Umamusume fans can actually race and place bets in new Steam game

An Umamusume-inspired Steam game where you race as anime girls and place in-game bets needs to be on every Uma fan’s radar.

Umamusume continues to prove incredibly popular, thanks to its mix of addictive horse races and its lovable cast of colorful characters.

The viral nature of the horse girl series has already caught the attention of the gaming community, and plenty of other titles like Project GT, which transforms cars into anime girls, have already started cropping up.

While Project GT is still in development, a new Steam game launching on August 5, 2026, aims to give Umamusume fans a more hands-on racing experience by letting them control their own star racer and even place bets on who they think will win.

Umamusume-style game comes to Steam

Derby Heroines: Run, Bet, Win! is an upcoming single-player PC game that puts you in the running shoes of anime girl athletes in competitive races.

Unlike the hands-off approach of Umamusume, which focuses on training, Derby Heroines requires you to activate skills in real time. These skills can be activated once per match and range from deadly crowd control abilities that knock back enemy racers to defensive skills like Mirroring, which reflect debuffs that would otherwise ruin your run.

In true Umamusume fashion, each of the 100+ anime girls also comes kitted out with their very own running styles and track/distance aptitudes. Everything from Front Runners, Closers, Stalkers, and Deep Closers is featured, so it looks like there will be a decent number of playstyles at launch.

SHINISE GAMES

You’ll also need to train your chosen girl as well, prioritizing the usual things like stamina, acceleration, pace, and dash speed depending on your chosen strategy. As for how you unlock new characters, the devs have said it’s via in-game gacha, so you’ll even be able to recreate the trauma of your missed MLB Kitasan Black (I’m not salty, I promise).

While we don’t know much about the tracks, the devs have revealed that there will be an audio commentary for each race in Japanese, English, Traditional Chinese, and French.

There’s even a betting feature that allows you to place in-game currency (not real money) on each race’s virtual runners. For example, you can choose to put the big bucks on who you think will win, or try your hand at predicting the top three finishers.

Racing with money on the line should certainly add a whole new layer of excitement (fear, mainly fear) to each race, especially if Derby Heroines happens to have any anime girls who are like Umamusume’s lovable loser Haru Urara.

Derby Heroines: Run, Bet, Win! launches on August 5, 2026, and is currently available on Steam, while a Switch version is scheduled for a later date.

In other Uma-related news, Umamusume’s Gold Ship has become so popular that his farm has suspended weekend visits indefinitely. Additionally, a rare Haru Urara trading card is being sold for almost $1,000 as sellers leap on the game’s popularity.