Horse Race Casino Games

You don’t need to head to the racetrack to take in a horse race – you need only hit up your favourite online casino. It’s likely to be stocked with one or more horse racing simulators, like Horse Race for example. Admittedly, this game which you can play for free isn’t going to win any prizes on the naming front, or on any other front for that matter, but at least it’s upfront about what you can expect. You’re getting a virtual race and that’s that. When the game loads, you’ll be confronted with a splash screen containing a composite graphic of a jockey on a horse and then a close up of two horses’ heads, a white and a brown, with the latter wearing a hood.

Beneath this composite image, you’re alerted to three features which come with this game: Forecast, Reverse Forecast and Tricast. Beneath this, there’s the option of selecting your game style by clicking on one of the coloured boxes. Choose from Easy, Soft, Smooth, Smart and Hard. By default, the race is set to Smart, marked in orange, and accompanied by a descriptor which reads “Ready to switch the gear! Get your heart beat faster! Feel the excitement of the race and win the long-awaited reward!” What does any of this gibberish mean?

Horses for Courses

Let’s take a moment to talk about the graphics of this game. Or rather the lack of graphics. Horse Race is an awful, awful looking game from a developer who specialise in making awful looking games. Graphics aren’t the be all and end all, but they are kind of a big deal. The most egregious example of the graphical style deployed in Horse Race comes after you’ve clicked through to the main board and are confronted by cyan text asking you to set your bet. This typeface has no connection with the text that appears anywhere else in this game and looks horribly out of place. It’s certainly not the only crime against design you’ll come across before you’re done with this game.

When the game loads, you’ll discover that you’re not about to watch a bunch of horses streak around a racetrack in high definition complete with life-like audio and animations. Gosh no. There’s none of that to be had here. Instead, you’ll find a basic board that’s been divided in two. On the left is the names of the horses that are in the race and where they’ve finished. These are imaginatively named Horse Name A, Horse Name B and so on. To the right is your betting slip. And above all this there are five chips which you click on to control your bet per game. The value of these chips is 10, 20, 40, 50 and 100. If you choose to go with the game’s standard betting options then you win if your horse finished first and you’ve selected WIN. If you’ve selected PLACE then you’ve essentially placed an each way bet, and will be rewarded if your horse finishes first, second or third.

Forecasting Your Fortune

Horse Race lets you place multiple betting combinations per game. So, for instance, if you’d like to place both a WIN and a PLACE bet simultaneously then you can do so. The game also offers some advanced bet types, the very same types first mentioned on the splash screen. The first of these, Forecast, obliges you to pick two horses to come first and second in that exact order. Reverse Forecast is exactly the same, except it doesn’t matter which order your two horses finish in so long as they’re first and second.

Finally, you’ve got Tricast which makes your job even harder by obliging you to predict which horses will come first, second and third in the order you’ve specified. Combination is the same as Tricast except your horses can finish in any order. There are basic playing tips to be found in Horse Race and there’s also the ability to view your playing history for the past five games.

A Good Bet?

It’s hard to see the appeal of Horse Race whatsoever. The fact that the game loads in the Chrome browser and also works on iPhone and Android devices is a positive. And the idea of creating a simple horse-racing game is perfectly fine. Beyond that though, this game has nothing to recommend about it. Do you even get to see any horse racing? It doesn’t look like it but it’s hard to tell because half the buttons don’t work or have been blanked out for reasons that aren’t evident. Bad typography, bad animations and bad everything else mean that Horse Race really isn’t worth your precious time.