Uma Musume Pretty Derby: All YOU need to Know! Full Breakdown

There are like six gachas basically.

Ooh, that's a lot.

That's really interesting because they have paid-only gachas.

So, what they have here is pretty much like two offers.

Like, those are kind of offers basically, because you have one SSR guarantee for temple,

but I cannot

buy it because I have only free crystals.

You need paid crystals, like paid hard currency, of course, which is never going to happen on your account

anyway.

So, they have this here, and it's kind of similar to Hoyo Wars games like Genshin's world chasing the sky.

With the two and a half gamers, the midnight crew, talking UA adverts, and game design too.

Mateish, Felix, Shaku, bringing the insight.

We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight.

colours like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey sick, got your back.

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Click it fast, don't delay.

Uh-huh.

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Hello, hello, hello.

Welcome to another amazing episode.

This is two gamers.

Not two and a half, because half gamer is on a vacation, and I don't think he would be very interested in this

game anyway.

So, my name is Matteo Anchalic,

and we are

your

host.

So, okay, perfect.

And we're talking about Uma Musu where Pretty Derby.

I'm, yeah, I mean,

so I would suggest, I don't suggest, I would say, like, this is gonna be just like a solo episode.

Most probably.

I'm here just for, I'm, yeah, I'm here just for the, for the lols.

No, but honestly, I'm here to actually get a sense of why I should play this game and why Yakubi is so excited about this.

And he actually said yesterday, like, this is the one of the best games he ever played.

So I just wanna know why.

And we go through a lot of stuff, so please buckle up.

Yeah,

just jump on the horse and come with us.

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I didn't see you.

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And thank you very much for joining us for this special episode.

Now let's get back to it.

Thank you.

As Buck Lab said, it's pretty much like we know that this episode will be again one of those episodes that like

all five people.

Yeah, all people

I don't really care to be honest.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

This is just like, hands down, the best roguelide game I ever played.

Period.

Nice.

Like, I don't know.

I don't know if

there's a better one.

I think people are off-putted because of the visual and because, you know, all the Japanese kind of very local.

Everything's pretty much Japanese and they don't really care about even the Western release.

It's pretty much the same, just translated.

So let's be honest.

Yeah, that's fine.

It's okay.

But it keeps its integrity, so that's there.

But yeah, I think and people should should understand that this is not something to be trifled with because this game is one of the biggest games out there and that that's why we're talking about it for those who want to really check i think maybe i can dig it out during the time as matte will be talking about ua zynga specifically small giant already tried to copy this game and where is it where is it now nowhere near that it's nowhere near it was called char champions it was exactly this kind of a gameplay but of course without the waifus so we will talk about that that one.

But yeah, before we jump to the game, big disclaimer: this game doesn't work on emulators at all.

None of my emulators work.

So, this is what?

So, this is actually Google Play Games Beta.

Yes.

I was like, very cool.

We won't be able to record this game

if you see Google Android for PC.

Yeah, this is this is and you know why it doesn't work because of anti-cheat.

Even better.

I mean, it's almost like superstar games.

Yeah, yeah, so that's very that's how it don't work, but fortunately I was able to make it work on this one, so that's great.

But if you're trying to replicate what we usually do, you can't.

So you can play it only on this.

But this is exactly the same version that you play on your phone, right?

Yes, it's connected.

The same

thing.

Seamless.

Yeah, seamless, exactly.

So it's perfect.

So this out of the way, what we're actually going to do, we're going to start building up that argument why you should play this, why this is so good.

And we're gonna start from the really beginning because, as I said, mostly people don't even understand what this is about once they see it because it seems like some random waifu game that's like making so much more money.

Because you always always joked about like horse girls, like what the fuck is that?

Yeah, what does it even mean?

Yeah, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

I know, I know everywhere.

And once you see it, you understand that, like, whoever did this put so much heart and dedication into it.

This, like, you won't believe it.

So, let's go.

As you see, you can't unsee.

Yeah, exactly.

So, let's start with the big numbers.

So, we're talking about those.

Uh, Umamusume was released in 2021, in February, in Japan, and it's one of those typical Japanese big giants that are making 95 plus percent revenue in Japan, which like they're living comfortably in their Japan bubble, and they're completely okay with this.

This is

an exception because there's like four percent South Korea, like I mean, come on, yeah, come on, so that's there.

But yeah, and this was doing like 70 million, 72 million launch month revenue, basically.

In Japan.

Yeah,

in Japan only.

And it's still doing comfortably something like 10 to

like spikes on like 30 million per those are events definitely got just

but yeah 10 million a month like stable so it's it's still there

Yeah, that's there.

Regarding the

downloads, maybe you see that there's some like few numbers missing here but this is the reality that you see here it's not so it's i think it's more than two they officially said it's 2.3 billion actually

that's that's the official what they said not non-sensitive estimate and it's 16 million downloads so let that sink in

If you look actually, if I just sort it here and just pull in the

Western release of all of these apps here, which means like how much is actually grossing in the West, it did during the Friday last week, it did

300k, and now it's going back to something like 100

or something.

I don't really expect, as I feared, that this game will do any good in the West.

It's just that it will be there for the core fans of the franchise that are still like, you know, this is US revenue mostly.

This is

what was the

filter here.

I think something like, yeah, 72% is US revenue.

Yeah,

this is this is not the same thing that happened with the puzzle and dragons that we saw there, the puzzle and dragons zero, which was like 96% Japanese revenue for the new one.

So this is not the case, but still, like, yeah.

I guess one thing is the game's complexity, and the other thing is of putting visual to like a lot of other people that love Japanese.

Visual is a problem, honestly.

