Pony Express

Pony Express is an custom controller game that takes place in the old Wild West. Your "H.O.R.S.E." (Haptic Operated Rider Saddle Experience) is outfitted to respond to inputs like an actual horse! Pull the reins to turn or stop, kick to go, use physical letters to deliver mail, and press the saddle horn to breathe fire!

Wait, what?

As you deliver mail and meet strange NPCs in Pony Express, you'll be rewarded with new horses! Each mount is unique and has its own advantages, from the legless horse to the fire-breathing variety. 

Traveling across the diverse Western landscapes, you'll encounter strange situations. If you solve these world events, you'll be rewarded with fabulous hats!

So slip on your boots, place your cowboy hat, hop on the H.O.R.S.E., and giddy up for adventure!

Itch

Initial prototype

Version 1.0

Although you don't need to play the game using the H.O.R.S.E., everything was designed around it. Our goal for this project was to design and create a game whose main method of control was through an alternative controller. Our initial prototype was an Xbox 360 racing wheel hooked up to actual horse reins. The way it hooked up made hitting the side triggers and turning really easy. We placed it in a custom wooden box we made to hold it and tied it down with 20-pound dumbbells. We ended up using the same saddle and mat the entire process. We ended up making a wooden version of the metal stand from the prototype, and we made it much bigger to feel more like a real horse. A team member sewed the horse head together that just fit over the wooden head we made that basically took the spot of the racing wheel. We added collapsable wheels to the feet to make it easier to move, luckily someone on the team had a truck so it was easier to move around the city than we thought.

But what was Pony Express?

A lot of my work on Pony Express was working on the Itch page, watching the budget, working on the physical controller and working with the single engineer to figure out his tasks and communicate his roadblocks.

We were given $750 in funds to buy things to make this controller, it was my job to create the spreadsheet to keep track of purchases and money for reimbursement. We were able to come in way under our max budget and only spent about $350-400 total. My self and the head producer Cleveland Parker bought wood for the project and built it in the parking lot of our office.

Our single engineer Raynard Christian was basically in charge of blueprinting our entire game plus figuring out how to get the RFID reading on our mail to work. Both Ray and I worked together over the course of 4 months to tackle the roadblocks that poped up, and I think that through overloading our large art team we were able to make good use of the time lost to engineering.

Cleveland and I implemented an art pipeline on Miro that the lead artist was able to easily check and validate the teams progress.
(I lost access to the boards)

Fam Squad Studios
Utah Launch 2025

Doug Bowser playing our game