Horses Online

The only gaming I managed last night was patching Pirates of the Burning Sea. I’ll have time to log in tonight I hope.

So I’ve been checking out gaming for my kids, as my daughter begins to seem more interested in playing computer games. (My boy ? Pfffft. Hot Wheels and Playhouse Disney FTW !) She is a horse fanatic, so I’ve been dabbling in the pony possibilities out there and hit a few interesting things.

I got this one off of a Google mail ad. Howrse is apparently all about raising a horse. Not just the raising of it, but also training it, getting it to run races, and also running your own breeding farm and employing others to keep it going.

It works by limiting time spent in a particular day; as the real life days pass, you get another “Howrse-day” to play through the game; each day is two months of game time. I haven’t yet shown my daughter - will she like it ? Not sure, but it’s the closest thing I got to a horse game.

We got her Bella Sara cards for Christmas, and she likes that. I misunderstood what it was - I’m thinking it’s a collectible card game ala Magic and Yu Gi Oh. But the Bella Sara cards don’t have a serious game involved, they are mostly used for collecting something that actually exists in meatspace, along with the code #’s printed on each one.

All you have to do is go to the website, put in the code, and you can care for your virtual horse online. Check out the three bars they have to manage. She has a whole stable of these things, complete with cutsey music and “positive messages”.

Webkinz, which I tried to get her interested in, requires purchasing a $15 stuffed horse and she just didn’t want another horse. “Can I buy more Bella Sara cards instead ?”

It’s an interesting world out there for my kids, with the games they put out for them to enjoy, and it’s *very* strange being a little girl’s dad and trying out these things.