Poema is my pride and joy. She was my first horse and she’s a competition winner, but she’s reached her potential. She’ll never be a show jumper, and that’s where the money and prestige are to be found. If I’m ever to grow my horse farm into a nationally renowned equestrian centre, I need the cash to expand and upgrade my facilities. Poema is a hoofstep on the path to that future, but she’s not going to be able to take me all the way herself.
For all its hand-drawn aesthetics, Horses of Hoofprint Bay has hard realities like the limits of Poema’s future bubbling under its surface. While the game’s scripted narrative may be lacking, it’s shockingly easy to fill in the gaps with drama worthy of a Jilly Cooper novel.
There may be better author comparisons, but I learned everything I know about showjumping from Cooper’s Riders – much as I learned everything about independent television franchise bids in the ’80s from its sequel Rivals – a book which is as much about the nitty gritty of horsetraining and competing as it is about toffs jumping into bed with one another. In my mind the two are tightly connected – showjumping and Jilly Cooper, not horses and toff bonking. In Horses of Hoofprint Bay, the only real story you get is the fact you’ve scrimped and saved to buy your first horse and your uncle has lent you the use of his field while you start your business. I was hoping there would at least be a similar setup to Regency Solitaire, where your motivation for touring the country’s tearooms is motivated by paying off your brother’s gambling debts. Yet, despite this disappointing start, I soon found its business simulation mechanics provide great storytelling material.
Horses of Hoofprint Bay has many of the trappings of a cosy game. At the start of each day, you’ll prepare the stables, dragging a rake around the yard to sling away the manure, clicking buckets of water to refill the trough, and making sure there’s enough hay for all the horses. But this isn’t just for the larks, if you skip these tasks there are serious knock on effects for yours horses. Forget to brush down your horses’ coats or pick out the stones in their shoes, and they’re liable to develop saddle sores and other injuries when you ride them. Leave an abrasion untreated and it can develop into an infection. Even something like taking a dirty horse to a contest can cost you. I forgot to brush Poema before entering her into her first contest and despite taking first place, her embarrassingly unkempt coat lost my stable prestige. It was a cruel end to what should have been a great celebration.
So long as your horses are well rested, you can train them each day. You may want to take them through some confidence building lunges, where they need to walk, trot, and canter on demand, or a more physically demanding Cavaletti or showjumping course. These latter too are much more tiring, but they build a horse’s strength and endurance. The higher its endurance the more energy it can expend on training sessions each day, and the higher its strength the more jumps it can do in succession before slowing to a walk for a breather – essential when you’re competing in a timed competition. Overdo the exercise, however, and you’ll exhaust a horse, severely reducing its energy for the next day.
Now, unlike Poema, my freshly bought stallion Kolizey has the potential to compete in showjumping competitions. He’ll never go all the way to the big national contests, but he can take a ribbon in the district and regional contests. Or he will when he’s up to standard; he’s arrived from the breeder in a sorry state: brambles in his mane, mud on his flanks, stones in his shoes, and his strength and endurance are far too low to make it through an entire course of obstacles.
The biggest problem, however, is Kolizey’s confidence: it’s shot. I don’t know what was happening in the stalls at the breeder’s, but he arrived at my stables backing up at the first sign of a jump. Before I can hope to earn him his first ribbon, I have to build up our relationship. If we exercise together enough in the yard, his confidence will grow and he will follow my direction without question.
It may be getting ahead of myself, but I also have plans for Kolizey and Poema to produce a foal. Done right, the two should raise a horse that’s able to exceed its parents’ potential, becoming stronger and more endurant than both of them. A stronger horse means a ticket to the bigger contests and the bigger prize pots. Not that I can start breeding the two just yet. I want both horses to be at peak physical fitness. Poema’s already there, while Kolizey can’t even manage a jump without shying away.
While getting Koliszey contest ready, I still need to be bringing in cash. That means using Poema as a training horse for students’ riding lessons. The better I am at the minigame where I use the Q, E, W, A, S, and D keys to tell them to sit forward or back, hold the reins higher or lower, or to level out their legs, the more they tip me. I have to be careful, because when Poema is working with students, she’s not being stretched, and her strength and endurance can wither which means she struggles to maintain her winning streak in the contests.
