Web Animation / Horse Race Tests

12 Following

Horse Race Tests is a series of surrealist videos created by video game designer Blake Andrews that was posted on his X account from April 1 to April 25, 2025. The first race, labeled "new prototype", can be found here. The videos follow extremely crude depictions of monocolored "horses" bouncing randomly around mazes consisting of sharp corners and jagged edges, with whichever horse is lucky enough to bounce into the goal (depicted as a bundle of carrots) being crowned the winner and earning a coveted victory screen.

Despite its crudeness and simplicity, the series attracted a surprising amount of attention, with bundles of fanart and fanfiction depicting the different horses as Anthropomorphic Personifications à la Umamusume: Pretty Derby.

On April 30, 2025, Blake Andrews announced a continuation of the series titled Horse Race Tests Tournament: Here Racehorses Transcend in collaboration with Lumpy Touch, a 13-race tournament where the 12 horses with wins on their records competed to determine an overall Horse Race Tests champion. The tournament video premiered on May 3, 2025, and is available here.

From June 6 to July 9, 2025, a continuation of the series was posted called "Hoop Race Tests", in which the horses split into teams of 5 and compete in a basketball tournament. From January 3 to January 8, 2026, another continuation called "Fuzao's Adventure" was released by Andrews on an alternate account, following a new group of horses. The original horses crossover with the newcomers from Fuzao's Adventure in "Horse Race Tests World", a currently ongoing series of races that started on February 18, 2026.

Blake Andrews is also developing a video game based on the series titled Horse Race Tests: Life is Pain, in which players gamble in-game currency (ʊ) on races and even rig them using abilities. It is scheduled to launch in early access on Steam on March 31, 2026, although Andrews has stated that the game's development is in flux and this plan may be delayed.

Place your tropes in... 10:

• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: While a few of the horses such as Door Knob (brown) and Downtown Skybox (grey) have realistic colorations for horses, most of the racers come in unusual colors such as red, blue, pink, etc.
• Ambiguous Gender: While the horses were originally considered to be all male, this decision was later retconned, with the horse genders now being unspecified, so as to allow for greater freedom of fan interpretation.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The tournament counterparts to Jovial Merryment, Superstitional Realism, and Cyan (Fearsome Fate, Fantasy Fantasy Fantasy, and Oob, respectively) have origins shrouded in mystery. Are they nightmare clones? Have the three (or their bodies) been possessed? Or have they returned from the nightmare realm with new names and personalities due to their experiences there?
  • The area where Fuzao and the nightmare horses are seen after being eaten is likely the elephant's innards, though, if the win screen is anything to go by, it could also be Hell.
  • In addition, the nightmare horses become Abomination Nations with unique abilities during this phase, it's never explained why.
• Anti-Climax: The final race, "e1m6t3", is promoted as a competition between one team consisting of Jovial Merryment and Superstitional Realism, and another team of the three nightmare horses with wins. Fans portrayed this as an epic race between good and evil, with Team Merry/Realism trying to win in order to free Cyan from the nightmare realm. Sadly, Garbage Bin won the race for the nightmare team. And in place of the usual victory screen, the race segued straight to a minimalist closing credits sequence followed by an illustration of a trophy, providing no apparent closure for the elaborate fan narratives. This was later subverted by the Here Racehorses Transcend tournament, which premiered a week after the supposed finale.
• Art Evolution: While minor, the horses were eventually given unique body shapes as opposed to being simple recolors of one another.
• Artistic License – Biology: Elephants are herbivores in real life, and definitely aren't large enough to swallow a horse whole.
• Big Damn Heroes: Superstitional Realism and later even Jovial Merryment appear during the final races against the nightmare horses. Subverted, as they ended up losing.
• Censored for Comedy: In Here Racehorses Transcend, both the victory screen and the occasional mid-race commentary finally reveal Yellow's name to be Lightning Strikes Thrice. But it's always censored by the sound of a bird squawking, though it's still pretty easy to make it out.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The series took a rather bizarre and dark turn in its final days, with the Cyan horse disappearing from the regular races and several of the races taking place in an extremely bleak and distorted setting with eerie music, likened to a nightmare by fans. All of the horses have dark or muted colors, misshapen sprites, and unusual alpha-numeric designations in these races, with only faint resemblances to the original horses. The winners also appear bizarre and misshapen in their victory screens.
• Disney Death: Most horses eaten by the elephant are unceremoniously removed from the races, implying death, however, Fuzao is eventually seen alive and competing against the nightmare horses inside of the elephant's stomach.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Early on, all of the horses had No Name Given, but later started earning names for winning a race. Since Yellow's only win happened before they started earning names, its name remained unrevealed. ...Until the Tournament, that is.
• Eaten Alive: The fate of any horse unfortunate enough to bounce near the elephant. All horses that are eaten (Barring Five Empty Bamboo) do not come back.
• Empty Room Psych: More often than not, maps will include a small room past the goal that serves no purpose other than occasionally trapping horses unlucky enough to enter it, wasting time and potentially losing them the race. Why? Because it’s funny.
• Evil Doppelgänger: A Mysterious Figure is one of the nightmare horses that bears heavy resemblance to Superstitional Realism. They even duel each other in e1m6t2.
• Fun with Acronyms: The tournament is called Here Racehorses Transcend, which happens to stand for the same thing as Horse Race Tests
• Greater-Scope Villain: Horse 17/The Green Horse. They only appear very briefly at the end of the tournament and never race, but seem to have some influence on the races. This is mainly apparent during season two, where the nightmare horses dress up as green ghosts, likely signifying some sort of control by Horse 17.
• Limited Animation: Other than sliding around and bouncing off walls, the most movement the horses do are looking in whichever direction they happen to be moving in.
• Luck-Based Mission: When it comes to winning a race, there is absolutely zero strategy involved. The winner is always determined by whichever horse is lucky enough to bounce their way to the goal.
• Musical Pastiche: The intermission theme that plays after every round of Here Racehorses Transcend's winner's bracket is a pastiche of the melody of "stupid horse" by 100 gecs, a song about betting on horse racing.
• No Name Given: Subverted; the horses do have names, but are only given one when they secure a win. Horses who had not yet scored a win were only referred to by their color. This is double-subverted by Cyan, whose name remained the same after they secured a win. Yellow won the second race in the series (denying Cyan what likely would have been a much earlier first victory), but as this occurred before Blake Andrews started revealing the horses' names on their victory screens and Yellow did not win another race in the initial series, it was unknown if Yellow had a unique name planned. Yellow later reappeared in the tournament and finally got another win, revealing their name as Lightning Strikes Thrice.
• Ret-Gone: Implied to be the case in the final race. Around the time it dropped, Blake Andrews' account banner quietly dropped the horse representing Jovial Merriment. Jovial supposedly returns in the Here Horses Transcend tournament, albeit under a new name: "Fearsome Fate".
• Second Episode Introduction: The first race only featured Bullet’n Board, Door Knob, Superstitional Realism, and Yellow. Cyan, Downtown Skybox, and Jovial Merryment weren’t introduced until the second race.
• The Stinger: At the end of the Here Racehorses Transcend tournament, a scene is shown in the first "nightmare" course, where a previously-unseen green horse enters the field.
• Stock Animal Diet: The goal is depicted as a bundle of carrots, and later an apple. Here Racehorses Transcend use radishes as the goal.
• Stylistic Suck: Blake Andrews is an experienced game designer, but Horse Race Tests reflects his tastes and style with its crude graphics, nonsensical physics, and "win screens" which amount to a lazy recoloring of a real-life horse photo.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Season two has the horses play basketball rather than race. Though the original formula is reverted back to in season three.
• The Un-Reveal: Yellow's only win occurred before Blake Andrews began naming the horses, and so its potential name was never revealed.
  • Parodied in Here Racehorses Transcend when Yellow finally wins another race and reveals its name to be Lightning Strikes Thrice. Upon winning, a poorly-drawn bird attempts (and fails) to physically obscure the revealed name, and caws loudly as the announcer reveals the name. This same cawing sound effect is played every time its name is said afterwards.
• Wham Shot: If "Jovial's" revamped appearance in the first race of Here Racehorses Transcend doesn't tip you off that something's up, then their victory screen calling them Fearsome Fate should. Same with "Cyan" and "Superstitional," now OOB and Fantasy Fantasy Fantasy.
• Womb Level: The races where Fuzao competes against the Abomination-ified nightmare horses in the elephant's stomach.