The best Umamusume replacement is $5 on Switch and Steam with 0 gacha

Horse racing meets the sushi bar in this charming and chill indie

Ever since I devoted dozens of hours to my brother's hand-me-down copy of Winning Post for the Sega Saturn, I've had a soft spot for horse racing games. It's a sports-sim subgenre that's been huge in Japan for decades, but only managed to gain popularity with overseas audiences following the 2025 release of the hit mobile and PC game Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Now there's a new contender champing at the bit — only this new racer doesn't star glamorous horse girls, but smiling slabs of pixel-art sushi.

Developed by ITAMAE Studio and published by Kodansha Ltd., Wabisabi SushiDerby is a casual racing sim where you train sushi to win races. No, it doesn't make any sense, but just go with it. These smiley little guys zip around conveyor-belt restaurants, fancy traditional eateries, and casual cafeterias. The detailed environments and cheerful character designs are a big part of the appeal here.

As racers navigate the course, all kinds of hazards pop up, from soy sauce spills that obscure the screen to bursting bubbles of salmon roe that bring a racer to a halt. Like in Umamusume, you can't control every aspect of the race, but you can unlock skills and stat boosts between rounds to give yourself an advantage. For the most part, it's the preparation you do before a race that determines your performance.

Since these are restaurants you're racing in, you'll also have to keep an eye on the order tracker in the top left. If your type of sushi is on the menu, you'll need to cheer on your racer with a simple button press. That activates a speed boost that will hopefully get them out of the way of a deadly pair of chopsticks — and keep them out of a customer's mouth. Just make sure you don't spam those cheers though — Wabisabi SushiDerby's speed boosts are on a cooldown timer, and if you're not careful, you can get gobbled up while you're waiting for the gauge to refill.

While most tracks are open to any type of sushi, some are specific to certain ingredients, like variations of salmon or nori rolls. In order to progress, you'll have to make a variety of different racers, rather than just sticking to one type consistently. Each piece of sushi has a short shelf life — just four races — but as you keep playing, you'll unlock more luxurious types of fish, meat, and veggies that will allow you to take on greater challenges. As you ascend the five racing ranks of Wabisabi SushiDerby, the types of sushi you can make will grow more elaborate. For instance, winning a few races with Salmon allows you to unlock Fire-Grilled Salmon, then Salmon Roe, and so on. Better ingredients yield racers with higher base stats and splashier skills. Eventually, your goal is to win the coveted S1 Galaxy Cup.

Wabisabi SushiDerby doesn't have a sprawling ensemble cast and an ongoing story like Umamusume, but it also doesn't have a gacha component, either. Instead, the focus here is more on the skill progression and casual business-sim elements of horse racing. If you enjoyed Umamusume but have hit the free-to-play progress wall, Wabisabi SushiDerby provides many of the same pleasures in a less daunting package, with an endearing art style, quick little races, and a satisfying yet simple progression system. Best of all, it's just $5 on Steam and Switch. Heck, that's less than the price of a California roll these days.