5th April 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we’re mixing it up a bit with a GDC-based indie preview special, highlighting several game demos we tried out in late March (And also it’s just me, Chris – hello!).
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
Horses – PC, others TBA, 2024
Boutique developer-publisher Santa Ragione won the IGF Award for Best Narrative during GDC with its previous game, the wonderful Mediterranea Inferno, and Horses – developed by Andrea Lucco Borlera, seems like another gem.
This one’s decidedly quieter though, with minimal dialogue and an eerily rudimentary construction. Borlera cited Czech surrealists and Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director of Poor Things and The Favourite, as inspirations to me out at GDC’s Day of the Devs, with Horses playing out in the style of a deeply unsettling silent film. Expect speech cards for dialogue, slow and manual mechanics, and violently close-up shots of people chewing, as you take on the role of a young new farmhand on a ranch that plays home to a herd of naked, horse-headed slave people.