Riding Club Championships

Summary
Riding Club Championships is a free-to-play 3D horse game for PC and Mac centered around competitive show jumping and parcours. It was developed and released by Artplant first 2010 on Facebook, and then ported to Steam in 2016.

The players can complete various parcours in singleplayer or compete against others in a multiplayer challenge mode. They can also create and submit their own courses for others to try.

Game Design
The game uses the Unity 5 engine and its graphics are designed in a pseudorealistic art style. It is fairly level-based, meaning the rider cannot move around like in an open world, but rather inside various bordered level-boxes.

The controls consist of WASD or arrow keys on a PC keyboard, with the numbers 1-4 to control the horses gait and the spacebar to jump. (See picture below)



Gameplay
At the beginning, the player can choose their and their horses gender and appearance out of 12 hair/skin color combinations, 65 horse coat colors and 16 mane/tail colors. Note that is is not possible to own several horses at once; however, if the rider is unsatisfied with their or their horses looks later in the game, they can still change it against a fee of the ingame currency.

After completing a brief tutorial on the paddock, the player is free to try out some of the official and/or player-made courses. More courses unlock with level-ups.

Singleplayer
There are various things to do in singleplayer mode; see below.

Course Types
First of, there are two types of courses to ride: showjumping and agility courses. In the first one, the player needs to exclusively jump over obstacles, in the second, there are rather some checkpoints the rider will have to pass. It is often necessary to slow down the horse in another gait on agility courses, whereas on showjumping courses, speed and sprints are often key.

The Paddock/Free Riding
Besides set courses, there is the paddock where the player can ride around freely and jump some obstacles in any order; sometimes, gift boxes and stars will spawn, granting seemingly random rewards, like 6 gold coins or 20XP.

Lucky clovers, which can be acquired in the shop for gold coins, are said to have a special effect when used in the paddock.

Horse Care
After repeatedly running some courses, the rider's horse will get dirty and require some grooming. The horse care system seems fairly realistic, with set steps and a heart bar to fill. The game will e.g. Remark "you can't use this here" if the player attempts to brush the horses head with an inappropriate tool, and the horse will react accordingly.

Creation Mode/Course Editor
With the course editor tool, the players are free to design their own courses and submit them for the community to try, like and share. There is a rather broad selection of obstacles, plants and decoration to choose from. It should be noted that each placed down item will cost the creator some ingame currency.

Multiplayer
There are a few ways to compete against other players in one form or another; see below for examples.

Ranked Matches
Ranked Matches are the easiest accessible form of multiplayer in the game. When clicking upon the button "Ranked Match", the game will start to search for an opponent. When found, both players will complete a randomly selected official course from the course selection that both unlocked in singleplayer mode, meaning that the riders can't see each other while competing. After both contestants are done with the course, the game will inform them who has won, with what time and penalty score.

Challenge a Friend
This feature gives players the possibility to challenge people from their (steam) friend list. Friend matches do not use any action points.

Weekly Showdown
The Weekly Showdown is a competition where all of the riders deciding to take part (the requirement is reaching level 10) will need to complete a randomly selected official course, and whoever ends with the best time and the least penalties wins. There is a qualification round and players will need to spend 150 skill tickets for each try of the course. Skill tickets can be acquired by winning ranked matches, winning friends challenges and completing quests.

Shop, Customization and Ingame Currency
Naturally, the shop is the number one place to spend earned gold coins, which are the ingame currency and can be obtained by completing courses, matches, quests, level-ups and via the daily login rewards system. In the shop, there is a medium-sized variety of different clothing items and horse gear/tack to buy. Additionally, there are a handful of buyable items used to boost action points, the horses stats for a limited time, etc.

Clubs and Chats
Up to 20 riders can join a single stable club. Players in a stable club will have an extra chat window and can challenge fellow club members. Depending on in which language the game is played, the player can access the chat in their respective language (e.g. German), plus the global (english) chat, which is open for all. It's also possible to message others via private chat.

Daily Quests and Login Rewards
Daily Quests are a good way to earn XP, money and skill tickets. They usually consist of tasks like "ride 2500 meters" or "complete 6 official courses without penalties". There are also daily login rewards with a somewhat more special gift every 50 days, if the player logs in without breaking the streak.

Pro-Rider Membership
At the beginning of the game, the player gets a free 3-day trial of the Pro-Rider Membership. After that, it can be bought with real money and unlocks advantages like free horse care, extra daily gifts, 50% more skill tickets and double the amount of playtime for ranked matches and play alone courses, as competing in courses costs 10 AP each instead of 20.

Stats, Levels and Experience
There are six different horse stats which can each be upgraded to level 10. Each time the player levels up, they gain one skill point they can spend to increase an attribute. The max level is logicially 60 with every attribute maxed out.

In order to level up, the rider will need to gather experience by completing courses and quests. Each level requires more and more experience points to the next level-up.



Action Points and Upgrades
The game uses an action points system, which regenerate over time, in order to balance the amount of resources like coins and experience the player can gather in a set amount of time. A fully regenerated action points (short: AP) bar will contain 200 AP, although it is possible to extend that limit by receiving action points while levelling up or feeding treats to the horse. The AP bar will then show something like "250/200 AP". Permanently extending the AP bar works only with clothing upgrades.

Each obstacle course and ranked match will use up 20 AP or 10 AP with a Pro Rider Membership. Activities that don't use up AP are riding on the paddock and friend matches. As AP regenerate over time, it is possible to speed up the process by upgrading gear and clothing, which will cost gold coins. Each piece of tack/clothing can be upgraded to Level 6 with bonuses like faster AP regeneration speed, a bigger AP bar and better stats.

Penalty System
Just like in real life equestrian competitions, certain mistakes on the obstacle courses will result in different penalties. The rider will receive +4 penalty points if the horse knocks over a bar/pole, collides with something, or if an obstacle is jumped from the wrong side. Furthermore, with each passing second over the time limit the player will receive +1 penalty points. In matches, the person with less penalty points will get placed higher, even if the opponent was effectively quicker.

Records and Leaderboard
The player can beat their own records on all of the rideable courses, plus compare their scores with club members, friends, and all of the players on their game platform (Facebook or Steam) in the global section. There's also a Leaderboard for Stable clubs.

Differences between Releases
Since Facebook and Steam are two different platforms, players will compete against other facebook users on Facebook, and Steam users on Steam. From experience, this leaves Steam users with significantly less competition to challenge.

Steam Achievements
On Steam, there are 53 different achievements to unlock:

System Requirements & Compatibility
Required for PC: System: Windows Vista, 7 (SP1 required), 8, 10 Processor: Dual Core CPU 2.0 GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2) or better RAM: 1 GB Graphics: Dedicated graphics card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GT or better) DirectX: Version 9.0c Memory: 1 GB

Required for Mac: System: Mountain Lion (10.8) Processor: Dual Core CPU 2.0 GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2) or better RAM: 1 GB Graphics: Dedicated graphics card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GT or better) Memory: 1 GB

Accessibility
The game is accessible via Facebook and Steam.