(Image courtesy of Cygames. “Umamusume is one of the most popular Japanese franchises right now, and its flagship game just saw a global release.”)

Maxi France
Connector Staff

One of the most popular Japanese multimedia franchises, “Umamusume: Pretty Derby” has managed to spark interest in global audiences. Cygames, the creators of this racing game franchise, released a mobile version of the game in English on June 26, 2025. The game provides English captions and the option to hear the corresponding Japanese dialogue.

The game follows a group of female trainers and girls with horse ears — called Umamusume — as they train in the fictitious Tracen Academy and compete in horse races against each other. The Umamusume are based on real Japanese racehorses but adapted to fit an anime style design. The object of the game is to train a team of Umamusume to compete in races and raise their team rank to the highest level. The player trains them in five different skills before competition and can chat with other trainers in interactive cutscenes to help boost their skills.

Gameplay involves being directed to a menu of options, where the player can either train Umamusume in individual or team races or access side stories. The game also tracks missions based on, for example, reaching top five in a race, and awards carats based on completing these goals. One can also gain carats by increasing one’s team rank.

For a new player, a strong way to increase team rank by a level is to start a Career Playthrough for an Umamusume and train her. In this gameplay mode, the player can level up her skills to prepare for upcoming races, while managing her energy bar and making sure it doesn’t fall too low. Each day, the player has the option of training for speed, stamina, power, guts, and wit, which loses energy, or taking a rest to gain energy. Eventually, if one chooses carefully, this Umamusume will have their rank increased, and can replace a weaker, untrained member on the player’s team to increase the overall team ranking.

A positive aspect of this mode is that it allows one to fast forward through the story cutscenes that precede the race in addition to the race itself for players who face time constraints.

The game also allows the player to access interactive side stories that give character development to each individual Umamusume for rewards. To progress through a particular Umamusume’s story, however, one must raise their bond level by training and racing her. As a result, the player cannot access certain parts of a given story until that requirement is fulfilled, which may feel frustrating.

Another difficult aspect of the game is dealing with how long it takes to try to improve the abilities of the Umamusume. Players can raise Potential and Hint levels for an Umamusume to gain advantages in races. However, raising these levels requires shoes that are obtained from racing. This means that one must be spending a set amount of time engaging in the racing portion of the game to get these rewards, which may annoy players who want a quick path to success.

Additionally, to obtain cleats that can be purchased to gain advantages in races, a player must exchange duplicate support cards for them, found in another section of the game. To obtain these cards, a player can spend carats to perform a Support Card Scout, a type of loot box mechanism where a random Umamusume is picked to join the player’s collection of support cards. The problem is that since this system is luck-based, there is no guarantee a player will obtain duplicates, incentivizing the player to spend more time scouting in hopes of finding one.

On the plus side, the music and graphics will likely meet player expectations. The music changes based on the context of every menu and differentiates based on mood. For example, when an Umamusume places low, somber-sounding music is played. Conversely, fanfare is played when she wins.

The graphics are a strong point of this game — the developers like to pay attention to detail. In the tutorial and in the pre-race cutscenes, each character has unique facial expressions that change throughout a given scene when the player taps on the text boxes to continue the story. The developers make sure to pay careful attention to realism, designing the characters so that they do not stay completely still but rather move slightly while standing from breathing.

Overall, this game is an adventure that is an appropriate fit for all ages. It may not resonate with players who prefer violence and drama, but those who want to increase their appreciation of Japanese culture may appreciate the gameplay and the storylines behind it.

Grade: B