I think it's a little bit of a problem because the problem with their specific style is that it's a lot of time, like with anime genre, it's there are different archetypes of women, and this is very close to that, like lowly visual, which is like very young girls.

Usually, if you have

there's like waifu games, like those look like adult women, actually, like you know, some of these ones, this is much younger, which could be really off-putting to some people, but again,

that's what we need to deal with.

That was they decided, and it works in Japan, it works in Japan, yeah, it works there for everybody,

this goes especially as our favorite discussion.

This game has one of the highest revenue per downloads on the planet,

which is something like 120,

but it's still nowhere near to our favorite game, which is Dragon Quest 1,

which I just put here just so though,

which is doing 200 or something.

Yeah,

but look at

way less

on 6 million download.

Those are all your friends.

It's all your friends.

So, this is like a Pokemon Go Dragon Quest version in Japan only.

Just saying.

So, we get it out of the bat.

Okay, so what are we talking about?

Derby Owners Club.

So, there's this game that we first need to talk about in order to continue talking about Ubamusume.

So, there's this game.

You can go on Wiki, check it.

It's called Derby Owners Club released.

That was before Sega was named Sega and was

it maker, just saying.

And how it actually looks, it was arcade machines, of course, because that was there, and it was horse racing.

And if you look at the mechanics and the stuff that's in the game, it's very, very close actually to what Uma Musume is, because you are basically training your horse between the races.

You are also the jockey here, which is a big change that Uma did.

All these other things, like giving it food, you see all those statistics and stuff that we'll see soon.

This is basically the game they took the main idea from.

Yeah, but here, instead of horses, it's actually horse girls.

Here?

Here's actual horse girl.

Not here, but in

Uma Musume.

We'll get to the horses part.

That is even better, to be honest.

Like, I think they've done it even better than actual horses.

I'll show you why.

So, yeah, this goes pretty much on, and I just want to show you the gameplay itself.

Yeah,

very very like similar.

There's the gameplay.

You see that there's the button.

So you can actually press the button and do stuff with it to kind of move the horse or like push it to go faster or not not push it at all.

So there's a little bit of active element.

It's not in Uma Musum.

Uma Musum is completely autoplay.

Idle.

Yeah, which is I think the right choice there for mobile.

Yeah, just saying so whoever's kind of interested, like, yeah, this is the game that they took the main idea from because it's the training roguelide loop that's there.

Moving on.

So, this is the other important part that I wanted to show you.

All the girls are specifically designed to the last detail on actual horses from Japan.

Actual horses.

All of them.

So, here you see the photo of actual jockeys and the horses with their real names.

They were named exactly like this.

Really?

All agreed this is licensed.

Okay.

This is literally licensed.

That's what I wanted to ask.

So they all agreed that they will be part of Umamusume, and if you see the girls and like how they resemble the horses, it's to the last detail.

So for instance, girls with silver hair are usually white horses or part of the horse is white.

Girls with that one string of white, where is it?

Like for instance here,

or you could see it here on Grasswander, because the horse had a string of white on his head.

You see, the clothes are basically the same.

Like, for instance, these yellow things on Ogurika, yeah, it's the same.

So they try to be as authentic as possible.

So all the girls are pretty much based on real horses,

which gives them a lot of, you know,

tribute and pretty much authenticity.

So this is not something like random stuff.

And because we're using actually the

I guess the biggest whore racing game in Japan anyway.

So now you see why it clicks so well in the same setup.

Okay, so let's move to the actual game and talk about more about the design and the mechanics, why this is so good and why like this whole thing kind of works.

So

I think the one of the closest games to this regarding rogue glide setups would be Rogue Legacy.

If you go on Steam and check that one out, because

usually rogue light games start from scratch and then you have some progression move on.

There's a difference between rogue like and rogue light.

Like is the one you really start from scratch and you don't

know no progression is transferred.

Rogue light is like progression is transferred and you build upon it and it gets better and better.

But you don't really see games that utilize their previous runs,

which is happening here.

Because in Rogue Legacy, what's happening, you have a character, you do like whatever it's a

action platformer, he dies, and your other character inherited his traits

as a son or as something.

So, it actually matters what was your previous run, and that's also what's happening here at Umamusume because Umamusume is using the

your previous runs to the limit.

Like, I haven't seen these mechanics.

I haven't seen this kind of gameplay ever in Roguela games.

I really like roguelike games, and I think this is the best of them.

And it doesn't matter if you're off-putted by whatever you see.

If you're a game designer, you should play it, and you should, now that it's translated into English, deconstruct Uma Musume and see how it works.

Because again, I still think it's a matter of time until somebody takes it, simplifies it, reskins it, or pretty much recolors it as it should be.

And we have another Empires and Puzzles doing 20 million a month.

That's what I think will actually happen.

The attempt that was done by Small Giant, I think it was good, but

missing the rifles.

Yeah, yeah, it likes the idea that they went straight against horse racing again, which isn't that popular here in the West because they didn't have the real horses and all these things that Umamusume has.

Probably they should have changed the team also and adjusted to something different.

What's the something different?

It could be RPG.

Like, you know, doesn't doesn't need to be horse racing.

It could be RPG or some kind of whatever.

Like, you can do different things with it.

Dogs racing.

It could be tennis.

I don't know.

It doesn't matter.

But the thing is that you need to adjust it.

You can just take umamusume, take the best parts out of it, and hope that, yeah, this will scale.

Hope for the best.

Yeah, yeah, that doesn't work, unfortunately.

But yeah, the team made a valiant effort anyway.

Yeah, so what's happening here?

Let's play and I'll comment and you'll see how

big and deep this whole thing is.

So we start at the home screen and we go straight to career.

The whole one run works on the premise that we are training our horse girl for three years if we are successful.

