The Story of My Horse and I: What Could’ve Been

Being a horse-enjoyer in the gaming industry is nothing short of a mild experience for the gamer. Despite the many games that have horses at the minimum, often as a mount that optimizes gameplay, they are never truly the center of the gameplay experience. As a child, I often yearned for games such as these where I was the rider, where I had control of how I represented myself, and where I could design my steed around the gameplay cycle. Luckily, games such as Star Stable Online, Bella Sara and Howrse have paved the way for the horse game genre to rise in popularity, but also for Story of my Horse and I: Alicia to push the boundaries of a “horse game.”

Story of my Horse and I: Alicia is a hub-based Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game (MMORPG) developed by Ntreev in 2009, where you, the racer, inherit a ranch from your grandfather, Thomas. After finishing your studies in the knight academy to become a racer for your property, you begin your quest to restore the ranch to its former glory. To do this, however, you must race.

Alicia has two different racing modes, each accompanied by a “team mode” to allow for cooperative gameplay. “Speed” is the game mode where you test your knowledge of the track and movement to compete with your fellow racers for the lowest time possible. “Magic,” similar to Mario Kart’s premise, is where item droppers are distributed across the track, and horses can generate these magic items through the gauge (which is present in both modes) to either attack, defend or surge across the ranks towards victory.

While being a racing game, Alicia offers a unique game mode to its gameplay loop: Breeding. Breeding is where the players receive the most (and the least) control over the horses they race on, as well as their appearance and stats. The breeding system also introduces the potential system, where the horse gains a passive skill that adds an additional playing card to gameplay during races for both modes. Some potentials manipulate neutral mechanics, others with specific mode mechanics, but the potential level and quality itself is determined purely by random chance.

Alicia is unique in that your gameplay experience is morphed by the player you want to be. You can follow the path of a racer in either “Speed” or “Magic,” or curate your ranch to hold horses of both game modes and tread down the path of a dual racer. Or, you can center yourself around being a breeder, focusing on feeding horses into the economy and becoming the foundation of the game’s core mechanic.

After the unsuccessful production of Project Alice, Ntreev’s beginning of Alicia before the game took off, Ntreev decided to shift lenses from a combat-heavy racing game to primarily just a racing game. In 2009, Alicia opened its closed beta to ten thousand testers, featuring Speed as their sole racing mode, with five tracks to be raced and tested by the incoming player base. With most of the players coming from Kartrider (a go-kart racing game with similar mechanics to Alicia), the closed beta ended up being a hit with the player base, and Ntreev moved on to greater heights.

In 2011, Alicia was released to the public as a free-to-download game with its own open party event for its release. The open party was such a huge event because IU, a Korean pop idol, not only released a song, “Alicia,” for the game, but was also a huge part of promotions for the game overall. This open party was a tremendous success, creating an astronomical influx of players to not only try the game, but to race and enjoy it. A consistent stream of players and updates went on for the following years, adding balance patches to tracks and stats, along with potentials (a passive skill attached to your horse), and eventually new tracks and cosmetics.

In 2012, the developers decided to test the waters with a huge overhaul: Alicia 2.0. This build of Alicia featured more social aspects, such as a dismount function, walking and even guiding your horse (which in Alicia 1.0, you were bound to your horse, so dismounting was a huge update that players wanted from 1.0), even including better ranch customization features to the game that weren’t present before.

Alicia 2.0 also revamped the horse leveling and breeding systems, so instead of racing your horse to have it level up, or “class up,” you’d train your horse’s stats through training cards, and depending on the success, your horse’s stats would level up or decrease. In addition, breeding also assigned horses a gender, which further complicated the breeding system in comparison to the game’s 1.0 counterpart.

After 2012, however, Ntreev faced a variety of difficulties with the game and even with finances. Players reported that 2.0 was too greedy in terms of the training system and breeding, and none of the concerns listed were resolved. If anything, progression was getting worse for the game, and funds were going down as a result. Eventually, in 2014, Ntreev filed for bankruptcy, shut down, and the game ended with it.

[Alicia Online]
On December 20th of 2014, Alicia finally returned under a sole developer who aimed to revive Alicia as a personal project (after having his own relations to the game). He ended up opening the gates to the westernmost access of the game for those who struggled to get access whilst Ntreev was still in control. The game’s lifespan lasted until July of 2024, when server complications eventually shut down Alicia Online for good.
[Story of Alicia]
Started in 2020 for development, Story of Alicia is an open-source build of Alicia run by a team of developers, artists, and programmers all from the community aiming to preserve the game’s integrity from the original build that shut down in February of 2014.
[Memories of Alicia]
In August of 2025, using Story of Alicia’s open source as a base for their server, Memories of Alicia stands as a Hungarian-based build of Alicia, aiming to serve the Hungarian population of Alicia’s community.
[Alicia Reborn]
In 2026, Alicia Reborn debuted to the greater community using Story of Alicia’s open source as the foundation for their server. It is a Russian-based global server aiming to expand the development of Alicia’s original build beyond its limits, while still holding close to Alicia Online’s development path.
[Our Private Alicia]
In August of 2026, Our Private Alicia debuted as a smaller server using Story of Alicia’s open source to create a Speed-centered server for the community, by the community.

[Breeding]
Alicia’s breeding infrastructure and economy are pivotal to the game’s attraction and . But what if it offered more? What if players could breed for more than specific traits, but also for different horse breeds and specific qualities that enhance the racing experience? Foremost, this is a racing game, and breeding acts as the gateway for players to access the stat and potential combinations to create the perfect playstyle for them. But if the doors for breeding were opened wider, then the opportunities for players to advance their gameplay could open as well.

[Tracks]
The most limiting factor of this game is the tracks provided. In total, there are 17 tracks with 12 Advanced versions of certain tracks only provided in the Speed racing mode. Since this game ended its service in 2014, the resources to create new tracks and new assets relating to the game have been non-existent. However, with the rise of these private servers—each one of them aiming to push the boundaries of what was left of the game—I believe it’s possible to extend this game’s lifespan through the construction of new tracks and maybe even new mechanics that the original development team were unable to enact

The beauty of Alicia is within its potential. Unlike the horse potentials in the game, limited by growth and random chance, this game had the grounds to be so much more. Competition is still a huge part of the playerbase’s culture across both modes, and even within Alicia’s counterpart, 2.0, in its beta phase, this rings clearer than anything else. The players all strive for excellence in their preferred game modes, whether chasing new highs in Speed or representing one’s ability to triumph over others in Magic. Alicia reigns strong in its unflinching creativity amongst the current contenders in the industry.