Rosette Ward Clears

The jump is won three strides before the fence.

Rosette Ward Clears is a show jumping game about the part most jumping games leave out: the approach. There is no button to press at the fence. Your horse canters on a steady rhythm and you ride the stride, lengthening and shortening on the way to each fence so that the last stride finishes exactly on the take-off spot.

A ruler is painted on the sand ahead of you. It shows where the next few strides will land and where the last one will leave the ground. Meet the fence out of the blue take-off zone and the rails stay up. Arrive on a long flat stride or a short cramped one and the top rail comes down. The decision that settled all of it was made several seconds earlier, at the top of the turn.

SCORED THE REAL WAY

- Four faults for a knocked rail

- Four faults for a refusal

- One fault for every started second over the time allowed

- Two refusals at the same fence end the round

- No faults at all, inside the time: a clear round

SIX COURSES AND A PRACTICE ARENA

Ten to fourteen numbered fences, built one at a time by hand, from a friendly pony ring of low uprights up to a championship track of wide oxers at full height. Combinations, two or three fences a stride or two apart, are jumped as a single unit, and that is where stride control really bites: how far you land past the first element decides what is left for the second. There is also a practice arena with one fence, no clock, and the ruler always on screen.

RIDE OFF AGAINST THE CLOCK

Ride a course clear and its jump-off opens up: a shortened track where the fences come at you sooner and the honest stride you had in the first round is no longer there. That is the whole trade.

KEPT HONEST

- Completely offline. No internet connection is needed or used

- No adverts, no tracking, no accounts, nothing to buy

- No sound at all. Feedback is visual, with an optional short buzz

- Portrait, one hand, and it remembers your record between sessions

- Nothing violent, nothing dark, no gambling of any kind. The horse is never hurt and never falls, and a refusal is simply a stop and a circle back

WHAT IS TRACKED

Clear rounds, faults split between rails, stops and the clock, your best jump-off time, fences jumped, combinations jumped through clean, and how many stride adjustments you make in an average round. Twelve rosettes to collect on the board.

Every fence, every horse and every mark on the sand is drawn from scratch in warm arena colours, with a stride ruler you will soon read without thinking about it.