March 2026 Blog: Equestrian Festival

Equestrian Festival

By Ella (Narrative Designer)

Hey there, Starfam! Getting sick of me yet? Too bad, so sad, I’m back! I have thawed out from the Winter Festival, so with spring around the corner and a blog post from the local narrative designer, that can only mean one thing. It’s festival time, baby!

I am, of course, talking about the Equestrian Festival! During our pre-production phase (a two-week period where we sit down, plan, scope, brainstorm, all that fun stuff) back in long-gone January, we started discussing the equestrian theme. So far, the Equestrian Festival has been themed around fancy and English riding. BUT, looking at the definition of Equestrian: “of, relating to, or featuring horseback riding”, it should be inclusive of more than just English riding.

To begin with, we needed to open up the theme to the possibility of including more than just English riding in the future, so for this year's festival, we were not able to add other riding disciplines. So, what does “opening up the theme” mean?

It means pushing our current boundaries. Creating only “elite English riding” content becomes a bit repetitive after a while. We wanted to expand the Equestrian Festival into a horse-centric event, celebrating the bond between riders and horses, and anything horse-themed. So we started looking at similar real-life “festivals” and shows, namely the Sweden International Horse Show. SIHS is one of the world’s biggest equestrian events, so why not take some inspiration to bring to one of Jorvik’s biggest equestrian events?

Something all of us designers were quite charmed by was the amount of silly found at SIHS. Hobby horsing, fun shows, and Shetland Steeplechase, to name a few. So why shouldn’t the Equestrian Festival have something silly? Luckily for us, quite a few silly people work here at SSE, and they have had quite a few silly passion projects. Projects we work on for fun, with the hopes that it will one day make it into the game. So when a horse mascot and a bouncy horse were available to us, we simply could not say no.

This is how we ended up with McHorse! And that is all I’ll say on the matter. I’ll leave it to them to tell you all about it when the festival begins. Or, to be fair, I guess the two designers we caught and put in front of a mic with the instruction “okay, scream as if you’re stuck in a horse suit” will tell you all about it.

But adapting to life in a horse suit isn’t the easiest feat, and running a festival while stuck in a horse suit is even more difficult! So there’ll be plenty of things to assist them with, may that be making sure all the activities work as intended or working on the teamwork between McHorseFace and his near and dear rear.

Now, bouncy horses. Did direction ask us to give the festival more spring? Or are we just very passionate about silly stuff? I guess we'll never know. But if we’d happen to be very passionate about silly stuff, and if we’d happen to have directors that are very passionate about silly stuff, we may just cram in even more silly things.

For long, there has been a certain Dark Rider shaped cloud looming over the Equestrian Festival, a story many veteran players have played over and over again each year. But with the reframing of the festival mixed with the general fatigue of this quest, the executive decision to move it out of the Equestrian Festival was made. So this will be the last year Sabine will taunt you at the Equestrian Festival! I shall protect you. She can’t hurt you no more, my sweet flower.

Ahem! Back to the new content!
To Jannica’s delight, we’re adding not one, not two, no— Okay, this got boring quick, we’re adding four new races! So you may delight in sprinting and bouncing through various courses. I even heard we’re getting a blast from a very distant past, some may even say it’s a part of a legacy.

Furthermore, on the “horse-centric” theme, this year's festival comes loaded with a quest quizzing about horses, a quest riding a horse, a quest finding a horse, and that’s not even all… Phew, who put this many horses in my horse game???

Horses? I’m glad you mentioned them! Because on that note, Pizzazzy Pony is begging to show me his moves, so I gotta go. I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen someone bounce, so I’m really excited to see this! Hope to see you all bouncing around the festival grounds alongside McHorse’s shenanigans this spring, byeeee!