So currently there's an event called Uria Finale, which is the main opening of launch event.

It's basically career mode play button.

Like there's no others.

But the thing is that these events have different conditions, which require different things and

so immediately first thing is you select your horse girl and

you see a lot of these stats and everything and what's happening.

It took me a week, literally,

of explanation videos or reading guides online, like to really grasp.

I finished the game, like I finished one playthrough.

I made it to the finals I wanted.

So that's like one of my biggest achievements here because it's just very, very hard to even understand what you're doing.

Once you understand that, it comes very simple, but that's like the...

you know the usual asian game setup that's why it's not working well in the west because they didn't really bother with this part of teaching you that well yeah how to it's too complex and we're talking about it all the time it's too complexity ramps are very very fast so and it's hard it's like hard even if you understand it yeah you see you you see all those stats it's like nope yeah see you later exactly

information overload immediately so what we're gonna do here is we're gonna run a run with sakura bakshin because she's the cookie cutter character currently regarding winning because she's just so easy to play because each of these horse girls basically require a completely different setup and different play style in order for them to be successful.

I'll demonstrate.

So Sakura Bakshin is basically a sprinter.

These girls or these horse girls are divided by their ability to run different distances of tracks.

So you see she's great at sprint, she's worse than mile, she's even worse at medium and long again, she's bad.

If we go to TM Opera, for instance, the current banner character, she's very bad at sprint, but she's very good at long.

So, immediately, okay, so I would need a different play style, different stats, different support cards, different like everything,

which is one of the mechanics that think of it like an elemental system, but on steroids, basically.

So, this is one of the things that assures that each of these ones will require you to use different strategy, even to play through, not only to adjust to the conditions that will be done during the run.

Style that goes the same.

It's pretty much how best positioned they are when they're kind of going into the race.

If they're racing best in front, if they pace chasers, so like they're first are somewhere in the middle, then they chase for the last 200 meters.

Oh, they're late runners or end runners.

Like, again, depends on the horse girl and depends on the style.

Track, there are just two ones, turf and dirt.

Again, this is literally imagine it like tennis.

So you have like US Open and Grand Slam and French Open.

Those are different terrains.

This is exactly the same.

Like Nadal is better in French Open and whatever is better in US Open.

Also, during football, if it's raining, you need different types of boots.

Exactly.

So exactly the same.

And you see how all of these parameters adds a lot more kind of skill cap or complexity into it.

So you need to understand all of this.

Suddenly it becomes very, very hard and complex.

So we're gonna start with Sakura Bakshino.

And then we gonna start to select the parents.

We're gonna include guests, yes.

So, we are going to start to select legacy Uma Musume,

and these are the images of previous runs, actually.

So, all of these that you see here, like for instance, TM Opera here,

this was her kind of a legacy Uma Musumes,

and now she's mine.

And it's like, think of it like a hereditary thing because what happens is- I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, so basically, you see that they are now behind her here somewhere here sure

and what happens is that you literally like it looks like breathing but it's not breathing it's basically inspiration or whatever what happens is that throughout the run there are events when your horse girl gets inspired and she pretty much gets stuff gets those

inspiration from those two and you need to choose the right ones so you conditions

okay

so for instance what it does is that i should put like some of those that are best for her because they are doing something different than her, for instance.

So she inherits something that she never can get in the normal playthrough.

Because again, her parent was graded long, she's graded sprint.

She never will have the possibility to get like good, I don't know, long abilities, but because of the parent, let's just see thing, whatever.

And keep in mind that in order to get these, you need to finish runs.

Those are my finished runs or or my friends finished runs.

Social helper mechanics are super strong in this game, as usual.

That's why I think you love it.

Yeah,

there's no social mechanics.

They're all of them.

Okay, so now that we have this,

then we go into cards.

And

this is even more weird now because

when I

what

this is the main monetization of the game, actually, support cards are the chase cards, not the horse girls.

I was like, what?

Because if we go here into the gacha, like let me let me just first finish this selection and

yeah,

let's see what we got here.

Maybe somebody has silence.

Yeah, okay, this is better because it's fully upgraded.

You see, it's five, like whoever's this, like, this is a whale card basically.

So we need all of the speed cards that we can get.

And

I want to filter now.

We can get one more.

So we can get this one.

You, by the way, cannot get the card of your horse girl.

That's also very interesting because these cards are all the horse girls.

For instance, this is vodka.

If I would be racing with vodka, I cannot get her as a support card.

That's also very, very interesting.

So one more,

one more.

Yeah, let's get.

Dear listeners, this is exactly what.

So what these cards do, they are these attributes, and it's important to stack the right attributes and the right card for your card.

Because we have Sakura Bakshino, she's basically stack speed forever.

So we need speed cards.

If I would have Tiem Opera, the other girl, she would need different cards, basically.

What these cards do, they give her stats and they also give her...

Where we are.

Okay, I think I can show you.

Yeah.

So they give her support effects and they can give her skills that I can then learn and use during my playthrough.

So it's literally, again, like choosing a gacha that will maybe trigger during my playthrough.

But it's confused.

Yeah, it's like, where's the Julia Roberts confused

meme?

Yeah, so what's happening here?

I'm selecting support cards that should hopefully give me the chance to get the thing that I need during my playthrough.

It's all a chance.

Everything's random.

So that's great, but it's like directed random this way.

So we start the career.

Yeah, everything's there.

We're great.

And what's going to happen is that immediately

there's a lot of these.

I think we can skip this one anyway.

Yeah, quick mode settings.

Just because we want to cover as much as possible, I'm going to use the shorten all events.

It's going to be turbo mode.

So everything's going to be as fast as possible.

You can have all the dialogues.

