Mein Gestüt: Ein Leben für die Pferde (2008)

Summary
You inherit a run-down stud farm from your grandfather.

Game Design
On the stud farm, the view is top down. Time is constantly running (except in menus or when the game is minimized). You wake up at 8am and the day automatically ends at 6pm. You'll get a popup with an overview of the achievements and finances of the day.

Controls
Walking around on the stud farm property means the controls are relative to compass direction - left arrow for west, up arrow for north, etc. Shift lets you run faster (on foot). WASD doesn't work. Alternately, you can move by moving the mouse in the desired direction while clicking left mouse button. When you walk close to an interactable area, you can press space or click the GUI element that pops up. However, pressing space won't close the info popups, this only works with pressing enter. When you run into a wall, most of the time, the horse will automatically move out of the way, instead of doing a full-stop refusal like in most games!

Accessibility
The settings allow to toggle between controlling a horse via keyboard or mouse. Moving the human character, both options are always on.

Customization
Upon starting a new game, you can customize your character (male or female, and a small selection of clothing and hair styles for each, as well as three different shades of white skin). You can then customize your first horse. There are three horse breeds whose models differ very slightly - the Friesian has feathered legs, while the Andalusian and Hanoverian have the minutest difference in size and muscle shape. You can choose the base color, regardless of breed (black, grey, white, palomino, creme colored, red, or brown, and then add either a black mane, a blaze, white socks, a pinto pattern or an appaloosa butt pattern (please edit the correct terminology).

Facilities
At the beginning, you only have your main house, a paddock, and the stable. Other locations on the property need to be renovated, which requires a certain amount of stars in your stud farm's rating.

The Main House
The game begins in your main house. The house has two rooms. In the bedroom, you can sleep to end your day, and you can use the wardrobe to get changed in. The living room has a bookshelf for gaining knowledge (increasing the value of your services, you gain more money from guests or trained/massaged horses), and a computer with an online shop for buying tack, clothing, food, and new horses, as well as an overview about your stud farm: its buildings, your horses, your won trophies, etc. Behind your house (north) there's a garden, with a carrot patch you can harvest from.

The Stable
The stable is where the core caring tasks are carried out. Here, you can check each horse’s health, feed it, groom it, braid it, clean its hooves, hose it down, clean its stall, rename it, sell it, lead it from its stall, and saddle it up for a ride. You start out with three intact boxes, while the back of the stable is visibly in disrepair. As the game progresses you will be able to upgrade your stable, eventually expanding it to a 9-stall version, this can hold up to 9 horses for use by you and your guests.

Horse Care
When you select your horse in its stall, you can
 * braid mane/tail (one click action)
 * groom
 * pick hooves
 * hose down
 * check health
 * tack up
 * rename
 * sell
 * lead out of the stable

The grooming interactions are the usual stuff: don't touch the head or legs with the coarse brush or they'll lose trust; and scrape at each hoof for ~30 seconds while not touching the frog with the metal hoof pick. There's a softer brush which is used to increase trust. With not enough trust, you are not able to saddle or ride your horse! For good horse care, you are awarded golden horse shoes. When interacting directly with a horse (like feed, pet, mount), these options will only show up if you approach your horse from its left side.

The Paddock
The paddock is where you rest your horses to reduce the pressure of running a busy riding stable. If a horse is left in a paddock it will not be counted as a working horse on the next day. Meaning it will not attract guests and income. Whilst a horse is in the paddock its hygiene and repletion properties do not de-grade. The drawback of using the paddock is that a horse’s trust degrades. When you select a horse to get it back from the paddock, there will be a cutscene of your horse coming out of the gate towards you.

The Riding Arena
In the riding arena, you can train foals (your own and client foals). Training a foal takes 1,5 hours of in game time. Training your own foals before they grow up will increase their value. What the tutorial won't tell you (but the manual does): Feeding your foal to reduce its bad behaviour is done by right click.

The Guest House
The guesthouse is where you can house paying guests who are using your horses. With one room up and running you can provide boarding for up to 3 guests. With two more upgrades, you end up with capacity for 9 guests.

The Therapy Center
Another source of income is the therapy center, where clients pay for a horse massage. The Therapy Centre is where you massage horses, alleviating them of stress. You need to save money and renovate the old watermill to get the massage ser-vice up and running. Clients will then bring horses for you to massage, you can massage your own horses too.

The Breeding Stable
You can breed your own mares (apparently, all your horses are mares) with a selection of randomized studs. In addition to breeding for your own stud farm, you can take commissions from clients – they will order a specific foal and within a time limited mini game, you need to find the perfect pair to get the right combination of coat color, breed, and pattern.

Cross-Country Areas
There are gates leading to fields, woods, and mountain estates. The fields estate comes for free, but the other two have to be purchased to allow access to the land. Buying an estate enhances the riding experience for you and your guests, allowing you to level-up your horse’s strength and skill, to level-up your riding stable’s star rating, to compete at cross-country races, and to collect bonus pickups. Gaining access to the woods estate gate requires reno-vation of the old bridge. Gaining access to the mountain estate gate requires renovation of the old barn.

Riding Mechanics
When riding off the property, into the trail ride areas, the riding controls change to the more intuitive arrow up - faster, arrow down - slower.However, the space bar isn't JUMP, it takes you back to the stables (with a popup to confirm).

The horse has an endurance bar stating how long your horse can gallop, and a dexterity bar for .....? Jumping happens automatically when you're galloping (does not work in canter) towards an obstacle.

Comparisons to the prequel Mein Gestüt
In Mein Gestüt, horses you lead would just walk/trot behind you without being on a lead. This game has implemented leads. When you would lead a horse into its stall, it would just teleport there upon selecting the option. In this game, there is a small cutscene of the horse actually walking into the stall.

Trivia
The horse model is probably the same, and the texture for the white horse is definitely the same as in Riding Star 3.

Additional Media
File:PC_RidingStables_Life_Manual_UK_ESD_2014.pdf

Also available in German:



Availability
The game is available on Steam

Save Location
The game automatically saves at the end of the in-game day.

On Windows, the save files can be found in