Is Star Stable a good game?

Star Stable is an online game, based around horses and quests.

What do you do in it?

You start off by designing your character and her horse. Then, you get presented with a story about the island you're going to live on. Afterwards, it's time to start playing. The first few quests are more of a tutorial, so you can get the hang of it.Then, you get the first taste of story quests, but it doesn't last long. Once you reach level 5 after a limited amount of quests, the free content is done and you can only continue with the quests if you buy a membership.

Is it a good game, though?

I've been playing this game since I was about 9. I've found that it does get more boring as you age, but it makes sense since it's mainly designed for children. As the year pass and you mature, it does start seeming like a silly horse game.

What I've discovered, though, is that lately they seem to be very shallow with their updates, as opposed to years ago, when their updates were actually enjoyable.

What happened?

As the company became larger and the game started attracting more users, it seemed to care more about money than the users' experience. Many new users don't have the same experience that old users had. The quests were purposefully made shorter just so that players get bored quicker and buy "star coins" -the in-game currency- for more items or horses.

They update the game every week, on Wednesday. This was fine, back in the day, when everything was new and exciting. But now, the updates are just boring. They give us the same content, over and over. Horses, boring and meaningless quests, or races.

Sometimes, even these updates feel barely put together. For example, the Christmas event that took place in 2019 was pretty poor. The "village" was the same as in 2018, with no new additions or quests.

The players, especially the old ones, have complained a lot about these issues, and Star Stable doesn't seem to take anything into consideration.

Conclusion

Although the graphics got better, the areas have expanded and there's more content to be discovered, the game lost it's essence. Instead of making the game a worthwhile and rewarding, they made it so you can go through all the quests created over the years in no less than about a month or two. Which, if you've bought a lifetime membership, is NOT worth it.

The story quests, the best part of the game, don't seem to be the main focus of the developers, even if they should be. They're released every two months or so, which is not a good strategy for attracting players.

Do I recommend it? Depends. This is my favourite childhood game, but the developers aren't very original at the moment, the updates don't really keep you on your toes, since it's mostly updated horse models or prettied-up areas and anything relatively good in the game costs money to get.

If you want to give it a try, you should. While it is getting worse, the game isn't bad in itself. Who knows? Maybe they'll change their dynamic soon and become enjoyable once again.