Yeah,

you can play forever.

We're going to do turbo mode.

Just shorten all events.

You'll see how it will now feel.

So there we go.

She got immediately inspired by the legacy Umas and get some stuff from her.

And now the show really starts.

So

there we go.

You see how suddenly everything will be super fast.

So what's happening is now we have to get to actually actually play the game.

This is the actual core.

So finally starts.

It only took us 22 minutes to actually get to the point

where we can actually play the game.

Perfect.

Just strap it.

Okay.

So what happens here is that we have immediate goal.

Running Jr.

make the debut.

So we have all of these,

where are all these races and fans, I think.

Somewhere else like the achievements, I need to find those.

Anyway,

debut race, basically.

So we need to train her as best as possible for the first race.

We have 11 turns, basically 11 days left.

Each of these buttons, except the skills,

consumes a turn.

So we have this energy, which is her energy, like how much stuff she can do during the day.

And she has normal moods.

That's it.

And these are her skills.

You see that they're capped.

They can go to like 1,200.

And currently they are there.

Because I know this is Sakurabakshino, we're going to train speed.

So we need to literally train speed.

So we have 0% failure to train speed once.

Which we

why would you need to train speed when everything else is not even close?

So train the other stuff, no?

What do you mean?

Well, you need to train everything because

the stamina is the worst attribute in here.

So I would love to.

Yeah, so you don't really train all around her.

You train to be exceptional in one step.

Okay.

Okay.

Because

we are playing Sakura Bakshina.

If we were playing different horse girl, she would have different guide and

pretty much set up.

You can also see here in, I think

I need to click here, but basically, yeah, full stats here.

So you see growth rate on those stats.

Her speed grows 20% more than all her other stats.

So it's because we selected that that's that's what we but there will be different things along the way that we'll need to make decisions.

So still we're like 0%.

Again, we'll stack speed.

That's what we're going to do.

Super fast because, again, we swing up, turns are going mad.

Again,

speed again.

How many guides have you read?

Like, during the yeah, okay.

Tell me

to our videos.

Yeah, so we continue.

You see, her energy is getting low.

So, what happens here now?

There's a 24% failure rate.

Actually, for me to fail the whole thing, she can get injured, her mode will get bad, and we would need to

sacrifice a turn in infirmary.

Yeah, so we put it to rest.

Before I do that, you see that there are these icons between the skills.

This is super important.

So it means that if I train some of these things, the support card horse girls are getting more to their friendship.

This is even more important.

Because, for instance, width can be trained kind of universally without

it actually restores energy.

That doesn't come energy and it doesn't have that.

And I really want to do this now because it rolled the roll that if I do this, I will get bonus friendship to all girls.

Why am I getting friendship to these girls and why I'm increasing these stats?

Because

if the stats get high, they're going to give me skills.

The ones that we are chasing after.

So we're going to continue that.

Again, we really need to speed, so we're going to rest her for now.

Yeah, we get the energy back.

Again, sacrifice a turn some kind of events

there we go yeah there's a notification see so there's a notification which means i will get the skill from the support card as a hint

still for you i'm listening yeah yeah yeah let's go

so we did the training there we go and there's the skill lay low so if i want to get the skill now i need to go to skills And there's the skill and I need to pay for it to buy it.

So because you know all the skills that the support cards can give you, you select the good support cards that complement her build, and so on, so forth.

We're still catching up, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, again, we're continuing more and more speed.

Probably it's always good to kind of check if like somebody is like against friendship stacked or whatever, because you want eventually you want to build friendship with all your support cards, and then you pretty much continue.

Yeah, I guess more speed.

She's like very, very easy because some cards, like let's say the Opera that I still haven't managed to win she's very hard to build at least for me as a beginner but Sakura Bakshino is like the beginner's friendly horse girl because you just stack speed that's like eventually

the round that I win with her I got like SS like one thousand something speed it's just like super fast Okay,

one more speed you already see that the speed growth has increased to level two but also notice that other stats are growing as we're training speed also power is growing a little little bit, giving us skill points.

Different of these have different modifiers.

Like,

this is pretty much the core of the game why it's so genius, because you see that every decision matters.

Yeah, it matters.

Like, you remember as we were talking about the skill calculator with or skill randomizer with Wheatle Defender, like how these get learned?

Like, this is like 10 times more complex to kind of choose because there's a random chance on me failing the thing.

There's a random role on the friendship girls appearing within each turn on on different skills.

There's a random chance of me, like, I don't know, doing events or triggering stuff that's behind the scenes and stuff like that.

So, let me finish the speed and then we're gonna do an actual race.

So, yeah, it's a race day.

There we go, we get some more stuff.

And now, before the race, you always go to buy skills.

So, we're gonna buy

something for a sprinter.

sprinting gear when the way ahead is jammed early race

You have the sprinting gear if you scroll down here

yeah yeah slighting gears on straight yeah that's definitely what we want so we're gonna take that one

and now we're gonna go to race

if you don't win now we end up there like immediately the podcast yeah like we just you just yeah we just end there so

you see that

we are now selecting This is also very important because there will be moments when you need to select from different ones.

And you see, these are the ones that are good for her because it's trint and surf.

We get 700 more fans for that.

And that's it.

So let's go.

Yeah, we want to race.

And then

we want to select the right stuff here.

So this is the strategy.

And we can either select pace, front, plate, or end.

See how this is the thing we were talking about, like how she's good with it.

So we're going to leave it at pace.

That's okay.

Her mode is good.

Aptitude, again, pretty good.

Stats are stats, nothing good to it.

The judges call.

So, there's literally a judge's call telling you

how much bets are placed on you that you win.

So, if you see circles, it's great.

If you don't see circles, it's your bet.

