Mein Gestüt: Ein Leben für die Pferde (2008)

Summary
You inherit a run-down stud farm from your grandfather. Your objective is to re-build this stud farm and transform it in guest house.

Game Design
On the stud farm, the view is top down. While riding in cross-courntry area, the view is behind the horse. 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, and the game is automatically saved.

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.

Character 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 (further is the pointer, faster goes the character/horse). 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!

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 how long he recovers), and a dexterity bar (for probably the jump height?). Jumping happens automatically when you're galloping (does not work in canter) towards an obstacle.

User Interface
On the top right corner, a four-part wheel is clickable. The top part (play icon) allows to increase the play speed (not available in cross-country area). The left part (notebook icon) shows the objectives. The down part (eye icon) shows the current area map. The right part (info icon) gives the estate status or the horse status (if near or ding a horse). The bottom right corner gives the current day and day time. The bottom left corner (only in cross-country area) shows the horse energy (heart), endurance bar and dexterity bar. When you walk close to an interactable area, you can press space or click the GUI element that pops up in bottom left corner.

Horse Status
The horse status includes seven bars:
 * Hygiene; increases with horse care
 * Trust; determines if horse can be ridden
 * Dexterity
 * Energy; determines heart max size in cross-country area
 * Health; decreases if hygiene is too low
 * Repletion
 * Skill

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. Check health option is only available if you have bought a vaccine, although it does not have any incidence on the game. 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. The tutorial said that put a horse in paddock will not attract guests and income, but in reality, this feature does not work, meaning putting a horse in paddock does not change the guests arrival. 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 and giving them a gold horseshoe. 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.

Your own foal
A foal will born three days after breeding your mare with a stud (the mare is unavailable during this time). Yhe foal will appear in the foal pasture next to the breeding stable. You can train your own foal by going to see her in the foal pasture. The foal skill increase by 25% each time you train her. The number of gate during the training increase at each new session. After five days, the foal grows up and automatically goes to the stable. Note that you can train your foal five times, although four are enough to have maximum skills. You can also sell your foal, and its price increase with training.

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 renovation of the old bridge. Gaining access to the mountain estate gate requires renovation of the old barn. (Note that whatever the equipped saddle, only the black one appears in country area.) Inside area, a map of the whole area is available by clicking on the eye at top right corner.

Competitions
There are nine competitions, three in each area. Competition needs to complete the previous one, and to have enough horse skills. Competition takes place at wednesday and sunday. You can train before and after, but you cannot compete for another reward of the same competition.

Collectables
You can collect horseshoes in country-cross areas. They can found on the trail or next remarkable points, or inside glade. They give bonus points that you can use to buy new horses or clothes.

All horseshoes location in the Field

Tips
Your own foal will appear after three days in the foal pasture next to the breeding stable. Carrots are behind the Main House. The profitability of activities, from the smallest to the largest, is: breeding, foal training, massage, guest house.

You can put all your horses, except one, in the pasture without any impact on guests arrival, contrary to what the tutorial says. Indeed, guests continue to come and ride the only available horse. It allows to keep the gold horseshoes as well as the income. If you want to ride a horse, take it before guests arrival or from the pasture.

Other tips are available on a Steam guide.

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.

Manual
English: 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

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