Uma Musume: Pretty Derby

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby turns famous racehorses of the past into anime girls with their own personalities, whom the player trains over weeks of in-game time to bring them to the top of Japan's horse racing calendar. The game combines a training simulation - scheduling stamina, speed, power and intelligence, planning rest periods and special events tied to a particular character's story - with a racing portion, where results play out semi-automatically based on the set strategy and chosen starting position in the field. Controls are simple, taps and swipes through menus, so the game's core lies more in careful planning and reading each heroine's constructed story than in fast reflexes.

Cygames released the title in Japan in 2021, and it quickly became one of the most profitable gacha titles in the country, thanks in part to a license for real legendary racehorses and the extraordinary care put into the music, animation and emotionally charged stories of individual characters. International players waited a long time for the global English version, which arrived with a significant delay after the Japanese launch, so many fans knew the game for years only through imports, community patches or fan translations. Monetization relies on a gacha system for characters, support cards and costumes, which typically requires a lot of time or money to assemble a competitive team.

Why play it: Appreciated by fans of gacha simulators and the horse racing setting who are willing to invest time in long-term training and accept gacha monetization as a natural part of the game.