Alexandra Ledermann 8 - Les Secrets Du Haras

Summary
Emma, aspiring veterinarian from California, ends up at a stud farm in Provence, France, led by Flora from the previous game.

Game Design
The game is in 3D, with photorealistic textures. Unlike its prequels, this game has an ongoing clock while on the stud farm or in the countryside, while story events as well as riding or fast-traveling take a pre-defined amount of time. There are time limitations for certain actions, like not doing horse care late at night, or competitions happening on fixed dates within a time frame. These time limits also come into effect for some of the story tasks. There is a daylight cycle, as well as different weather conditions that have an effect on horses when in the pasture.

Gameplay
Emma stays at the stud farm to help out, and soon learns about the mystery around the disappearance of Flora's friend Marie. While training horses and taking part in competitions are gameplay features, they take second place behind solving the mystery. While some story events involve riding, a lot of time is spent running on foot through the French village close to the stud farm.

The day cycle has a lot of influence on game progress. Emma can set an alarm for 6am-10am, and choose to go to bed anytime from 8pm. Otherwise, Emma is teleported to bed at 4am, and a new day starts. When saving and reloading the game, Emma is always teleported to her bedroom, while the time is as it was saved. The village has market days (for tack) on thursdays and sundays.

Horse Care
In the stable, you can access feeding, medication, mucking, brushing and hoof picking, which either gives you little cut scenes, or the usual grooming minigames. Brush (but not the head!), scrape hooves (but not the frog!), remove dirty straw and replace with fresh straw. This is meant to be done every day, but stats don't always decay over night / horses don't complain. Only the energy stat requires regular care so it replenishes, allowing to ride the horse in training. From the stable, you can also access the pasture with your horse, where you can hose down your horse (check for weather, or horse can get sick!), or train lunging or horse behaviour.

Horse Behaviour
Like in its prequel, there's a horse behaviour mode. You get three separate cutscenes where your horse expresses a certain behaviour. You need to pick the correct reaction from a menu to raise your skill in this. Hints on correct reactions are given when studying horse behaviour in Flora's office.

Lunging
New in this game is the lunging mode. This requires keyboard controls to control gait and direction, as well as simultaneous mouse control, following a marking on the floor and collecting bonus (or minus..) points.

Riding
There are three disciplines to train and compete in – dressage, show jumping, and cross-country. There are two mandatory training sessions, each counting 50% for your passing grade each week (or else, you need to repeat the week). The mechanics have been slightly updated from the last game.

Cross Country
Move with Arrow Keys, jump with space. The next obstacle is lit up with a colorful circle that indicates whether the horse's speed is correct. Blue/Turquoise will be a perfect jump, green is a good one, and anything below yellow will lead to a refusal.

Show Jumping
Move with Arrow Keys, jump with space. In front of each obstacle, there is a colorful bar on the floor. Altering speed will change its color (same color coding as Cross Country), depending on horse's skills, it will be easier or harder (or impossible) to get the best colors.

Dressage
Dressage follows a line of dots on the floor, which indicate the path as well as the requested gait. Gaits come with extended/collected modifier keys. There are special figures like passage or pirouette etc that are executed by repeating a set of arrow keys in the right order. Dressage gives points (0-10) for each part of the course, which add up to and end grade.

Locations
While there is an option to fast-travel using the map, the intended way to travel from stud farm to village or other places is on horseback (which is odd, since Emma lives in the village, but her horses live on the farm...). Whenever Emma is in the countryside, it's basically open world for exploring the area and reaching the different locations. Fast-traveling between stud farm and village entrance takes 2 in-game hours (longer for deeper in the village), while taking a horse takes about 45 min.

Village Béléou
Béléou is a fictional village in the french countryside where Emma gets stranded at the beginning of the game. There are a bunch of NPCs she can talk to, some of them play a role in the storyline as well – including Hugo (a neuro-atypical character, potentially homeless? unclear.), artist Créon (Luigi in English version), Claudette (Hilda) the store owner, ... Most of the story tasks happen in Béléou, and in Chapter 3, Emma chooses an appartment in the village.

