One of my favorite things to do is explain niche gaming things to my befuddled husband. It’s the trade-off for listening to him talk about the Dodgers—while I love watching baseball the minutia of trades and injuries is hard for me to wrap my head around. So, late this week, as he was putting away leftovers from dinner I said to him: the game is about training pretty anime girls as race horses, but they’re also pop stars, so after they win a race they have to put on a concert. He gave me a look of deep love, and said, “that’s nice honey.”
Uma Musume is a four year old mobile game that very recently was released in English, with a PC port on Steam. I remember when the game came out because I remember the trailer for the anime, which, frankly, looked like total dogshit.
What do I know, though. Four years later, the Uma Musume anime has three seasons and a spin off. At the time of its release, the mobile gacha game Love Live was extremely popular, and the Uma Musume mobile game takes a lot of cues from it. Similar to Love Live, the main goal of the game is to level up your favorite anime-girl-horse-hybrid, which are called uma musume in the game. You do this by having them run through a set list of races in Career mode, with the player choosing which skills to train them in, and earning Perks that give them special abilities. Each time you play Career mode, you are able to choose two uma musume to be their “legacy,” allowing your character to inherit skills and perks from these characters. In short, you are breeding horse girls to create even better horse girls, so that they can achieve their dream of winning races and performing a concert literally right after.
All of this makes for surprisingly compelling gaming. Like Princess Maker 2 and Long Live The Queen, or even dating sims like Tokimeki Memorial, micromanaging the way you raise your uma musume in order to get the best stats and perks becomes a logic puzzle to untangle. How do you manage her stress levels and energy so that you can get the most out of each and every day? And then, how do you create good legacies, so that each time you replay the game you can take your favorite uma musume even farther?
But I don’t think the gameplay is the reason for the game’s sudden popularity. It makes a surprisingly entertaining game to stream. The streamer Northernlion is usually credited with bringing the game to Twitch—I am watching his ruthlessly min-max his uma musume as I write this, and there are nearly 30,000 viewers in the category on Twitch. It makes for fun viewing because the races that your uma musume runs are actually viewable, and they have a dynamic announcer that narrates the race. There’s also just enough randomness in the game that the outcome of a race feels unpredictable. I have had moments where I was sure my uma musume was going to lose, only for her Perks to kick in at the last minute, giving her a last minute edge. It’s popularity on Twitch has led to Ludwig (from video games) organizing a tournament with streamers like Northernlion to race their best uma musume against each other.
The fandom that has cropped up around this game is also pretty entertaining, especially once you dig into the inherent silliness of the premise. Most recently, players have learned that fan favorite uma musume Gold Ship is based on an actual extremely violent race horse. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get my husband into this game, but I enjoy the facial expression he makes when I explain it to him over dinner, and then politely listen as he talks to me about the status of the Dodgers’ various pitchers.
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