You can also check the other runners that are going against you.

Those are still like first rate.

Those are like

the horsebacks,

not the ones that you that I showed you, like name after your horses for sure.

There's like the stats, so let's go.

Once I press it, no control anymore.

What we can do is just speed up the animation, so everything's kind of decided now.

It's by the way, super good.

It's uh see number one favorite with there,

it's super intense by the way.

Like, there's a fully voiced commentary, like you know, NHL or whatever.

People are literally screaming their lungs out as as these are kind of going around the thing you can skip it a little bit if you go with the like skip button but the whole thing takes like nearly five minutes so I'm not gonna bother that so we're at the start

there we go

and you see how it goes and pretty much again we can speed it up to the last 400 meters if you really want

I could speed it even further if you want but just want to show you like how it works.

This is usually the part where skills get triggered.

You would see that.

It's again a chance.

Skills, even though I bought them, it's still a chance that she will even trigger them.

So it's not that, like, again, you are 100% sure.

Yeah.

So because she's so fast, she won very, very easily.

And then we continue.

Great.

We get more fans.

Fans are super important.

I'll get to it later.

Watch concert, actually.

Yeah, that would be a concert, actually.

Because

I hope so.

We will watch the next one.

So, you see, we did our goal.

Run Junior make the debut, and this is basically her goals for the whole career season.

Each horse girls have different goals because different tracks.

Like, you know, if I put a long horse girl or like long distance horsegirl, she won't be put on sprint tracks, like Sakura Bakshino.

Yeah, place first in sprinters, whatever,

different setups.

So imagine that basically

with each horse skill, you're playing kind of a different game, literally, a little bit.

Yeah, okay.

Because you need to adjust to that setup.

So we're moving on.

We have eight turns to our next race, and we need to use them as much as possible.

So there's an event triggered by Vodka, which gave us a skill.

Yeah, that's I know, I know it says the real name of the horse.

It's fine, just funny.

So we're continuing then to stack speed.

That's basically what we do the best.

You need to, you see, replace top five.

It's actually a little bit linear in the beginning, it's like top three, top five, and eventually the later races will be top one until you hit the career and then you go to finals.

Finals are just four races, all you need to be top one.

That's it, basically.

Yeah, we're gonna rest for now because we don't want to really push it.

Maybe I can push it later to show you how it how bad it feels or whatever.

Yeah, vodka is going to be increased here.

Oh, yeah, we still definitely want that.

And we're continuing to increase her speed more and more.

These events, by the way, they are specific for each horse girl that you see there.

There's literally a list of those, and each of these options have different times.

The recommendation that I got, because I don't want to check every single one of them, is always select the top option, which was a safe option.

You can select different ones.

And stuff can go bad.

I mean, really bad.

Like, she can get hurt.

So on and so forth.

You don't want that.

Okay, we're continuing.

Speed still on zero failure.

That's great.

Moving ahead.

More speed.

Yeah, maybe we won't.

Or maybe let's try.

Let's see.

Yeah.

So that is success.

It was a risky move, but still, now it'd be like a message.

I mean, the risky move is a 25% failure.

It's fine.

Man, I had 1% failure.

I literally had 1% failure as she went infirmary.

Broke her leg or something.

Finally, finally happening to you as well.

Oh, you lucky bastard.

Always.

So, you see, now that we have like nearly zero energy, like we would be really pushing our luck if we want to increase the skills.

Like, width is always the least, but it's still not bulletproof.

So, so you go to rest.

If the recreation button, I would press this if her mood would be bad.

So, it means that she would get some disease or whatever, something, something.

That's the thing.

I can also race, by the way, in the meantime.

For instance, there are these races that are there to get get fans because at some point there are criteria that like you know entry criteria meet but sometimes it's like get 10 000 fans if you don't have those you lose basically the whole progress you need to just accumulate those from winning those races so we're gonna rest a little bit more

and then train again speed because we are just following

very easy guys very easy guys yeah like

you see how easy it is but normally i would just go and like check all of these to see like the friendship options, which is the best one for me.

It takes like a lot of time to actually decide what to do.

Are we gonna risk it?

Yeah, let's twice.

There we go.

Six percent, Jesus Christ.

Play play that slot machine a little bit.

Yeah, so we're gonna select some more skills.

Hopefully, we have.

Yeah, there's a legendary one recorder.

So we really need to use it.

Maybe, okay, let's save for that one for later.

So we're continuing here and see,

you can only compete in a goal race.

These would be the other races I showed you for the fans.

So we're gonna go to G2.

It's actually the

one of the main tracks there.

And yeah, I think the competition is gonna be a little bit bigger now.

I would guess so.

Or not.

Doesn't matter.

Yeah, let's go.

What happens if you lose?

So there's multiple options that happens if you lose.

There's the clock consumable,

which can rewind back time and you can race again.

Yeah, and you make different choices, I guess.

No, you don't make different choices.

You already are racing.

Oh, so you only race.

You have another chance.

Then, yeah, okay, the chance.

Okay, fine.

No choice.

Amazing.

So somebody took us on.

That's interesting.

And she's still.

She now she's popping up skills.

Let's see how this will go.

But yeah, if you lose.

She's third.

She's third.

I know.

She's getting getting there.

This is worse now, fourth, fifth, fifth.

Yeah, it's even worse probably.

Oi

fifty.

You need to finish fifth.

Yeah, which is fine, I guess.

You see how there we go.

Oh, nice, okay.

Strong finish.

Now it's better.

But it's gonna be second.

But you see how engaging it's just to watch.

Yeah, of course, 100%.

It's like because the chance mechanic is taken to the limit, so it's always kind of great.

