Hobby Horse is ridiculous in the best way, but underneath the joke there is a fast and genuinely satisfying time-trial racer
Lowkey, I love this one. Hobby horsing is already one of the funniest hobbies real humans have somehow turned into a serious thing, and Hobby Horse fully understands how absurd that looks from the outside. You are not riding a majestic animal. You are running around with a wooden stick between your legs and a plush horse head in front of you, trying to clear obstacle courses like your dignity is not already somewhere behind the starting line.
That premise could have been enough for a cheap joke, but Hobby Horse is better than that. The funny part gets you through the door, then the movement keeps you playing. It is a time-trial racing game where every track is about hitting checkpoints, jumping hurdles, sliding under obstacles, drifting around corners, wall running, grabbing boosts, and shaving seconds off your run until you finally get that better trophy.
Right now, the races are solo time trials only, and that is probably the one mode limitation I kept thinking about while playing. Chasing better times works well, but hopefully multiplayer comes later, because running around these courses against friends while everyone smashes their horse heads into the same obstacle would be hilarious.
The most surprising thing is how good it feels. The sense of speed is excellent, especially once the track starts throwing boost pads and long downhill sections at you. There is a silly exaggeration to the camera and motion that sells the fantasy, but the controls underneath are responsive enough that I quickly stopped laughing at the idea and started caring about cleaner lines.
That is where Hobby Horse clicked for me. You are still watching a person sprint around with a toy horse, which never stops being funny, but there is a proper skill game under it. Jumps need timing. Slides need commitment. Drifts are not just there for style, they help you stay fast through corners. Wall running can save a run if you hit it right, and a clean obstacle chain can return valuable seconds to your time.
There is a simple but effective trophy structure across the courses. Finishing is one thing, but getting gold means actually learning the track. I like that because it gives the game a clear loop. Run the course, mess up, restart, figure out where you lost time, then push harder. It has that same compact retry energy that makes good time-attack games easy to play for ten minutes and hard to put down for an hour.
Not every track lands perfectly. Some courses have an almost insane density of obstacles stacked one after another, and in those moments the game can feel like it expects you to become a true MLG hobby horse legend out of nowhere. You either lock in and thread every jump, slide, turn, and wall run perfectly, or you bash your horse head into everything in sight and try to laugh it off. Thankfully, even the messy failures are funny because the whole visual idea is so inherently stupid.
The better tracks are genuinely awesome though. When the course gives you room to build momentum, read the next obstacle, and react with precision, Hobby Horse feels fantastic. It is challenging without losing its casual charm, and that balance is not easy. It asks for timing and practice, but it never becomes so serious that the absurdity disappears.
Progression is mostly about unlocking new customization options, and there is a lot more of it than I expected. You can tweak your rider, decorate your room, and customize the hobby horse itself with different heads, hair, sticks, eyes, colors, and accessories. Some of the options are hilarious. The JoJo-style eyes in particular make your plush horse look like it is about to deliver a dramatic monologue before smashing face-first into a hurdle.
The room customization is a nice extra touch too. It gives the trophies somewhere to live and makes the whole thing feel more personal between runs. There is also a track editor, and that might end up being one of the most important parts of the game once more people discover it. The built-in courses already show how demanding these obstacle layouts can get, so I can only imagine what the community will do with Steam Workshop support.
Visually, it looks great. It is colorful, clean, and readable, which matters because you need to understand what is coming at speed. The game knows its tone too. It is goofy, but it is not ugly or lazy, and the animation sells both the speed and the comedy of what you are doing.
It also has these very Gen Z-coded speech bubbles and little text moments popping up with stuff like "L-aura" and similar nonsense, and honestly, they fit. They are dumb in the exact way this game needs them to be. I can see that style annoying some people, but for me it adds to the whole absurd, self-aware vibe instead of feeling forced.
On ROG Xbox Ally X, Hobby Horse ran well. I was usually hovering around 45 fps, and while that is not a locked 60, it never felt sluggish to play. Input response stayed strong, the controller layout felt natural, and the handheld form factor suits the game nicely.
Hobby Horse is far better than it had any right to be. It captures the absurdity of the hobby completely, but it also builds a proper racing and obstacle-course game around it. Some tracks can get a little too packed with obstacles, and the challenge occasionally spikes in chaotic ways, but the speed, controls, customization, and personality carry it hard. It is silly, responsive, oddly satisfying, and absolutely worth checking out if you want something different on PC. Thanks for reading!
