ROAM: Wild Horse Simulator

I think ROAM has fantastic potential; The horse creator is simple but ticks all the boxes, customizing your herd is fun and it's nice to see and interact with them in the wild. The horse animations are very decent! The model has a good enough "weight" to it. Graphically I like the style a lot, though my PC struggled at the higher settings with lag, the medium option was fine but any lower and the "blur" in the distance was a little hard on my eyes. The world is simple but I still find it pretty and was interested to explore. The models of other animals were very cute too. The gallop sounds are satisfying enough though an option to completely turn off the music would be nice, dragging the slider seemed to only temporarily turn off the music and it would return after a few moments. A separate audio tab in the options would be good. It really does have all the bones to be an amazing little simulator, things I would love to see would be: - A skill tree type system to adjust or advance the horse default jump height/speed/stamina etc. The defaults are good however personally I wish I could jump just a little higher, and reach another level of speed that might be a bit more unrealistic but would be fun for Roaming. Making it an optional skill point in a menu as to not take over the defaults would be cool. Perhaps finding or collecting certain items could be used for experience points to spend in the tree? - An interaction/action button to interact with objects and other animals or people: for example, picking up and carrying a cowboys hat and running away, holding an apple to eat or to drop and offer to a critter, interacting with other animals and having them sniff or snort back at you or something. Goose Game type shenanigans. - More maps / areas to explore, the provided wild west was very cool, but would like to see forest areas, bigger farmlands, rural town areas, perhaps even different time periods like modern, western, medieval, etc would be amazing. - Improvements to the predators and attack button, the predators did not attack me and I could not line up to kick them or make contact however I tried. - Mud puddles that leave hoof prints for a time after you walk through them and splash effects, as well as the optional ability to get dusty/dirty/paint from the environment and then "wash" off in the river, for comparison "Dog's Life" for PS2 had this feature. Random details that show more of your impact on the world and the worlds impact on your horse. - Maybe a reminder prompt to save as when I quit after playing the first time I did not realize my horse and herd were not saved to the menu and when I started the game back up I had lost them and had to start over. I could go on but as I said this has a lot of potential and I was happy to pay the price to play around in ROAM, I hope more updates come and I'm excited to see any future improvements :) Personally I would even pay small amounts for DLC bundles if they were released in the future with significant and quality improvements and new content. I think if you stick to the goose game / goat simulator type of vibes you’ll do well. ROAM doesn’t go over the top silly though and keeps it simple and kind of relaxing and I think that’s the way to go. Reach out to horse girl gamers for reviews and I think you’ll find you will get a good amount of support.

I think this game has good potential but i do wish the herd could follow you while stopping to rest and eat when you do. Their energy levels and hunger go down super quick and I constantly have to free them and then lead them again to get them to do these actions. I know this Isn't exactly a realistic game, but I feel when you birth a foal they should stay by your side until they age up to a yearling, instead of just wondering off. The animations and customization are super well done though.

Its a game that has potential. Does not lie about what it offers. I guess you can say that you get what you pay for. It feels empty. I'd say that ROAM has a similar idea as Goat Simulator, just a lot less things to do. There are no objectives, or mini challenges, or quests or what ever that keeps the game interesting for me. All you do is run around, literally. The NPC's bug a lot and if you just stand still in town they will walk into you, fall and blame you for it, if they don't get stuck in dummy position. The herd is scattered everywhere and I honestly don't know what to do with them. I gathered them all and took them to touch some grass. And that's literally what they did, they did not eat or drink from the water right next to where we were, they just walked around and let the hunger bar almost go to 0. Even tried breeding which did not go as i expected. All in all, its a decent game if you just want to run around and role-play, but its not a game for me, and it does not feel like a finished product. Might get a recommendation from me in the future, but for now i don't think its worth the time.

I think this game has a lot of potential but it was a bit too limited in mechanics for me, which ultimately led to me refunding it. The idea of playing as the horse with your own herd is something not typically found in horse games, and I hope the devs keep working on it and make small improvements here and there as time goes on.

Cute game that does what it says on the box, but could use some more work. It's fun to be able to free captive horses but the follow mechanics can be buggy.

Overall, this game is a good time. Definitely worth $5! I especially enjoyed getting to create my herd and customize all the horses. It's very fun to mess up the town, and the maze when you get captured is actually quite challenging. I love how the horses can swim! The gameplay is limited, but for $5, it's worth it!

I want to say first and foremost before anything, that I'm very happy to have found this game! I'm a horse girl not an equestrian; I don't give a diddly darn about merely riding the horses and doing little shows, or even games all about taking care of them. Almost no one gets how much a lot of people out there wanna have a game were we can BE the horse and just live our little horsie lives, build our own herd and have a grand old time without the survival mechanics beating us over the head. So this game was like a little gem to me, and priced pretty well with the animation and potential of the game (I mean it takes money to make a good game, let's be real)! The simplistic style of it prepared me to not expect an outrageously good game, but it did surprise me with how open world and light hearted it is. I saw someone posted a review of how this game isn't worth buying even on sale, and I think that was a bit too harsh. Maybe they played it when it didn't have the updates it has now, but I would say this game has a good foundation for something really cool (and I pray to God the wonderful person or persons who are making it continue their good work!). The game isn't perfect but its was released in November of 2024, which to me still seems like a pretty young game. It's a baby learning to walk, we can't expect it to go galloping out of the womb, especially if its a solo dev or small team. Games can be rough to make and upkeep, so its good to acknowledge that at least this game is out for us to experience and patiently wait for quality of life updates! As for quality of life fixes for maybe a future update, I'd love to see two major things which would just make it easier on the eyes. The first is making it so that the camera doesn't get squished between the player horse and the rest of the herd; it jolts and gets real up close and then goes back to normal depending on how low the camera angle is, which was a bit hard to ignore (I don't get motion sickness really but after a while it made me feel a bit icky). Also, the world is very big and full of suprising little details, but the HUD for the player's vitals really kinda gets in the way of that; I'd be completely fine with that gettin' shoved in a corner where its less in the middle of the view-port. Those are my two big requests for quality of life, and the rest I can be patient for and let ya cook!

it's very cute! there isn't a lot to do, mostly just wandering around and mild mischief. i would say it's similar to wolfquest, just as horses instead. overall i think it's worth $5 but i would love to see some updates in the future. i would like improvements on the herd following. it's easy to lose members of your herd just by them getting stuck on the environment or each other. you also have to release them from following so they'll eat and sleep, and those bars have to run out almost completely before they'll do either, which is a little frustrating when they're not synced up so you're standing around waiting on each member of the herd to rest while they're also all slowly wandering further away from you. a button to call all herd members to you at once would be great. i think it would be nice to have some more behaviors for herd members, and temperament options for the custom herd horses. i made my player horse a stallion and made one of my custom herd horses a stallion. it would be interesting to see the other stallion challenge my horse, but i know not everyone would like that so offering a temperament option would be good! having something like a bond meter for herd members would be nice, as well. also, for customization, i wish there were a way to turn off body markings completely, but you kind of just have to match them to the coat to hide them. i would love to see the option to do individual leg markings, different eye colors, and a bald-face head marking! i also wish the foals looked like foals and not just adults that have been scaled down. EDIT: i just remembered, the music is a bit buggy at the moment!

I've been following this game since the first tiktok post lol. It is so cool to see how it has developed especially by a solo dev! Definitely worth $5. You can make some pretty horses, run around a pretty world, and bully some cowboys!

Quite buggy and very poorly optimized. For me, the only/main positive point of the game is how realistic the horse animations are. I can't really say I recommend this even during a sale, the game definitely needs a lot more work.