokesperson, for an expert opinion. She's done consulting on Khiimori though, so for a more neutral view I've instead called upon another equestrian correspondent: livestreamer, Red Dead Redemption 2 horse posse wrangler, and professional horse photographer Chelsea Farace.

I LOVE love love that PC Gamer wrote this, AND that they went to @chelsealiz.bsky.social for an opinion AND that they acknowledged that they'd usually ask me about this but didn't due to my involvement as a consultant. 🥹

Thank you, @comradecupcake.bsky.social!! 💖💖💖

www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/th...

DEAR TRANS KIDS, THIS WORLD IS BETTER WITH YOu IN IT AND YOU AR E WORTH FIGHTING FOR.

I met these two wonderful people in person for the first time this week, which is kind of hard to believe when you‘ve already been making a game together for over a year and it feels like you‘ve been friends for a much longer time 🥹💖

I left GG Bavaria early in the hopes of having a quiet evening at home after a very busy week. It was a TON of fun and I (once again) managed to play too few games but met and caught up with a lot of cool people 🥰🥰🥰

three women in front of their booth at a con. anna (middle) is sitting on our saddle controller

Happy International Women's Day from the three horse girls making Horses of Hoofprint Bay! 😁
Left to right: Programmer & Game Designer Theresa Thoma, Illustrator & Animator Anna Glinsmann and Producer & Publisher Alice Ruppert. ICYMI: Our Demo is featured in the #womensdaysale on Steam right now!💖

I'm too bored of this to try and be clever about it anymore.

If you think that two men kissing, or two women kissing, requires any more explanation than a man kissing a woman, that is homophobia.

Photo of a convention stage, two women are sitting on a grey couch with microphones, the projection behind them says „gg bavaria - women in games -with Insa“

Our programmer Theresa is currently on stage at GG Bavaria as part of a panel on women in games 🥰🥰🥰
#internationalwomensday

Fun conversations about the highs and lows of social media marketing were had 😌

HELLO???

Did you see this dope ass shit we‘re doing 🥹

Did you see this dope ass shit we‘re doing 🥹

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The Women's Day Sale is live! 🎉🎉🎉

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Haha, there‘s actually two sensors so you CAN hook this up to a game like Tales of Rein Ravine that actually differentiates between inside and outside leg 😁
For HoHB, only one of the sensors is hooked up and the horse only walks straight forward ^^

Can I add that it is really fucking funny to see how differently people handle this controller depending on whether they have riding experience. Like obviously it‘s not completely „realistic“ aids, but having equestrian muscle memory makes it infinitely easier to use this thing and that‘s hilarious