HORSES

About HORSES

HORSES was made by Santa Ragione, the Italian studio behind Saturnalia and Mediterranea Inferno, with the filmmaker Andrea Lucco Borlera, who brought them the idea and drew on surrealist cinema and his own childhood fear of horses on his grandfather's farm. GOG presents it as part of the studio's Italian horror trilogy. It came out for Windows on 2 December 2025 on GOG and itch.io. Steam refused it during development and the Epic Games Store pulled it a day before launch; the studio says the game criticises violence and abuse rather than promoting it, and it is rated PEGI 18 and ESRB M.

You play Anselmo, a young man who takes a break from college to help out on a remote farm for the summer. The air is warm, the people are plain-spoken, and each morning there is a list of chores. The farm's horses are people in horse masks, kept and worked as animals, and the farmer has rules for how you treat them. Each day the work grows a little stranger, and the store page promises consequences for not heeding the farmer's warnings.

It plays in first person, in black and white, carrying two tools at a time from task to task: watering, feeding, cleaning, and evening activities. Between days, live-action film sequences and silent-film intertitles tell the story. Nudity is pixelated by the makers themselves. Critics found it less extreme than the store bans suggested and praised its filmic style while questioning its story; reviews were mixed to positive, and Metacritic lists it at 73.

It suits adults who want an unsettling, art-house horror about cruelty and going along with it, closer to a short film than to a game of chases and scares. Read the content notes first: it depicts sexual violence, abuse and dehumanisation.

How to play HORSES

1. Buy HORSES on GOG or itch.io and install it on Windows.
2. Each morning, read the day's list of tasks at the farmhouse.
3. Walk the farm in first person, picking up the tools a task needs; you can carry two at a time.
4. Follow, or choose not to follow, the farmer's rules as you finish each task.
5. Watch the film sequences between days as the fourteen days unfold.

Tips

• Read the task list and the intertitles carefully: they tell you what the farmer expects.
• Expect a slow, deliberate pace; the dread builds from day to day rather than from sudden scares.
• If motion blur bothers you, the game's first update lets you switch it off.
• The content warning on the store page also lists chewing and swallowing sounds, so play with the volume where you can turn it down if those bother you.

Questions