Many horse fans play games like Red Dead Redemption 1 + 2 due to the lack of good alternatives to take a seat in the saddle. Now a Kickstarter campaign has been launched for a promising alternative for Steam and PS5 – and it reached its funding goal in just a few hours.
What game is it about? We’re talking about Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori from the German developer studio Aesir Interactive. The game promises a lot of what you can do with horses in games like Red Dead Redemption. Only without shooting and with a greater focus on the horses and riding through the prairie.
You will travel to Mongolia in the 13th century and take on the role of a young girl who explores the wilderness as a courier rider for her nomadic people.
In doing so, you can ride freely through the open world with its different environments, such as endless meadows, forests, steppes, deserts, or snowy mountains. However, to protect yourself and your people from diseases and threats, you need to choose your routes wisely.
Additionally, you can build, design, and expand your nomad camp by collecting resources and crafting items. And of course, you can tame, breed, and train horses to produce the prettiest and best horse over generations.
Besides the gameplay elements, there is also a mystical story surrounding the legendary Windhorse
and its legacy, as well as various challenges and puzzles that you must master. Whether delivering cargo or herding animals – you immerse yourself in the life of your people.
Here you can see the announcement trailer for Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori:
Financed and exceeded in no time
The funding goal was reached in just a few hours: After the Kickstarter campaign for the game started on March 4, 2025, it didn’t take long. After about 19 hours, the funding goal of around €60,000 was already reached, and approximately 1,380 people participated in the campaign. Previously, the studio had received about €1.47 million in funding from the Federal Ministry of Economics in 2023 for the development (via Gameswirtschaft).
As of now, the campaign stands at around €132,000 (as of March 8, 2025), which is more than double the planned funding goal. This means that the first milestones have also been reached, with which the developers want to bring a larger game world and additional game content.
The campaign will run for another 27 days. Therefore, it is expected that the funding will continue to rise and the game will be filled with even more content. The release is planned for March 2026 for Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S. An early access version is expected to start on Steam and Epic Games in the summer of 2025.
There are few games that focus so strongly on hooved animals and the happiness of the earth and promise so much content as Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori does. Many players therefore fall back on games like Red Dead Redemption 1 + 2, as these games manage to portray horses particularly realistically: In Red Dead Redemption 2, there are horse testicles and they shrink
