Legacy is a free-to-play horse breeding and management sim that takes realism to the next level. The game’s genetics were designed by a professional biologist who has studied genetics for the past eight years.
Nearly Unlimited Possibilities
Legacy’s horses have over 600 genes controlling everything from color and patterns to conformation, performance abilities, and talents. Even personalities are controlled by genetics.
Speaking of color and patterns, there are over 60 genes that create over 18 million possible color and pattern combinations in the game for each of the nine individual body types.That means there are roughly 160 million different ways a horse can look (and counting).
If it isn’t obvious, breeding is the main focus of the game. You can breed your horses for whatever goal you have. Want the fastest racehorse? You can breed that. Want the prettiest horse in the game? You can breed that.
Genetic uniqueness
Each horse is a unique individual with its own personality and talents. A horse has eight performance traits: agility, balance, intelligence, jumping, speed, stamina, strength, and surefootedness. Horses also have 32 different conformation traits, which can be found on our wiki.There are also three to five gaits possible for a horse to have.
Legacy has 55 unique breeds, including 10 cross-breeds, to play with currently. These breeds range across nine body types, draft, cob, baroque, warmblood, saddle, stock, light, pony, and miniature. For a full list of the breeds we will include, visit our wiki.
Performance
Your horses can compete in 14 different disciplines, including Dressage, Barrel Racing, Endurance, Trot Racing, Gaited Pleasure, and Reining. For a full list of disciplines, visit our wiki.
Your horse’s performance in each discipline is based on a couple key factors. The primary factor is conformation. For example, if you want to compete with your horses in Pulling, you would want a horse with a decent amount of muscle mass. Conformation isn’t everything though. There are special genes that directly impact a horse’s performance traits, such as Jumping, which has a total of 107 genes that affect it (including conformation genes). A horse’s personality also impacts its show scores.
Genetic complexity
The complexity of the game’s genetics isn’t just in the number of genes that are included. It is also a type of inheritance. For instance, in the game we have linked inheritance, which influences combinations of alleles from different genes that are inherited together. We also have epistasis, pleiotropy, and heterosis. Our wiki has a few helpful articles on understanding inheritance. Not only is it relevant to our game, but it is educational for real life as well.
Other features
Other gameplay mechanics include managing your horse’s health through different feed options. Horses will gain or lose weight depending on which of the four feed types you have them on and whether or not they are in training, performing in shows, or performing a job. Horse’s can become ill or injured and you can treat them yourself or call a vet.
Horses can be trained in groundwork, undersaddle, and any of the various disciplines. You can train your horse by hand or hire a trainer to handle it for you. How quickly a horse is trained is dependent on, you guessed it, its genetics. A horse’s personality is the main factor in how well it responds to training.
You will also need to manage your stable/ranch’s finances. The main source of income is show purses but your horses can also hold jobs such as a lesson horse or carriage horse. Which jobs a horse can hold is dependent on their personality and not all horses will be suited for a job.
Join our community
Legacy is a multiplayer game. You can sell and buy horses from other players as well as compete against them. The genetics are so complex that working together is not only encouraged, but will be a huge boost to your success in the game.
Sound like your kind of game? If you’d like to participate in the Alpha period all you have to do is join our Discord.