I think it was because it was raining or something so she didn't didn't done that well she's so many excuses yeah

so if you lose you can use the clock consumable to run the race again there's one free per day and you can use two more as your consumables and after three times if you all of them lose it's end

so that's there by the way there's the concert mechanic

They also have this.

It's done kind of interesting because in Japan there are a lot of these idle games, which are you pretty much being a manager of a pop group.

How it works here is that there's a concert being played after every race, and the horse girl that wins is the main singer.

And then, from second, third, whatever plays are like accompanying her in the

playthrough.

So, let's keep that.

And then,

what we're gonna do again, get some more goals,

and then again, we need to run

in string S

I think that's even like participation race,

and we lost Mate.

It was so overwhelming, then it just disconnected me.

Don't worry, I waited.

It's fine, it's okay, it's okay.

It should continue.

Anyway,

so what happens here is basically stuff continues like this for three years.

Won't finish it all, basically.

But you go, you train, and there's like a little bit more and more different choices.

And at some point, these became very hard to do.

I'm not sure what's happening with the reverse side.

It's pushing me out because of the server issues.

Anyway, continue.

Just continue.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just wanted to show you how it actually looks.

We would need to run this, now we need to run String S, then big top five in our S, yada, yada, yada, yada.

And then you see, like, then comes the hard races with like first place required to even move, and then it would go to finale.

So that's there,

yeah.

You've seen most of the mechanics here, like what's happening.

There's events that even like secret mini-games that can trigger with like crane machines.

There's currently a big quest for it.

Everybody's, yeah, there's lots of interesting stuff that can happen here.

If I would,

let's rest her, if I would max out my friendship with these other horse girls, they would start kind of giving more stats and the skills.

And again, I could flesh this out, so on and so on.

I was expecting you say they start dating.

I think that's mechanically outside the core, but there's also something like this.

I understand.

Anyway, let's get back to the core.

So, for the purposes of this podcast, let's assume we won everything.

Of course.

So, what are you gonna do then next, or what can you do that?

is that

they get here put here as veteran uma musume.

So for instance, this is my Sakura Bakshino

that won the finals champion.

This is how it would end basically.

So see how our speed is so big and everything.

And now you can use it to the rest of the game in these other things and also as a legacy kind of inspiration parent basically.

So if we go here into, let's say, daily races, like this is literally like the daily questing, you would need to take uh yeah we don't really have stream but whatever one won't do good in this

yeah so we go here and again see you're selecting only from the ones that already raced not not the ones so same same exact thing here she would go race without any training and

and yeah the competition gets like quite big you see how it goes and we probably lose horribly because she's not really well suited for mile racer races.

Depends.

At least you see like how it how it looks in like very overcrowded

line.

And uh

yeah,

so

yeah, she's fifth.

Yeah, it's okay.

See how how they are popping up all those skills?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Go with the first one.

Those are all all player player Roma Muslim, not like random ones.

Not bots.

And

Player driven.

So, yeah.

No chance, basically.

No fucking chance.

No fucking chance.

No way.

She's not the mile.

So you do this.

This is like one of the other things that you do instead of just like getting stuff.

But the other thing is there's PvP,

which is

the team trials.

So this is again a collection-driven driver mechanic where you have a team race and you need to select a team of five.

Actually,

and there are events when you need to select three teams of five, so you need a lot of them.

What happens here is that they get

pitched against each other,

and you just see the results.

You can do five of these during the day, but again, it's like not that it's, I think

it's completely okay to play the game even without it, to be honest, but again, just less rewards and less stuff.

So that's there.

Yeah, that's it.

I'm still waiting for the actual motivation why should I play the game?

Because it's so engaging when you need to select those choices.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Let's talk monetization more.

Yes, please.

Yeah, so there are like six gachas basically.

Ooh, that's a lot.

Yeah, that's really interesting because they have paid only gachas.

So what they have here is pretty much like two offers.

Like those are kind of offers basically.

Because you have one SSR guarantee for temple,

but I cannot

I cannot buy it because I have only free crystals.

You need paid crystals, like paid hard currency.

Of course, which is never going to happen on your account.

Anyway, so they have this here and it's kind of of similar to Hoyo Wars games like Genshin or Hello everybody.

Thanks for uh joining this episode.

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Now let's get back to the content.

Bye-bye.

Okay, where you have the

character gachas and the weapon gachas.

Here, actually, it's kind of the same, but the weapons are stronger than characters.

Because without proper support cards, and this is like literally the first rule of like you read online, like don't summon for the horse girls, summon for the cards.

Because without the cards, they're nothing.

So they're just there.

Even though I had luck and on daily free spin, I got the banner character opera.

Yeah, since there.

Everybody is currently waiting for some other girl that's going to be coming next week or when where she's on the banner card and yeah, everybody's crazy about that but they have there there's guarantees

super rare as full which is not super super rare not the highest quality but yeah that's there

and yeah you just collect these and get more and more of these in a way to again suit different needs of those races so even currently let's say we have the aura finale

i cannot show you but basically the event itself has some requirements and the races have some stuff and different girls different horse goals yeah yeah of of course.

Yeah.

Then you have the club mechanic, which is the guild mechanic, basically.

Nothing really to it.

So you want to have as many friends as possible because it's, by the way, very hard to get the best friends.

Because if I would go here, for instance, into the team trials and I would check like who's the top top guys in the team.

For instance, this guy is first.

And I okay, so he's first, so I want to be friends with him.

Why not?

I can be friends with him.

Okay, that's that's

a great thing.

But but I'm guessing the second one won't be that easy.

Yeah, see?

So most of these people, like, it never happened to me I was able to friend the first one, but like, most of these people, you can't because they have already maximum followers because they have upgraded cards and everybody wants to use them.

