Snow Horse is a game where the player controls a horse on a snowboard.  That could be the entire review, but in order to keep Hardcore Gamer a professional and respectable website, the boss has imposed minimum word requirements for reviews.  I will not disclose what the number is, mainly because I do not actually know what it is, but that sentence alone does not fulfill the requirement.  So there will be much pontificating about this horse.  Who is on a snowboard.  A horse is a horse of course of course and this horse will challenge a snowy course and jump and flip with no recourse and hope he won't fall dead.

The previous paragraph and subsequent screenshots are not a joke, this seriously is a game about a horse on a snowboard.  There is no real plot to speak of or even a basic explanation as to why the horse is on a snowboard so if you are looking a narrative that rivals The Last of Us, this is not the game you are looking for.  Actually, regardless of what you are looking for this is probably not the game you are looking for.  We do know that, spoiler alert, Snow Horse enjoys long walks on the beach, Swedish candy, and (s)he is better than Snow Goat, who does not appear to be a playable character or AI rival in Snow Horse at this time.  This is not to say that Snow Goat could not make an appearance as DLC later on but that rumor is not confirmed because this writer made it up a few seconds ago.

The gameplay mechanics attempt to mimic snowboarding games such as SSX or Amped but are much more simplified.  The snowboarding horse who I am going to refer to as Mr. Shred starts each stage standing on a snowboard and even though he is facing away it is obvious he has a very bewildered look on his face.  Mr. Shred does not look like he knows what he is doing, it is as if someone told him that if he pizzas when he should French fry he is going to have a bad time and that was the only instruction he was given before stepping on the snowboard.  This was terrible instruction because as a horse, Mr. Shred does not understand the concept of pizza or French fries and also because those are things that are taught during ski instruction, not snowboarding.  People playing this game are likely to have a similar look on their face, wondering what the hell they are playing and thinking magic beans would have been a better investment.  If you play Snow Horse when you should have bought magic beans you're going to have a bad time.

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Mr. Shred snowboards down the course and encounters ramps along the way, which I probably didn't need to include that sentence since that is what snowboard courses are.  As Mr. Shred slides through the course, trying to make sense of pizza, French fries, and other food horses generally have no frame of reference for, he can alter his trajectory or use the jump button on ramps to give himself some more airtime for his tricks, which are really useless and boring.  Pressing a letter key will make his nose tilt forward or his tail wag.  Even if the game is played with a controller on the PC version, the controller buttons will not activate these tricks so the flips in the air will be done with the thumbstick, any other tricks will have to be done with the keyboard.  So this is game that has minimal button input, yet requires simultaneous juggling of the mouse, keyboard, and controller to fully play.  For the lazy gamer who thinks that is why too much effort for such an unrewarding game, it is possible to successfully complete some of the courses without pressing a single button.  The score at the end of the level will be nothing to brag about, but it is possible to just sit back and watch Mr. Shred not do anything remotely close to shredding and just slide and jump over the ramps until he makes it to the end.

Snow Horse is a silly concept and it is clear that it is not meant to be taken seriously.  The trouble is that while the gimmick of a snowboarding horse doing tricks is amusing for a short while, there really is nothing worthwhile about the game.  There are not very many tracks and there is little variety between them.  The stage select screen does threaten more to come, but the hope remains that the threat is empty. The customization option for the horse's appearance, such as having him wear a top hat or pumpkin on his head provide amusement for approximately two seconds.  The limited content is somewhat of a blessing in disguise since the content they have is not good.  The controllers are responsive enough to ensure that the experience simulates how easy it is to control a real horse on a snowboard.  Snow Horse plays more like a Unity engine tech demo than an actual game.

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Closing Comments:

Snow Horse is a mildly amusing concept that could have been decent if it were developed beyond the idea of "let's put a horse on a snowboard."  There are plenty of games that are built around ridiculous ideas, but they have enough content built into them that make them enjoyable for more than five seconds.  A game about a snowboarding horse that is budget priced for Steam and iOS is something that someone should walk into with little to no expectations.  No matter how low the expectation are for this title, they are probably too high.  Screw Flanders.