Häst & Ponny: Varsågod och rid!

Summary
Visit and groom the horses at Greenfield Stables, learn about horses and riding, and enter tournaments.

Game Design
The game is as pixelated and laggy as you would expect from a 2001 game. The 12 horses are 2D in the stable view, each their own model. The only idle movements they show is blinking and moving their ears from time to time, but they are mostly static and do not react to the player. While the horses are clearly made to look like a drawing, the stable environment is going for more realistic textures. The stable is full of horse sounds, the stall doors open with a creak, creating a nice stable atmosphere. Navigation in the stables is controlled by point&click / drag&drop. You move through the aisle of stalls by clicking directional cursors.

Gameplay
On a personal note: As a child, i spent a massive amount of fantasy living in this stable. I knew all the horses and their pedigree / info by heart. I still remember more about this game, its sounds, and how it felt to me as a kid than i thought i would! First of all, you sign up for a riding lesson by speaking to the riding instructor, Anne, at the counter. Then, you can go see the horses and pick one for the lesson.

Riding Lessons
After you have signed up for a riding lesson, you drag the bridle and saddle on the horse you chose. The “exit stall“ cursor will then change and you can enter the riding school after knocking at the door. Riding lessons are mostly theoretical, you get a fairly long lesson with text (spoken audio + written down in a powerpoint presentation style) and pictures / videos on different topics.

Beginners Lesson
In between, you get tested by clicking on correct parts on a schematic image.
 * leading a horse
 * riding school etiquette
 * adjusting the stirrups, tightening the girth
 * mounting a horse
 * correct posture
 * holding the reins
 * aids - voice, seat, weight shifts, reins, legs
 * how to give aids for basic gaits or halting
 * Posting Trot / Sitting Trot
 * lunging training for balance
 * dismounting the horse
 * securing the stirrups on the saddle

Advanced Lesson
You get tested on riding figures which you have to ride using the arrow keys (there is no tutorial, though). You have to do it by heart and accurately enough to beat the game. Some of them are rather tricky and get frustrating when the game says you did it wrong, but gives you no hints.
 * Reining Back
 * Left Lead / Right Lead Canter
 * Half Seat
 * Jumping Posture / yielding the reins
 * Bending
 * Riding Figures

Tournament Lesson
- collection - turn on the forehand / haunches - lateral movements (shoulder-in, half pass etc) - different jumping obstacles - jumping basics - ground work - dress code for tournaments - pony measurements - tournament levels - types and basic rules of jumping, dressage, and eventing tournaments - looking at parcours before the show - documents for tournaments At the end, you take a quiz with 20 questions about the contents of this lesson as well as the previous ones.

You pass the test and get to participate in tournaments even if you get everything wrong on the test. After a lesson, you are returned to your horse's stall and can not leave before you have taken off saddle and bridle and picked its hooves.

Tournaments
under construction, too tired now

You can participate in Show Jumping, Dressage, and Cross Country competitions. You control the horse by arrow keys / space. In Show Jumping and dressage, you can switch camera mode between camera from behind the horse, or from horseback. You can pick between five of the horses from the stable: Shalimar, Jazz, Prince, Misty, or Amigo. Despite each horse's flash card describing their preferences and dislikes when riding, there is no difference to their behaviour / controls when riding.

Show Jumping
There are 5 levels of show jumping competition. Before the ride, you can take a look at the parcours on a chart, or you can watch a demonstration ride. The different competitions are following a different ruleset for how they are judged. Three refusals will disqualify you. Riding the wrong way for too long (30 seconds after start) gets you disqualified. You can throw bars on any obstacle by riding into them from behind. You can get a refusal by walking into the correct obstacle from the wrong side. You can only jump while directly in front of the correct obstacle. You can keep the space bar pressed permanently and your horse will jump as soon as it gets into the jumping area - but this means it will jump to early and most likely kick a bar down.

There Are Sounds: hoof beats according to gait a clonking sound when a bar falls a neigh at a refusal commentator voice

Level 1 / Level 3 If you pass the round (9 obstacles) without mistakes, you directly continue with 5 additional obstacles.

Level 2 / Level 5 Lowest amount of mistakes in a round of 10 / 11 obstacles, in a tie, faster rider wins.

Level 4 Only time matters, 4 penalty seconds added for each fallen bar.

You can throw off bars of obstacles if you just run into them from behind.

If you don't jump in time, the horse will refuse (with a neigh)

System Requirements & Compatibility
WIN 98/ME/2000 Pentium 90 processor 12MB RAM (16MB recommended) graphics card 256 colors, 640x480 resolution 16 Bit SoundBlaster compatible sound card

I got this game to run on Windows 10 via VirtualBox XP without any trouble.