Pretty Derby’? Viral Horse Girl Gacha, Explained

Just a few days after release, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is going viral— inspiring livestreams, memes and TikTok edits—the bizarre anime girl racing game is proving immensely popular online.

What Is ‘Umamusume: Pretty Derby’?

First released in 2021 as a mobile game for iOS and Android, Umamusume is a racing simulator and a gacha game, featuring anime “Horse Girls” with horse ears and tails, sprinting around a racing track.

Umamusume’s Horse Girls aren’t the equine enthusiasts of our world, but animal-human hybrids. Sort of.

In the world of Umamusume, Horse Girls are reincarnated racehorses from Earth, birthed in human form, but gifted with superhuman speed and stamina. For whatever reason, all are female—even famous stallions are reborn as cute anime girls.

For those interested in delving deeper into the lore, the game also has a multiple-season anime adaptation that, from the clips posted online, actually looks fairly thrilling.

One user review on Steam succinctly summarized the strange world of Umamusume, writing: “The most terrifying thing about the Umamusume universe is that real horses don’t actually exist.”

After launching on Steam on June 24, Umamusume suddenly exploded in popularity, introducing gamers to the ins and outs of horse racing—cute anime girls, it seems, are the key to success, in any field.

At the time of writing, Umamusume: Pretty Derby has more than 5,600 user reviews on Steam, with an “overwhelmingly positive” score of 95%.

Following livestreams on YouTube and Twitch from popular streamers Ludwig and Northernlion, Umamusume shot up to 28,784 players on Steam.

Gamers are finding the thrill of racing highly addictive, and are posting memes and adrenaline-infused TikTok edits to convey the emotional highs and lows of watching their favorite Horse Girls sprint to the finish.

Notably, the game is a management simulator, and players do not actually control their Horse Girls, only train them. For many players, this makes the game all the more addictive, essentially placing the player on the sidelines, as just another spectator.

Many commentators have criticized Umamusume for being another gacha game, adding to the microtransaction-addled landscape of modern gaming.

What Is A Gacha Game?

Gacha games are free-to-play games that make money through microtransactions, drawing players in with engaging gameplay, but ensuring that most players will eventually want to spend virtual currency to acquire new characters or items.

In gacha games, paid items and characters are distributed randomly, like loot boxes, and have been compared to gambling, as the random rewards can fuel addictive behavior and spending.

Obviously, horse racing is already known as a gambler’s pursuit, but Umamusume’s merging of horse racing, gacha gaming, and adorable anime girls seems to have created an addictive supernova.

Gamers with poor impulse control might want to skip this one, but fans seem to have happily embraced the bizarre blend.

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