Stud Farm
The farm officially belongs to Marie, who has mysteriously disappeared, potentially dead. It is currently run by Marie's friends and employees Flora, Miguel (Michael), Carol, and Raphael (Oliver), who is Flora's cousin, two of whom we've already met in the prequel.

Horse Market / Breeder
This is not an accessible building, when you ride up to it, it just opens a menu where you can buy, sell, or breed horses.

Story
The game is separated into story chapters, starting with a tutorial chapter in which Emma arrives and learns about all the game mechanics, including the riding disciplines. After completing that, the player freely decides what to do with the day. New chapters in the story are often connected to a certain day of the week, so there can be several days without new story parts in between. When finishing a chapter, a popup will inform you on what day the next chapter starts. Every new chapter begins with a diary screen, showing a date to progress the time, and recounting what recently happened and how Emma feels about it. Then, you return to the game, and usually get a text message or call by a character, sending you onto the next quest. You may also choose to ignore the quest and go about your business, and pick up the story the next time the conditions are right (e.g. if a quest asks you to go somewhere at midnight, and you miss midnight by more than one hour, you can go again the next day when it's midnight). Emma and Oliver are determined to solve the mystery, as they do not believe that Marie is actually dead. Hint: If you want to make separate saves to play out every decision, you need to make a new save before the decision, because once the decision is taken, the game will auto-save your current save!

please use spoiler tags to hide big plot points!

Chapters
Chapter “The Adventure Begins“ – Tutorial chapter - get to know the stud farm - learn about horse care – Flora lends you one of her horses - try out the riding disciplines (no free play yet)

Chapter 1 “The Happy Event” Fetch quest:

Go to the stable at midnight (between 12pm-00.59am). Big Choice: Stay or Leave

The game moves on to chapter 2 or 3, depending on choice.

Chapter 2 “A Brillant Career” This chapter only happens when Emma decides to go to her internship in Paris.

The game moves on to chapter 4.

Chapter 3 “Young Woman Seeks Apartment” This chapter only happens when Emma decides to ditch the internship and take the job at the stud farm right away. First of all, Emma gets to choose her first own horse. Emma is also responsible for Amelie, the newborn foal. Oliver invites Emma to his place, there is a cutscene. He then gives her the ads for available apartments in Béléou. You can also pick up a collectable figurine in his room.

The choice of apartment has influence on where in the village you start your day, but also has an influence on which chapter comes next:

Chapter 4 “Young Woman Seeks Apartment” This chapter only happens when Emma decided to go to her internship in Paris, and then came back to the stud farm. First of all, Emma gets to choose her first own horse. Emma is also responsible for Amelie, the newborn foal. Plot Piece:

Emma needs to decide for an apartment in Béléou.

You visit Oliver to get the key to the flat, so you can pick up the collectable figurine there in any case. Oliver is less excited than in chapter 3 with the cutscene. The choice of apartment has influence on where in the village you start your day, but also has an influence on which chapter comes next, because:

Chapter 5 “The Mystery of the Tape Recorder” This chapter only happens when Emma decided to rent Hilda's apartment. Action Cutscene:

The game moves on to chapter 6.

Chapter 6 “Business is going badly” This chapter happens after chapter 4 or 5.

Spying Quest:

Big Choice:

Chapter 7 “Infiltration” This chapter only happens when Emma decides to

Chapter 8 “Infiltration” This chapter only happens when Emma decides to

Choices and Endings
Some of the player choices will affect flavor or even plot of the game. The choice in the beginning, whether Emma should stay at the farm, or go to her job interview

has an influence on which 2/3 apartements are available in chapter 3. Some of the choices (including finishing a certain amount of side quests) will also affect what ending cutscene you will get.

(not yet) Full Guide to each ending, major spoilers:

Collectables
There are 10 hidden figurines in stud farm and village. Finding all of them gives you a surprise.

These are the locations:

Differences between Releases
Names of characters have been localized.

Additional Media
File:Petz Horsez 2 (Lexis Numérique) Manual.pdf