My Horse Prince is a mobile Otome game developed by USAYA and released in 2016. It centers on a businesswoman, who can be named by the player but is called Umako by default, who left her job in the city to come to the countryside and find a significant other. She arrives at a ranch in the hopes of finding a prince to date, but is upset to discover that there are no attractive men around; however, she soon comes across Yuuma, a horse with the face of a handsome human boy. Ranch owner Ojisan quickly convinces Umako to become Yuuma's new owner, and she finds herself unable to say no. What follows is a series of increasingly absurd adventures with Yuuma, which are mostly told through clicker minigames, as Ojisan and Umako attempt to train him for an upcoming race against his rival Ryouma.
My Horse Prince contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Of the Dating Sim Visual Novel genre.
- Am I Just a Toy to You?: In one of the minigames, getting a question wrong will cause Yuuma to ask Umako if he’s just her “sugar foal.”
- Anger Born of Worry: Yuuma gets briefly angry at Umako after she gets mugged by a thug in the middle of the city.
- Animals Lack Attributes: Yuuma and Ryouma.
- Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Despite Umako’s initial worries about the finances of maintaining and caring for a horse, she takes ownership of Yuuma with no hesitation, and money never becomes an issue afterwards. Umako could also afford to quit her office-job to come live near a ranch, and where she’s getting her money is never said.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: Ojisan feeds Yuuma on a diet of “carrots” that are only occasionally real, takes him surfing and to rock concerts, and once forced him to get a human job.
- Blank Slate: Umako really has no personality or backstory outside of her desire to find a Prince Charming (or a princely horse.)
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Neither Yuuma or Umako have much personality outside of their attraction to each other, but Yuuma is significantly more brooding. Even just answering a question in a way he doesn’t like will make him depressed enough to lose a large chunk of his energy.
- But Thou Must!: The only time the player has any input in what Umako does is when she’s talking to Yuuma to help him regain his energy during the minigames. The rest of the time, the game determines what she does when another character asks her a question.
- Cool Horse: Yuuma, of course.
- Didn't Think This Through: In episode 13, after finding an abandoned cabin following her fight with Yuuma, Umako decides to make a fire using her phone as the kindling.* Once it's on fire, only then does she realize that she can't call for help, forcing Yuuma to run through the snow to save her.
- Eastern Zodiac: Umako sees normal horses as handsome boys because she was born in the year of the horse.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles: The game has sparkles, glitter, and bright colors everywhere. Yuuma also sparkles before he greets Umako.
- Evil Counterpart: Ryouma to Yuuma. They're both horses with attractive human faces, but Ryouma is mean and a sore loser.
- Force Feeding: In episode 2, Yuuma makes miso soup for breakfast, then forcibly feeds Umako green onions until she almost suffocates. It’s played for laughs… kind of.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Completely averted for the Rule of Funny. When the player has to click on a hundred tiny treadmills for Yuuma to run on, he's actually running on and destroying all of those treadmills. When they have to click on hundreds of green onions for miso soup, he's actually running around the kitchen chopping up onions on the floor. Umako occasionally hangs a lampshade on the absurdity of this, but it never takes long for her to accept it as normal and move on.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The main character’s default name is Umako, but players can name her anything they want.
- I Am Not Pretty: During the minigames, Umako sometimes has the option to answer questions about her appearance like this. Sometimes Yuuma likes it, and sometimes he doesn’t.
- Idle Game: All of the mini games are just clicking on objects. Players can let the game run indefinitely, as long as they drop by every so often to ask Yuuma questions to refill his energy bar.
- Interspecies Romance: Yuuma and Umako.
- Invincible Hero: When Yuuma is fighting or racing someone, he always wins. There actually isn't any way to lose the mini games—if his energy drops down to zero, the only consequence is earning fewer points per tap, so the progress bar keeps increasing anyway (albeit at a much slower rate.)
- Lampshade Hanging: Umako regularly acknowledges the absurdity of the game, though being Umako, she quickly forgets about whatever insane thing she was just thinking about and accepts it as fact immediately.
- Limited Animation: Characters all have a limited number of sprites.
