I’ve long been a fan of horse racing games, probably because my dad spent his Saturday placing bets on the horses and would make me pick a Grand National horse for a yearly bet as a child. I was never interested in the actual sport though, which makes Tap Derby an intriguing proposition. This is a streamlined horse stable management game where the racing is automated but how you train and look after your horses will dramatically affect your results.
Tap Derby has three main phases of gameplay. The first is the auction house where you can bid on horses to take into your stables. You are up against a collection of other stable owners whose names you’ll see throughout the game as rivals in races and bidding alike. Horses come with three main skills – speed, stamina and agility. Each affects the top speed, staying power and ability to deal with corners in turn and this helps you understand if your horse is a sprinter, middle-distance, or long-distance runner. Horses also have fitness, peak fitness and a rest meter which you’ll manage in the main phase of the game – training.
Training is a numbers game, allowing you to train your horse on their three main attributes. Anything the horse does will reduce its rest meter and potentially its fitness too if you aren’t maintaining it as a regular cost. Horse can go to the spa for a boost of relaxation but it comes at a hefty price tag, which is helpful for a big prize pot race. There are other less tangible stats for horses like morale which aren’t shown or quantified but when you train a horse it’ll boost its stat by 1,2, or 3 points. Over time this will make the horse more powerful and although most horses have a skill ceiling they can reach, you’ll be able to enter them into bigger and higher-ranked races over time. Horses can race for 3 in-game years (each training/racing phase is a week in-game) which gives you plenty of time to rise up the ranks if the stat chasing grabs you. It will need to grab you too as like many Kairosoft games – the kings of breezy mini-management games – the gameplay loop here is succinct and direct. There is no fluff or filler and that means you can burn through weeks at pace but get a little bored with its rinse and repeat gameplay.
Racing is automated but you need to allocate the right horse to the race best suited to its stats. Paying an agent can help you to do that but it’s not an exact science either. As horses improve you’ll be able to test out the next class of horses. After the basic races, stakes are a gateway to G3, G2 and G1 races and these come with huge prize pots. Only the top 5 horses in a race get prize money and it is hugely weighted towards the winner. It pays to hang around in the lower ranks and win by 500 yards than place 7th in the next rank up. This leads to unintentional dips in racing interest because the crossover from winning a stakes race to being competitive in a G3 race is non-existent. You’ll need to grind a bit and that’s where the streamlined gameplay is at its weakest. At the end of each year, you can choose to sell horses you own, put old ones into retirement, or your best into a hall of fame.
Whilst breezy and light on things to do, Tap Derby is moreish. I still enjoyed watching the races as I did with my favourite retro horse racing game Sport of Kings on the ZX Spectrum +3. You can’t fail too much either unless you grossly mismanage your finances. A cheap horse can still win basic races and keep some income rolling in and eventually, that will bankroll a new steed to train. The developer will be adding in breeding in a future update and that will add some more gameplay variety, which is welcome. The groundwork is here for a decent horse racing management game and I’m curious to see where the series develops.
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