Like any good parent, I try to limit my children’s screen time as much as I can. But when I do let them watch TV or play games on the phone or iPad, I always try to steer them toward something I can enjoy with them, like Adventure Time, for example.

When it comes to playing games on the phone or iPad, I have pushed chess on them for too long. They would both rather play something more fast-paced, more graphic, more exciting.

After a while I realized that there might be horse-racing versions of the lame games they were drawn to … and I was right. The iTunes store is filled with horse racing games. I wanted to try some out, but had no idea where to begin. So I sorted the store by most popular and let the kids pick the ones they thought looked interesting, then we took each of them out for a test drive.

All of these games, with the exception of one, were free.

My kids are Gus, 6, and Adeline, 4.

Horse Academy

Horse Academy - This game looked promising, graphically, in the iTunes store. But I was immediately alarmed when I realized I’d have to log in with Facebook. Evidently there’s a Facebook version of this game as well. For the purposes of this scientific study, I went ahead and shared my private Facebook with this app, already soured on it.

The game uses a tilt method to control the horse. Gus found it familiar and easy to use. He immediately set out ramming into the other horses and weaving back and forth on the track. I told him to take the inside track but he wouldn’t listen. Somehow with all those fouls and bolting back and forth he still managed to get second in his first race.

Racehorses Champion Lite

Racehorses Champion Lite - The controls for this game were a little more tricky than those in Horse Academy. You have to tap the screen with one hand to speed up and swipe the screen with the other hand to move back and forth. I suggested to the kids that I play first, to show them how to do it. I raced off to a big lead. The children complimented me on my superior Racehorses Champion Lite skills. Then when I rounded the last turn in the race every other horse caught up to me and left me eating dirt in the stretch. I finished fifth.

“Oh I see,” I explained to the kids, “I need to leave some stamina for the final stretch run.”

I gave it another go, this time being careful not to use anything until the end. This time I finished fourth. My kids’ admiration for me quickly faded and they were anxious to see if they could fare better. Adeline took over. She bolted in the opening stretch, hit the fence, and her horse stood still on the track. The other horses were rounding the last turn when she looked up at us and said, proudly, “I’m good at this racing game.”

Gus took the iPad and loaded his horse in the gate. He finished second without any trouble. To his credit, he didn’t gloat. He just said “Hey, I like this one a lot.” 

Seems like there’s a way to also breed and sell horses, but we were on to the next one.

Stupid Dumb Horse Derby Race

Stupid Dumb Horse Derby Race - I announced the name of this one expecting belly laughs and an argument over who got to play it first. Adeline replied, “I don’t want to play something stupid and dumb” and left the room. Gus shrugged and gave it a try. There’s no jockey, or even a racetrack. You basically just make a horse jump over and duck under random obstacles while the screen scrolls. There’s no race, no Derby, but plenty of stupid and dumb. I was annoyed.

Gus, for what it’s worth, didn’t want to stop playing. Don’t judge him.

Horse Race

Horse Race - After playing this game for about two seconds, Gus announced: “This is the worst game I’ve ever seen in my life.” There was no race, as far as we could tell. There’s a huge cliff with a rock floating in the air in the middle of it. A horse appears out of nowhere and is running toward the cliff. You can move the rock close to the edge so the horse won’t just run off the cliff to a certain death, then you need to move the rock across to the cliff on the other side fast enough so that the horse can make it safely across. If you’re too slow he will run off the rock into the hole and die. Occasionally, a plus sign or minus sign falls from the sky. A plus sign makes the rock bigger and a minus sign makes it smaller. If you get the horse across, another one appears and you do it again and again. Eventually, Gus just said: “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Then, apropos of nothing, the game announced: “Game over.”

“That game was so stupid,” Gus said. “I want to play it again.”

Horse Betting

Horse Betting - This was a twist on horse racing games. You don’t control the horse in the race. You have a bankroll and you just pick a horse, select your bet, and then sweat a boring race to see whether you won any money. The kids really loved this one. Gus started out betting $100 a clip then quickly dropped down to $30 when he lost a few bets. I was very proud of his bankroll management. But he and Adeline both thought that if a horse wins a race, it probably will win the next race, too. So they’d bet the winner of the previous race every time. Eventually, they realized that wasn’t working, and it was confusing to them.

“He just won and now he lost?” Adeline asked, stupified. “What?”

So, they decided to bet the No. 1 horse every race until he won. Eventually, it worked before they had burned through all their money and they won a bet. They danced around the living room cheering. “We won! It says plus 108 dollars! We did it!”

I tried to get them to move on to the next game and they wanted to keep betting.

So, basically this game was pretty decent at simulating a real day at the track with degenerate horseplayers, except the actual races were boring instead of fun to watch — such a good education for the kids, too. In addition to math skills, they are learning empathy. Now they have a better understanding of why daddy is always crying at the track.

Champion of the Derby

Champion of the Derby - “Oh good we only have to race one other horse” was Gus’ first reaction to this one. Two crude 2-D horses were on the long, horizontal track. You control your horse by tapping two buttons on the screen as fast as you can. I have pretty good Nintendo thumbs and still got destroyed in the race. Gus fared much worse. Not only that, the race is just a long, straight line … super long. Like Desert Bus long.

For once, Gus did not want to keep playing. “This game is so bad.”

Horse Racing Winner 3D Plus

Horse Racing Winner 3D - At first, it seemed like the only way we could race more than once was to pay money. But eventually we figured out that we could keep racing the first race and earning money to either enter higher races or level up our horse’s skills. Eventually, we got the hang of how to win races — pick up energy during the race, be mindful of your stamina and how much race is left — and how to budget our money wisely. Move up too quickly and you’ll be way outclassed and lose your entry fees. The kids got into the challenge of figuring out the right race for our horse. The controls were simple enough. Left thumb controls the direction; right thumb controls the speed.

This was easily the most fun game of the day. The kids even wanted to return to it the following day. They liked that they could customize the way the horses looked and they enjoyed the strategy of thinking about which race was their best shot at making money. I’m sure they’ll keep at this one until their horse makes it around the world.

Pocket Stables

Pocket Stables - This was the only game we paid for. In fact, we paid $5. It was popular on iTunes and it looked pretty fun. It had retro 8-bit graphics and it would allow us to build a stable and farm, buy horses and train them, pick from a menu of races, etc. It had the most involved menu of strategic choices. The problem was that it was overwhelming for the kids. And worst of all, it didn’t allow you to control the horse at all during the race. In fact, you couldn’t control anything other than how much money you spent on what and where you placed the various elements of your horse farm on the map. The rest of the time we felt like spectators.

This game didn’t hold the kids patience very long and, despite being excited about it initially, I grew tired of it pretty quick.

All in all, the games we ended up downloading were pretty awful. Horse Racing Winner was our favorite, and it’s the only one that will survive the delete fest that will take place as soon as this article is finished.

After all, we have to make room to reinstall Simpson’s Tapped Out. Now that we have a new betting system, the kids are anxious to see how Homer will fare at Springfield Downs.