A disturbing horror experience you won’t easily forget.
Art has always offered a way to confront the darker corners of society, whether through movies, paintings, or games. Works like David Lynch’s Lost Highway or Half Mermaid’s Immortality leave viewers unsettled, fascinated, and full of questions. Horses, the new horror title from Santa Ragione, follows in that tradition. It puts you in the shoes of a naive farmhand and forces you through increasingly uncomfortable tasks, crafting a morally challenging story that lingers long after you finish. Despite some occasional pacing issues and moments where the game’s direction feels unclear, Horses is an intense first-person nightmare that’s difficult to shake.
Before the game begins, Santa Ragione provides an extensive content warning that outlines its heavy subject matter: disturbing imagery, psychological manipulation, suicide, and actions that may conflict with your personal values. The warning is worth taking seriously. I appreciated the transparency—especially since some moments were difficult to get through myself.
Banned From Major Storefronts
Before launch, Santa Ragione announced that Valve had blocked Horses from releasing on Steam. It remained available on platforms like GOG, itch.io, and Humble, with CD Projekt publicly supporting its release. IGN previously reported on the situation.
After launch, more complications followed. The Epic Games Store—which initially provided IGN’s review key—also reversed course and declined to sell the game. Then the Humble Store briefly removed it as well, before restoring it hours later. It’s been a chaotic rollout.
A Descent Into a Disturbing World
You play as Anselmo, a troubled 20-year-old sent away from college to work on a remote farm for two weeks at his parents’ insistence. The unease begins immediately: the “horses” you encounter are actually naked humans with permanent horse masks. From that moment on, nearly every task—routine farm chores or gruesome veterinary “procedures”—is crafted to challenge your moral boundaries as you’re dragged into the farmer’s twisted fantasies.
The game lasts about three hours, during which I felt both fascinated and deeply unsettled. Horses uses an unusual format: it’s structured like an interactive silent film, with black-and-white visuals, title-card dialogue, and a mix of live-action and 3D-rendered scenes linked by brief first-person interactions. You’re often forced to stare up-close at the farmer’s mouth as he delivers deranged monologues, intercut with real footage of crops, water, and far more disturbing images best left unspoiled.
The minimal sound design heightens the tension—soft ambient noise, the constant flicker of film, and an unrelenting sense of isolation as the days grind on. The unease never lets up, building toward a finale that’s as striking as it is harrowing.
