Horse racing simulators are clearly like London buses – you don’t play one for ages and then two come to your attention together. We recently reviewed Net Entertainment’s Golden Derby and here’s something pretty similar. It’s called Virtual Horses, it’s from Ash Gaming and once more you get the chance to pick your nag and watch as the action unfolds.

Virtual Horses is a little simpler than Golden Derby although it might not look like it when you first load up the game. Start it up and you will be faced with a rather busy screen. The top third is taken up by the list of horses and their odds of winning or placing in the top three.

The bottom of the screen is is a large range of bets which are all explained when you hover over them. For example the top left option – 1 x 2 – is a bet for Horse 1 to win with Horse 2 finishing second. Huge odds are available towards the bottom of this list for the more unlikely finishing combos.

How It Works

The first thing to do is select the size of your betting chip at the bottom of the screen and these range from £0.10 – £50.00.  Then it’s time to decide which bets to place and this is of course entirely up to you. Each horse has it’s own odds so bet on the favourite if you like or have a punt on an outsider. Unlike Golden Derby there is no form guide for each horse.

When you’re ready to go just click ‘Play’ and the race will unfold, complete with some decent commentary and this good-looking section is one of this game’s strong points.

Turbo mode will eliminate the race altogether and just show you the results and the Auto Bet feature will let you plan more than one race in a row with similar bets.

Verdicts

For us, this is not quite as good as Golden Derby, mainly because it lacks the form section for each horse. The racing looks good though and overall it’s well worth checking out.

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