Pippa Funnell Horse Riding Academy

Hmm, tough one this. I've never been a ten-year-old girl, don't own a pair of jodhpurs, and the only time I sat on a horse, it was too big, so I cried until my mum took me off it.

I was 23 at the time. We try not to talk about it.

Suffice to say, I'm not the target audience for Pippa Funnell: Horse Riding Academy. I don't even know who Pippa Funnell is, although since she's not royal or blonde, I'd hazard a guess that she's the equestrian world's gritty, keepin' it real alternative to Zara Phillips. Maybe.

Nevertheless, with few (i.e. no) horsey gals on the Pocket Gamer payroll, it's down to me to tell you whether Gameloft's new saddle-'em-up is worth recommending to your younger sister / daughter / niece (delete as appropriate). And before you accuse me of being sexist, this game is fully female-oriented, and you can only play as girl characters.

You play a new recruit to, yes, Pippa Funnell's Horse Riding Academy. It seems like a jolly old place to me. Besides the obvious horse-riding and grooming activities, you get to swan off to Mexico and Japan, interact with other students, and undertake quirky animal-based mini-games.

Put it this way: it's the first time I've played a mobile game that involved chasing after a rabbit called Flopsy on horseback (me, not him) before being told by a teenage boy that my hairstyle's looking good. No wonder the people sitting behind me on the train gave me a strange look when they got off...

Anyway, the game is divided into three sections: UK, Mexico and Japan. In each, you have to complete a series of tasks based around horsey activities. The core event is riding and jumping over fences, which is a simple case of using the directional buttons and '5' to jump. Sometimes the event is in a competition or race, and at other times it's based around a limited 'mission' (for example, collect water drops, or indeed rabbits).

There's even a level in Mexico where it goes all Indiana Jones, with you having to outride giant stone balls rolling behind you.

For every level you complete, you get a medal, while at the end of every section there's a competition to ride in, with the aim of scoring enough points (through well-timed jumps and collecting bonus objects) to beat your fellow students.

Around this there's a loose teen-romance plot, albeit more The OC than Wuthering Heights in its depth. Your fellow students fall into stock roles like The Dishy Boy, The Best Friend, The Bitchy Rival and, er, The Boring Bloke Who Doesn't Actually Do Much. And in truth, your ability to interact with them is extremely limited.

There's also horse-grooming, which consists of three mini-games. Feeding your horse is a case of pressing '5' to flip a bar to direct food towards it (apples, cabbages, carrots) and direct non-food (bones, old boots, gloves) away. Brushing him is a simple memory game where you have to remember strings of numbers and re-enter them, while de-clodding his hooves is a more traditional puzzler where you rotate coloured shapes to form clusters of three or more.

Pippa Funnell: Horse Riding Academy is well put together, with an admirable focus on an audience (young girls) that's often ignored in the mobile games world. The trouble is, it's lacking in any long-term depth.

This reviewer rattled through all three sections as well as the separate mini-games mode in around 90 minutes, and there's little incentive to replay.

You already knew that this game wouldn't appeal to the average Pocket Gamer reader. But with so little competition – we'll be taking a look at HandyGames' Horse & Pony: My Stud Farm shortly – if you're buying a new phone for a suitably horse-mad daughter for Christmas, it's worth buying and downloading this game to it as an extra gift.

Just don't be too surprised if the recipient is pestering you for another game come Boxing Day, after quickly completing it.

Pippa Funnell Horse Riding Academy

Admirable attempt to marry the worlds of mobile and equestrianism, if a little lacking in depth
Score
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)