Dead Heat has its roots in the early 2000s, when the original game ran as a small but passionate online horse racing simulation. Players built stables, raced their thoroughbreds against each other, and competed for glory on a weekly race card. For just over a year it thrived — a tight-knit community united by a love of racing and a healthy competitive streak.
Then, like so many games of its era, it fell victim to progress. The software it ran on became incompatible with Windows 10, and with no easy path forward, Dead Heat closed its doors. The horses were put out to pasture. The stables went quiet.
Dead Heat II is a full rebuild — designed from the ground up for the modern web, with everything that made the original special and much more besides. Real equine coat genetics. A proper breeding engine. Stat inheritance. A live race engine with commentary. The spirit of the original, rebuilt for today.
Welcome back to the track.
Dead Heat II is a browser-based thoroughbred horse racing simulation. You register a stable, create horses, enter them in races, and compete against other players for prize money and leaderboard points.
Every horse is unique — generated with a full set of hidden racing stats and real equine genetics that determine their coat colour and what they pass on to their offspring. Your trainer's notes give you clues about what you've got, but the only way to truly know a horse is to race them.
Races run on a weekly schedule across three days — Maiden races on Thursdays for unbeaten horses, Allowances on Fridays for the open field, and Black Type races on Saturdays for the best in the game. Breed the next generation, develop your bloodlines over time, and build a stable to be proud of.
There's no pay-to-win here. Every stable starts equal. What you build is entirely down to skill, strategy, and a little racing luck.
Dead Heat II is a labour of love, built and run by a small team of volunteers who genuinely enjoy horse racing games.
Interested in helping run Dead Heat II? Send Rhianon a message in-game.
Dead Heat II is a friendly, welcoming place. We want people of all experience levels to feel at home here — whether you're a veteran of the original game or you've never played a horse racing sim in your life.
Competition is encouraged. Unsportsmanlike behaviour is not. We're all here because we enjoy the same thing, and the best rivalries on the track are built on mutual respect off it.
If you have questions, feedback, or ideas for the game, reach out to an admin through in-game messaging. Dead Heat II is a living game and your input genuinely shapes where it goes.
Dead Heat II is built on open-source tools and wouldn't exist without the work of the communities behind them.
PHP & MySQL — server-side logic and data storage.
Bootstrap 5 — responsive layout and UI components.
Bootstrap Icons — the icon set used throughout the interface.
EB Garamond & Source Sans 3 — typography via Google Fonts.
Equine coat colour genetics — based on real-world research into the E, A, G, Cr, W20 and W22 loci in thoroughbred populations.
Dead Heat II is a fan-made simulation game. It is not affiliated with any real-world racing authority, breed registry, or betting organisation.