Another reason to hold off on getting Poema pregnant is that during the second half of her pregnancy, she can’t be ridden, which means no contests and no lessons for students. Currently, those are my two main sources of income besides what I’m paid in rent to board a couple of nearby farmers’ horses. I don’t want her out of the rota when Kolizey isn’t yet ready to step into her place.
And, well, while I’m on the subject of plans, reader, I must tell you, the future lies in semen. If I can build the facilities, earn the cash, and raise Kolizey’s profile, I can make a good buck on his virile stallion cream. With the money I bring in from a prizewinning semen I can expand into the far field, creating space to take on more horses, upgrade my home from the caravan I’m living in currently, maybe even build a proper training school. I’m not going to afford all that by giving riding lessons to the local children or boarders’ rent. No, the big money comes from competition wins and valuable horse sauce.
While Poema continues entering contests and carrying students, I start pushing Kolizey harder. Multiple training sessions every day. I begin with Cavaletti, which is a kind of obedience competition. Your horse has to be travelling at the correct speed when it passes marker flags – walking, trotting, or cantering – and make some small jumps over cross bars. It should be straightforward, but because Kolizey’s confidence is so low, he keeps refusing my orders and trying to change speed. He warns me before he’s about to speed up or slow down, and if I counter it in time he will obey me and even receive a little confidence boost, but often he does it just before a jump, messing up my timing and he hits the bars. Each time he fails a jump it knocks his confidence, risking me taking me even further from where I need him to be.
I try the easier lunges sessions. And they raise his confidence a little but they’re doing little for his physical health. It’s all taking too long and Poema’s getting older every day. In a fit of frustration, and in mark that I may not be able to cut it as an animal trainer, I skip from the Cavaletti training straight into a showjumping qualifier. The time limits on these are much stricter, so you have to clear the course at a gallop. This is also where a horse’s strength really comes into play. The faster you’re going, the more strength it requires to jump an obstacle. Horses only recover strength when moving at a walk, so you don’t want to tire a horse out by going at a gallop through the whole course, else they won’t have the strength to make all the jumps and they’ll be forced to withdraw from the event. But nor do you want to go too slowly and fall foul of the time limit.
I realise my mistake as soon as the course begins: I try to stir Kolizey into a walk he refuses. Thankfully the timer only starts when he crosses the line, but it’s an inauspicious start. I tap forward again and he begins to walk. I tap again and Kolizey moves up to a trot, then to a canter, before picking up to a gallop. I think he’s going too fast as we approach the first jump, but Kolizey clears it. Then another jump and another. With a nervous eye on the depleting strength bar, I tap him down to a canter for the next jump. We’re halfway through the course, I briefly slow to a walk to recover some strength then take the next three jumps at a canter. We’re so close to the end now but a big yellow exclamation mark appears next to the strength bar. Kolizey is on the edge of exhaustion but he refuses to slow down and increases to a gallop for the last two jumps.
He completes the course with a perfect clear. Not a single obstacle clipped and we end with ten seconds left on the timer. Not only has Kolizey earned his showjumping license, his success swells his confidence. He’s a natural athlete.
The next day, with my horses rested, I take Kolizey and Poema to town to compete in the showjumping and Caprilli events respectively. They both bring home first place, raising the prestige of my stables, earning me a tidy little packet, and convincing me it’s time my prized horses started a family. I’m perhaps too eager, when I try to send them to the breeding station, I’m told they’re both ‘Done for the day’. I suppose I should give my contest winners a bit of a break. They’ve earned it. I groom them and send them both to bed with an apple as a treat.
Except, maybe they weren’t too tired: the next morning, I’m met with a message telling me Poema is pregnant. My stable’s become the Olympic Village, with my rosette-winning horses working out the highs and stresses of competition in the only way they know how. Good on them. I needn’t have even made the breeding station.
Then, with horror, I remember the horses I’m boarding for the neighbours. They’re both stallions themselves. Neither of them are at competition level, their strength and endurance is lower even than Poema’s when she arrived at the stable. If either of them are the father, Poema is about to be out of action for a whole season and at the other end of it I’ll have a foal that can’t even compete in the beginner events. fetch the equestrian version of Hercule Poirot, I need to find out who impregnated my horse!
It may not be a plot worthy of Cooper, but it will do for me.
