I’m a sucker for aesthetics and feels and Horse Runner DX leans into a beautiful pixel art style that oozes charm and beauty when it’s in motion. This is an endless runner that keeps the gameplay simple. By doing so it will be either your favourite relaxation game to unwind mindlessly with or it won’t entertain you enough to keep you coming back for more.
The procedural generation of Horse Runner DX will generate an endless trail for your horse to autorun through. Your only worry is to jump and pressing and holding jump will give you airtime and distance. Along the way hay barrels, fences, rocks, and rivers will block your path and if you hit them or land in them, you’ll lose a life (and potentially all your lives if you land in the drink). At its core, this gameplay loop never changes but your trail is broken up into stages, giving you stats on how many apples you ate along the way and points for completing any of three goals you’ll be working towards that are selected at random. From this perspective, Horse Runner DX reminds me of The Alto Collection. Each run is different and gives increasing goals to aim for. These goals unlock different starter horses.
I say starter horses because the best thing about Horse Runner DX is its life mechanic. When you complete a stage you’ll have the opportunity to unlock a new horse to add to your team. You’ll get to choose from two, spending apples you’ve collected along the way to buy them. Horses have different traits like speeding up or slowing down the game speed, increasing the score per apple collected, or a score multiplier change. Ultimately they all play the same way but now you’ll see a whole stable of horses galloping through the game. It is such a simple thing but having eight or ten horses all jumping like a Mexican wave over the obstacles brought me genuine joy. Where this goes beyond aesthetic is that each horse acts as a life, so if you run into an object, the lead horse gets dizzy and drops out, letting the next horse take charge. Run out of horses and it’s game over, which usually means if you land in the river, so will all your horses – so beware!
The main concern with Horse Runner DX is what you experience after 3 minutes is exactly the same at 30 minutes or 3 hours in. Aside from some gradient and background changes, and a nice day/night cycle, the gameplay is identical. For some that might make this a mindless relaxing experience. In theory, the horses get faster over time but you can prevent that from ever happening by buying slower horses with your apples. For me, it was a little too simplistic. I wanted a secondary mechanic to keep it fresh and interesting. If you aren’t put off by simplicity then Horse Runner DX is a competent endless runner and a good choice. If you are looking for something more, you’ll burn out quickly.
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