Mes Galops 3D de 1 à 4

Summary
You are invited to spend your school holiday at your grandma's brand new riding school. There you will help her and your aunt and uncle to perfect their preparation courses for the first four Galops (the French equestrian association's diplomas for riders) by taking the tests and competing in competitions.

Game Design
3D, going for realistic. Looks similar to other Dancing Dots games, especially Ride! Equestrian Simulation - they even have the same menu music!

Gameplay
You can mostly move around freely on the grounds of the riding school and pick your next activity. There are three subjects: 1. General knowledge about horses and riding, such as colours, disciplines etc. 2. Horse care 3. Riding First you get texts to read, then take multiple choice tests. The latter two also have "practical" parts. The actual test takes place in the classroom. To pass, you have to answer 15 out of 20 questions correctly. After passing the third test, you can compete in the show jumping competitions.

Riding Mechanics
Mouse based. Move to steer, left click to go faster, right click to slow down. The horse - like most riding school horses - will slow down by itself if not regularly prodded. Jumping requires a click before and after the jump. Other than most games, this is explained as shifting your balance to help the horse clear the jump, not directly making it jump. Points for realism!

Differences between Releases
In Germany, the game was released as a sequel to Deine Reitschule. German translation: The translation, while not as bad as in some games, is often awkward and sometimes plain wrong when it comes to horse specific terms and subtleties; for an educational game with quizzes this is quite bad. There is also no regard to differences in languages which leads to silly test questions like: Wie nennt man den Hals eines Pferdes? Antwort: Hals (What is a horse's neck called? Answer: Neck). In the Netherlands, the game was released as "Anky's Ruiterschool", promoted by controversial dressage rider Anky van Grunsven (see also Famous Equestrian Cameos).