Yeah, everyone wants them.

Okay.

Not only the cards, also the legacy girls, you can use those.

Oh, yeah, that's why everybody knows guests.

Like, it's like a game of musical chairs.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, so that works perfectly for them as usual.

That's good.

You can upgrade the cards and upgrade the girls to have better limits, not better starting positions.

So if I go here, again, I can level up the support cards, I can uncap them, which basically means absorb copies, which means that they can go higher, give you more stats, typical gacha stuff, basically.

Leveling up yeah, leveling up means they're stronger and whatever.

Or more stats, of course.

If I go to horse girls

trainees, the potential levels basically increase, they unlock different skills that they can get immediately that I can then buy and stuff like that.

But as I said, sport cards are much more important than the thing because, again, you can win the race with like one star horse girls anyway.

Yeah, I saw it.

Okay.

Yeah.

So so it's it's not a problem.

It's just they offer different play styles and it's more also for PvP because in PvP again you need different styles and stuff like that.

There's story.

There's a lot of story actually.

It plays like uh full-fledged anime actually.

So if I go yeah, let's go into something that actually looks like an episode.

Oh by the way always asks you if you want to have it landscape and portrait

because

The main core is usually portrait, but they want to give the races landscape to really feel so that's there.

And you are also asked if you want to download or not download the voiceover, which you definitely want.

Yeah, because it's all Japanese.

Yeah.

And then comes the actual thing, which is

yeah, it like literally is like an anime.

There was on mobile, I think, five gig download.

Yeah, I'm not joking

to get even this thing running.

So similar to like Honkai Star Election Impact, it's like fully fledged anime.

So fully animated everything, it's it's there.

So

they have it there.

By the way, the whole franchise have like five or s three seasons of main anime and like three or four five spin-offs.

Like they have the movie, I think, later last year or somewhere there.

So

yeah, it's it's in Japan it's like a very, very stable franchise.

Yep.

So that's there.

There's the story.

On top of the story, you have event stories and the character stories, which you need to level characters and stuff.

Never ending content.

Yeah, that's so much.

And we haven't even talked about the event stuff.

So currently, there's the Dashing Towards Your Dreams event, which can give you the special week, Horse Girl.

So there's the story that unlocks.

There's the even reward points that you need to play in order to get the where is it?

SSR card.

Here she is.

Thousand, which I have.

Okay.

Then the gacha thing, where she kind of rolls and spins, and does literally, you need to fill in the bingo card.

So that's there.

There's event missions, which are kind of similar to the ones that are the daily missions.

And then there's the where's the main mechanic?

Yeah, the special missions, which is like the normal daily main titles and...

stuff like that.

So, you know, your typical kind of gacha based stuff.

But really, the beauty of it is that how it all kind of complements and fulfills each other.

My previous runs affect my further runs.

My current runs are, again, done by all the cards.

And

if I would really play it as like really, really play it and not speeding it up, I would really reconsider every choice.

Because

I showed you the part where it's kind of easy winning because top five, top three, top something.

But later down.

Top one is different beast.

Yeah, top one is different beast.

So it's done super well.

And as I said, I haven't seen any roguelite on rogue glide game on the market using these mechanics.

So both the person who devised the Derby Owners Club on Sega machines and the one that then mutated to these are both geniuses in my opinion.

Like it's just so smooth and so well kind of told out how all the interactions of the rogue glide mechanics and how random the run is.

And that that's the most interesting part.

It's like so random that you never know what's gonna happen and you really never know.

That's why you sell the clock.

Yeah, that's why you sell the clock also because Sun can cause fallacy like after so much time, like you,

for sure.

So, yeah, I'm still eagerly waiting for somebody from the West to kind of

streamline this.

No, streamline, use this, basically.

Use this.

Think of it as

Golf Clash.

Like, we're waiting basically for the Golf Clash version of it.

It's like, take the meta, take the systems, and put it in a different setup and make millions with it.

This is, by the way, not the first time I was asked by either some of my clients or friends to construct the game for them.

Big clients, big, big names, because they see the revenue, they see the potential of this engine.

Everybody sees the revenue.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I don't think it's going to

increase the revenue that much by

version less.

Yeah, it's just like

nice to have.

Yeah, it's nice to have.

It's nice to have nice for the fans, and that's it.

And the game,

as it is, it's great.

If you are a big fan of this, yeah, you play it.

You speak Japanese.

I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, you're playing the Japanese server anyway.

exactly exactly so so this is not for the fans there's literally 40 40 pages long guide on the web where it's literally translated telling you where you need to click there i saw it because people want to play it okay i know

so why not yeah i know why yeah so final recommendation for everyone that thinks that he tries to do game design and roguelike design specifically go play this.

Doesn't care, don't like it, doesn't care, it doesn't matter.

Go play it and familiarize yourself with the mechanics.

That's the most important part.

Okay, so give me the screen.

It's actually, my part is going to be very quick.

No shit, share lock.

Although, I was pretty surprised.

Like, they're actually running a lot of channels.

And most surprisingly, it's majority of it's like it's kind of TikTok, which is nice.

But again, I mean,

what else

would you

than the trailer, yeah,

to kind of see in here?

I mean,

just a trailer on TikTok, that doesn't matter.

15-second video, it's fine.

I mean, there you go,

same thing here, just a different cut.

I just,

I mean, the music, I love it, I really love it.

When I play the video, I was was like, the Japanese that, oh my god, it's amazing.

It's good.

I'm not sure, like, how is this going to kind of go in?

Okay, these are all the same things.

But there are

some interesting things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The voiceovers and music in Japanese, it's perfect.

It looks completely different.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Even like after my recent visit in Tokyo, I was like, ah, I can see why this is working.

