About This Game

EARLY ACCESS - THIS GAME IS IN DEVELOPMENT (see the attached early access info for more details)
Please join the Discord channel to give feedback or get help!

Tobiano is a sport horse simulator with realistic genetics, management, and riding. Shop for horses and train them through the levels to succeed at shows or sell for profit. Breed horses with unique personalities and conformation. Grow your facility to add stables, farm feed, or craft tack.  Without microtransactions or ads.

Note: This game comes in an offline and an online version, check the details at the bottom of this store page to be sure you get the right version for your preferences!

Training

In Tobiano, horses aren’t born knowing how to be ridden. You start the training process by backing the horse, then work your way through dressage movements to unlock new levels of training. Just like in real life, horses are not always successful when learning new movements. Horses also have temperaments and fitness levels which will impact their ride ability. Horses can get stressed by high demands like new exercises or strenuous work. For now Tobiano is focused on dressage, but jumping and other disciplines are in progress and will be added later on.

Beginner horse

Medium level horse

High level horse

Breeding

Tobiano features a complex breeding system that includes personality traits, ten different color genes, and conformation traits. A mare’s nutrition needs and conformation will change throughout the pregnancy, which lasts almost a year in game. Refine your line by strategically selling horses and breed for more valuable horses.

Breed for color, temperament, and conformation

There are ten different color genes, and multiple phenotypes for each.  There are literally billions of unique coats in the game. Also, grey horses get lighter with age!

Feeding and management

You can’t make a horse faster or more agile with feed. In Tobiano, feed is made up of different nutrients found in the real world, like protein, energy, vitamins and minerals. A horse’s nutrient requirements depend on their workload, size, and life stage. You can grow some of your own feed at your farm to be more self-sufficient.

Horses live out together in paddocks

Tack

Tobiano has a tack shop where you can buy gear for horse and rider. All tack comes in different colors and styles, so there are endless combinations that can add to your horse’s individuality. Tack is unlocked with gold which can be earned by maintaining your login streak or doing daily quests. Unlocked tack can also be crafted in the workshop. Spare tack can be sold for an extra income or equipped on your horses.

The tacking up area in the horse profile lets you save an "outfit" for each individual horse

Explore

Tobiano is semi-open world with a town center, home stables, and trails to explore.  You can take your horses out to train, do quests, or complete daily challenges.

Training while out on a trail ride

Controller support

Tobiano is best experienced with mouse and keyboard. Controller support is in progress.

Future development

A number of expansions are planned for the future, including jumping, livery stables, new tack and more, see the website for more details: 

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

As the AI debate continues to evolve I feel the need to add nuance to this statement so players can make an informed decision whether or not to support human game developers.

I took 5 years of classes learning code and 3D to produce my game. When the AI boom hit, Tobiano was already a functioning breeding and management simulator. At my day job, we were encouraged to use AI for everything from image generation to writing emails. I opposed the use of AI for creative aspects and human communication, but tested out chatbots for help with code. Problems solved with AI include things like "how do i make the camera follow the player". A lot of the problems ended up more convoluted by AI.

Most of the code written early in the game has gone through 2-3 iterations to simplify and be easier to work with and debug. For example, the riding lesson system was redone completely after the first 5 lessons were added, just to make the next 5 lessons easier for me to add. Building a large and complex game requires understanding of code and the developer needs to know where to find every method, every variable. There is an important distinction between "hey Claude, build me a horse game" and saving a couple hours writing a database. I've spent literally thousands of hours writing code for my passion project.

AI use in the game today consists of time-saving things like "add these markings to this list". AI can be useful for debugging, when the root of a problem can be a simple typo that is hard to spot. Bigger debugging problems always require a broader conceptual understanding of the way the game is set up and take human hours to solve. AI has not been used to create any 3D assets, textures, audio, or writing or translations in the game. I cannot guarantee that people I hire to do these tasks do not use AI, as these cooperations are based on trust.

My discord community see behind the scenes and know the care and work that goes into this game. As time goes on I take the gamble that my efforts will produce something that players can enjoy, knowing they are supporting human game developers.