Umamusume: Pretty Derby: “To be honest, we weren’t sure how a game inspired by Japanese horse racing culture would be received overseas”

• Umamusume: Pretty Derby launched in Japan in February 2021 and worldwide in June 2025.
• An anonymous developer believes the anime adaptation, which released in the West long before the game, made Cygames aware of its potential overseas.

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After taking Japan by storm in 2021, multi-billion dollar hit Umamusume: Pretty Derby is finally taking a lap around the globe following its worldwide rollout this June.

The horse girl racing game is building momentum overseas. During its first global month, AppMagic estimates suggested mobile player spending was roughly a 50/50 split between Japan and the rest of the world, where after two months, this has shifted to 57% overseas.

As the anime-style racer trots forward, we speak with an anonymous developer on Cygames’ team about Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s global launch, the nuances of localisation, its multimedia brand status and more.

Taking a look back at Umamusume’s origins in Japan, the developer highlights Cygames’ “deep interest” in horse racing and the culture surrounding it, which spawned the idea of recreating that experience in a game.

“What really inspired us were the dramatic stories behind each racehorse, and we wanted to find a way to share those stories with a broader audience.

“That desire led us to ask ourselves if we could reimagine not only the races and records, but also the stories behind each horse, transforming them into new forms of entertainment. That’s how the idea for the project first took shape.”

Just how successful that project became took Cygames’ team by surprise, already achieving 30 million downloads across mobile and PC in Asia alone before going global.

While the developer can’t share any internal KPIs on Umamusume’s financial performance, AppMagic estimates suggest the title made almost $1 billion on mobile back in 2021 and raced beyond $2.5bn before its worldwide launch.

It’s also Cygames’ top-grossing mobile title and was considered Japan’s most lucrative game of 2021 and 2022.

“We are very grateful that not only fans of games and anime, but also supporters of the racehorses who lend their names to our characters, have come to know about the project,” the developer shares.

“We believe that our commitment to respecting the world of horse racing, combined with our dedication to making the game fun, resonated with many people and contributed to its popularity.”

Trotting to transmedia

While Umamusume: Pretty Derby was originally announced as a mobile game, the brand ultimately debuted as an online manga in 2016. An anime series followed in 2018, succeeded by a second season in 2021 which overlapped with the mobile game’s launch.

Already a multimedia brand by that time, this helped familiarise viewers with anime protagonist Special Week and other characters by the time they appeared in the gacha.

Umamusume as a brand has also extended to an anime film, a stage play in Tokyo and a spinoff party game titled Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash, released on console and PC rather than mobile.

But it was the anime show that marked the West’s first official exposure to Umamusume, and its reception gave Cygames some optimism that the mobile game could also reach this audience. However, the anonymous dev reveals there wasn’t absolute confidence.

“To be honest, we weren’t sure how a game inspired by Japanese horse racing culture would be received overseas, especially in Western markets. However, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reactions from so many regions around the world,” they share.

“We’ve enjoyed seeing people having fun with Umamusume through social media and live streams, and it truly makes us happy to see fans around the world enjoying the game.

“The overseas distribution of the anime, among other things, showed us that awareness of Umamusume was spreading not only within Japan but also across other parts of Asia and Western countries as well. In order to let even more people enjoy the series, we worked to make it available in multiple languages.”

Now that the game is finding success overseas, the developer hopes it will drive interest in real-world horse racing. After all, many of Umamusume’s characters are inspired by Japanese racehorses: the real Special Week was a Japanese thoroughbred who raced from 1997 to 1999, for example.

“It would be a great joy to know that our game helped stimulate enthusiasm around horse racing,” the developer says.

Languages, localisation and difficult decisions

Cygames confirmed that an English version of Umamusume: Pretty Derby was in the works in June 2024, more than three years after its release in Japan. An official website, X (formerly Twitter) account and YouTube trailer were released, tailored to Western audiences, and fans in the US soon got a first look at the game during Anime Expo in Los Angeles.

However, in the end it took another full year from the English reveal to Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s global rollout – more than four years after its Japanese launch. So, we ask the developer about the localisation process and any challenges that arose.

The balance between accessibility and cultural identity appears to have played a significant role: “We worked hard to make the game accessible and relatable for international players while staying true to the unique world and spirit of Umamusume.

“Some Japanese terms, like oshi (meaning a favourite character), were already familiar to many anime fans overseas, so we kept explanations for those to a minimum.

“For other cultural elements such as katsudon, a dish considered lucky in Japan because katsu is a homophone for win, we added context within character dialogue to help convey its meaning of good fortune to players less familiar with Japanese traditions.”

The developer recalls cases where nuances of Japan’s culture couldn’t be directly translated, so the team searched for “equivalent ideas” from the West.

“For example, Maruzensky’s 80s/90s slang was adapted using similar expressions in American English, while Daitaku Helios’ slang was localised using contemporary Gen Z slang where appropriate. Addressing these cultural differences was certainly one of the most challenging aspects of localisation, but also one of the most rewarding experiences for our team.”

We also ask the developer about how the game’s many horse girls are adapted from real thoroughbreds, and how closely those horses’ owners work with Cygames to see them represented.

They aren’t able to share the secrets behind the design process, but we do learn more about making those characters as familiar as possible in the West to fans of the anime.

“The very first medium through which we were able to introduce Umamusume to overseas audiences was the anime. Because of this, we anticipated that many fans who learned about Umamusume and decided to try the game would enter through the anime.

“To help these fans feel more familiar with the content, we decided to keep the original Japanese voices.”

At the same time, there are potential limitations in keeping Japanese voices rather than recording an English dub, which Cygames has taken extra steps to overcome.

“We were also aware that not providing English voiceovers could make gameplay difficult for some players. To address this, we added English subtitles and text not only for spoken parts but also in sections that were not originally subtitled in the Japanese version, as part of features unique to the English release.”

Victory lap

Yet another IP from Asia finding huge success as a mobile gacha, Umamusume: Pretty Derby tasks players with rolling the dice on new characters, trading in-game currency for a chance at the latest contender. Monetisation comes from players spending on that currency, therefore, with no actual betting on the horse-like races depicted.

Once players recruit their trainees, they can build them up and help improve their stats between races, given the option to focus on stamina, speed, or other forms of constitution. After a race, players then watch the competitors perform in idol-like concerts where the victors take centre stage.

Though there are clear parallels to Japan’s prevalent idol culture, the game’s anonymous developer says that “strictly speaking, the Umamusume are not idols”. Rather, they compare concerts to a victory lap seen in real sports, “special moments where the victorious Umamusume can share their joy directly with their fans”.

One might also say the game itself is taking a victory lap, cheered on by this positive reception in the West after already stampeding to financial success in its home country.