After dodging gacha games for years over various reasons, Umamusume: Pretty Derby managed to pull me into the gacha experience. The critically acclaimed game enjoyed tons of fanfare even before its global launch this year, back in Japan, in the form of three seasons of an anime, a few manga, and a mobile game.
That fanfare and popularity suddenly skyrocketed after the game launched on Steam and mobile phones, and everyone on the internet started talking about the horses-turned-idol girls. People happily started sharing memes, personal builds, and overall experience of playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby.
Much like everyone else, I decided to download the game and give it a whirl, not expecting to sink a lot of unhealthy amounts of time into it. Sadly, I cannot lie, and I am pretty much addicted to training the trainees I managed to get from the occasional free pulls, all thanks to the general gameplay loop of the game.
What Is This Umamusume: Pretty Derby You Keep Talking About
Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a management gacha game made by the Japanese game developers Cygames. Chances are that you might’ve heard about them, as they are the brains behind the hit game Granblue Fantasy.
Pretty Derby takes place in a world where real-world race horses from Japan reincarnate into horse-ear anime girl idols. Each of these girls in their previous life couldn’t manage to fulfill their dreams, and in this world, they aim to do that by winning their dream races.
That is where you, the trainer, come in. You take responsibility of training the horse girl under your care, training them to the best of their ability using various skill-cards, fulfilling their goals, improving their stats, and ensuring they win their races. As a bonus, winning the race lets you watch your trainee perform in these beautifully 3D-rendered idol concerts, which are a delight to watch.
What sells the game is the fact that every horse-girl featured in the game has a real-life counterpart with some rather sad backstory. For example, Silence Suzuka, Special Week, and Rice Shower had some particularly bad experiences in real life, which I won’t go into too much detail about. Hence, average players start to care and connect with the characters in-game, resulting in their newfound fanfare.
The latter section of the game also lets you participate in PvP races around the world against other players, and even form clubs with your friends. Ultimately, your goal is to create a strong roster of horse-girls who can win races. So you keep repeating this entire process, do some gacha pulls in the hopes of getting new training cards and trainees, and keep repeating this process until you build a strong team.
It is quite different from most gacha games out there because of its replayability factor and how the general gameplay loop always stays similar. That is where the game managed to pull me into the rabbit hole, resulting in hours and hours of gameplay.
The Overall Gameplay Loop Is Addictive
If I have to explain it to someone, how the general gameplay of Umamusume: Pretty Derby is like, it vividly reminds me of the management mini-games from SEGA’s Like a Dragon games, such as Yakuza 0 or Yakuza: Kiwami 2.
In those games, you are tasked to run a Cabaret Club (in the case of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2), and run a real-estate business (In the case of Yakuza 0). Cabaret, for example, makes you help dress your cabaret host girl in proper accessories to let them cater to a certain crowd.
Similarly, you choose the right candidate for improving the conditions of a business or building in the real-estate management game of Yakuza 0, leading to you making passive income. These mini-games were highly replayable and easily made me clock in more than 40 hours of gameplay, and that excludes the additional 20+ hours I managed to put into the base game, respectively.
So, when Umamusume: Pretty Derby followed a similar gameplay loop, it immediately stuck with me as it reminded me of the time when I was managing the cabaret as Goro Majima in Yakuza 0. Both the game and the mini-game, to some extent, shared a similarity – you keep playing them until you get the perfect run, or complete the career mode.
Sitting down to choose the correct stat card before a career, the right parents to gain inspiration abilities mid-late game, and juggling between the right stats to train is nothing short of addictive. Every bit of action I was taking in-game pushed me further to replay the tile. Whether it was an unsuccessful run or a successful career, I kept going for that one extra run, dawning upon me that maybe I am very much into the game.
A Surprise Case of Not Feeling Like Spending
Unlike most gacha games, Umamusume: Pretty Derby doesn’t push FOMO on players, and even if it does, it never feels like it. This game has not once made me feel like whaling (which means spending in-game to earn your desired character), because you never really stop training your trainees. You’ll always have access to them, and always have the potential to keep improving them.
It’s because of this game’s gameplay loop of training your horse-girl to its ultimate potential that the FOMO doesn’t creep up too much. You are actively never playing with any of these characters, but rather increasing their chances of winning races. To that end, you’ll always have someone to train, and that is something highly appreciated.
Most gacha games will always inadvertently give you the urge to whale because the newly introduced character looks cool. However, every horse-girl in Umamusume: Pretty Derby is good in its own way. You’ll never get bored with them, and that is where the uniqueness of the title comes into play.
Soar High, O Pretty Horse-Girl, and Win Your Dream
It is worth mentioning that the global launch of the game is a few years behind in updates, and this is still the early years for the game, resulting in the developer frequently gifting players with rewards to boost their progress. Chances are that down the line, the monetization becomes very much like an average gacha game.
Until it becomes such, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a problem that will stick with me for a while. An addiction that isn’t disrupting my life in major ways, but has made me explore three seasons of an anime in three days, binge-read a whole 160 chapters of manga in four days, and finally made me read up on various racehorses.
I’ve also started receiving targeted ads for the local horse race-course in my city, which hosts races every few often. So who knows, maybe I’ll go and enjoy a horse race one of these days. Good job, Cygames. Good job in making me appreciate horse racing to an extent through Oguri Cap and Tokai Teio.