- Limited Wardrobe: From what the player can see, Umako’s wardrobe remains the same every day regardless of what situation she’s in. She even wears regular office attire while riding Yuuma during a race.
- Little Bit Beastly: Yuuma’s entire body is equestrian, but his actual face is just a normal male face with two horse-like ears on top.
- Love Interests: Umako and Yuuma.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Completely averted. Umako sees Yuuma and Ryouma as attractive men with horse bodies, but other horses are just regular horses. It's said that only Umako and "girls born in the year of the horse" have this ability, but everyone else in society just treats Yuuma's presence on the subway and in the city as normal. Basically, the magic changes all the time according to the Rule of Funny.
- Mars Needs Women: Yuuma is a horse, but he has a lot more interest in Umako than he does in other horses.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: Sometimes. Yuuma tends to prefer it when Umako answers his questions in ways that make her seem weak and needy. In the chapter "Street Corner Cavalletti," being headstrong will earn the player a sad face and an energy decrease, while meekly saying "sorry!" and asking Yuuma to fight the bad guy will get them a happy face and an "Excellent!" reaction.
- Only Six Faces: Four, really: Umako, Yuuma, Ryouma, and Ojisan. Nearly all of the other characters are just recolors of Ojisan’s sprite (which is explained in-game by saying that Ojisan just happens to be related to them all.)
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Yuuma and Ryouma are both horse-man hybrids, with the key differences being that 1. Only “girls born in the year of the horse” can see the man part, and 2. the man part is just the head, and they both still have horse bodies.
- Parody Names: The original Japanese title is Uma no Prince-sama, which is a pun on Uta No Prince-sama.
- Partially Civilized Animal: Yuuma is a horse who participates in equestrian sports and is owned by human beings. Yet he manages to hold a job and constantly take part in human activities… somehow.
- Playing Hard to Get: Answering questions this way sometimes nets the player a positive reaction and energy increase. Other times, Yuuma will act sad and decrease in energy.
- Pink Means Feminine: Umako's outfit has a pink sweater, and the entire game is drenched in shades of fluorescent pink and neon magenta.
- Pony Tale: One part this, one part Dating Sim.
- Prince Charming: Umako came to the ranch looking for this (under the impression that she’d find a prince easily, because princes ride horses.) She wound up finding Yuuma instead, who is a horse-man whose racing name is “Prince of Love.”
- Property of Love: Literally. Yuuma is an actual horse that Umako owns.
- Rearing Horse: Yuuma does this in the first chapter… only to run over to Umako and ask her to be his new owner.
- Sapient Steed: Yuuma.
- Shrinking Violet: Yuuma tends to prefer it when Umako answers questions in a way that makes her look like this. Choosing the option that makes Umako sound like she has low self-esteem, is embarrassed by Yuuma’s advances, or needs to be saved will usually get the player a “Good!” or “Excellent!” reaction.
- Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying: Yuuma gets a job as a construction worker, goes surfing, sings music on stage, and apparently lives off of a combination of (fake?) carrots and human food (like miso soup.)
- Stronger Than They Look: Yuuma and Ryouma look like regular horses from the neck down, but they're able to throw, catch, and crush boulders.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Yuuma. Sometimes he likes it when Umako is confident, other times he wants her to be helpless and reliant on him. Sometimes he likes it when Umako is tough on him, and other times he wants her to be gentle. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the answers he prefers.
- Too Dumb to Live: Umako, why, just why in the Sam Hill did you decide the best fuel for a fire in the cabin would be your damn cell phone?!
- Weight Woe: When Umako has to be Yumma’s jockey, one of the questions he asks during the mini game race is about her weight. One of the responses is to say “I-I’ve only gained a little,” which will cause Yuuma to question her commitment to being his owner, look disappointed, and lose 15% of his energy. (Naturally, Umako herself if
Hollywood Pudgy, and her sprite remains exactly the same whether she claims to have gained or lost weight.) - White Stallion: One of the mini games has Yuuma ask Umako what her favorite type of horse is. Answering with this will get the player an “Excellent!” reaction and a 30% increase in energy.
- You All Look Familiar: Almost every character outside of the main four is a near-exact replica of Ojisan.