I actually actually kinda like kinda like it.

We don't really we are not gonna really see many different creatives and videos.

And I don't think like this is gonna be very much like a

by the way, check Japanese ones.

Like if they're different

for sure.

I can just go to

Japan here.

Oh, there you are running some Twitter stuff.

Oh, there you go.

Completely different setups.

Yeah, but it's like 66 second videos, but still, yeah, completely setup.

So

the thing with gacha games and their creatives, I mean, the big gacha games, is that they change their creatives based on the banner characters.

Sure, yeah, I know.

That's very important for them.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, they want everybody to just get those.

It's like it's only four pages of the creatives, it's not as

the same thing all over again.

That's basically the new banner character.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is what we saw already in the US or like the Latin America

English versions.

It's not as as big of a difference.

Here?

See?

See what she's wearing?

Dress.

No.

Look closer.

It's wedding dress.

Wedding dress.

Yeah, oh, sorry, okay.

I'm sorry.

Of course, it's very I mean, sure.

That's what I want to say when I said dress because it's still playing WIFO game.

Yeah, but I see I didn't think that matters that much.

Yeah, of course it matters.

Okay, okay, okay, fair enough.

Fair enough.

Okay, fine.

So let's actually go.

They have all the different networks, even in Japan, but let's just go all networks.

And I would love to see up Loving here.

But it's just

banners, nothing else.

I mean, I don't think they care about the UA that much.

The thing is, and yeah, you won't be able to see it here, but the thing is that in Japan, there's a shitload of offline marketing

metro station buses on the streets everywhere.

You can't escape mobile games in Japan, like yes, in the real world.

Especially the train station as well, everywhere.

Yeah.

I see.

And piano music.

Comics in Japan.

I'm sorry.

It it doesn't matter for me.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

I I'm very ignorant.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm sorry.

I didn't want to offend anyone.

I didn't want to offend anyone.

Okay, yeah, I mean, like, that's pretty much it, man.

Yeah.

I don't think.

I have the final thing.

For those that

went to Facebook this far,

yeah, I mean, congratulations to you.

You have won the prize for the best fucking fan of the whole

century.

Yeah.

Okay, let's see.

I mean, they are running something, but it's like, do you want to bet like this is gonna end like the spending, like, like within a couple of months?

Well, no, it's not gonna end, it's gonna be you know up and down based on gacha cycles.

Okay, so you're okay,

and and this is normal behavior for these games, like they go in big spikes because everybody rolls the gacha and then they wait for the next one, and then another spike comes in.

Like, every gacha came out.

Retargeting

by revenue or downloads, you mean downloads?

I mean, like, in terms of the UA, no, I didn't mean like spike.

Revenue will spike.

Yeah, I didn't mean like the game is going to end, like, the UA and overall, like, spending and advertising is going to end, especially online.

I guess it's going to be boosted during a new gadget cycle or something.

Or new events, yeah.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, I guess it's

on scale.

That's even how it works originally in Japan.

Of course.

Just the same

music all over again.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay,

I mean, it's kind of nice, but like four videos again,

thank you very much.

Yeah,

but at least they're trying different things rather than just Facebook only, which is nice.

Okay, that's that's pretty much it.

Yeah, but let me let me do the

so this is the game called Shark Champions.

Yeah, how can you even compare it like this?

Yeah, now you can understand what I understood last time.

I mean, it's exactly the same kind of speed things, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, heel, yes, I know, yeah, exactly the same thing, but the horse looks like it's retarded.

I mean,

seriously,

look,

short legs, what the fuck is that?

I know the guy is bigger than the horse, yeah.

I mean, come on, you can't win it, just wait for the race.

Oh, no, please, no.

like as I said the guys like sending regards to my friends in Small John like they put a valiant effort yes

I think it was good effort because they were going the right direction

They're going for the right direction because they are the masters of taking stuff from Japan and adjusting it in the US, but I guess they chew a little bit bigger bite than they are used to

this time.

Translating Puzzles and Dragons to Empires and Puzzles didn't involve waifus.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, which is an integral part of that game.

Yeah, which is integral part of that game, and especially the mechanic.

And you see how much history was put behind Umamusuma with real horses and everything.

This is like Puzzle and Dragons doesn't have that.

A real horse is just put the fucking real horse in this one as well.

I mean, not just like a short-legged horse.

Yeah, we could also have that.

I don't know.

But as I said, for me, whatever, yeah,

what's really important, all of this, and now you can see see it in its full glory because it's tripped to the bare bones, is this system.

Is this system of these train things and like these three menus?

That's the genius of that system on Roguelite Run.

Fully automated, by the way.

So that's there.

Okay.

Best of luck to anyone who tries to do it.

I'm cheering for you.

Best of luck who actually want to play the game.

It's like, that's a big, big task.

Yeah, we should do like a competition, whoever is able to build

a selection,

the finale, Ura finale.

Okay, yeah, go post your screenshot if you can do it.

Oh, please do.

Yeah, please do.

I'm definitely not gonna post any screenshots.

I can tell you that.

I can tell you.

Maybe I will try.

Maybe I'll try after all the half hour of you talking about it.

I'm a little bit closer to downloading the game, but only a little bit.

Oh, it's it's me.

Now I can actually actually understand why you actually like it that much.

Listeners, thank you very much for joining us for this hour-long episode about Uma Musume Pretty Derby.

It was a pretty derby, and please join the Slack channel.

Share all the comments you want, please just put them

under the YouTube video or even Spotify or just

in our Slack channel.

So we have an interesting discussion.

And see you next time.

Bye-bye.

Share your race results.

I'm waiting for them.

Yeah, see ya.

Bye-bye.