Horse Game History

Early Board Games
The earliest forms of Chess and its predecessors had horses as pieces in pre-Islamic Arabia (before about 630 CE), and in India as a game called Chaturanga even earlier than that. These games had several kinds of pieces on a board of squares. The pieces representing horses had a set of valid moves that distinguished them from other pieces on the board.

A Navajo game referred to as Stick-Dice includes pieces that progress in a circle around a center stone, using "dice" to control the progression of the pieces. The game is sometimes called "Stick-Dice and Horses", with the horses represented by the pieces which travel around the circle. The game involved betting on a winner of the game.

The Rise of Non-Racing Games
Many horse-related board games throughout the 20th century were based on horse racing. One source of horse-themed board games came from products in popular culture like German children's radio show Bibi & Tina, which transitioned to an animated series in 2004. There were several Bibi branded boardgames starting around the time of the beginning of the radio play series in 1991, including Bibi Blocksberg auf dem Martinshof. My Little Pony was another animated series for children which generated fantasy pony board games branded My Little Pony in the 1980s and later. In the early 2000s, companies like Breyer, a manufacturer of horse model toys, began to produce board games involving horses that did not center around horse racing: "The Breyer Game of Horse Sense" (2001) and "Hold Your Horses" (2002). By 2007, the classic board game Monopoly released a horse-themed "Horse Lover's Edition".

Mechanical Games
"Trade Stimulators" were mechanical devices used in shops to promote certain products, or to get customers' attention with the goal of stimulating the purchase of products sold in the shop. A trade stimulator by the name of Steeplechase included colored balls that rolled down a randomizing path, so that the resulting order was random. Reference