One thing that my wife and I have been laughing about lately is my daughter’s wish list for the upcoming holidays. Every single this or that that happens to pop up on the screen during her favorite shows is included in this growing and absurd list of what she wants, and one thing that has been dominating the charts lately are things from Disney’s Princess collection. Well, you can imagine how ecstatic she was over the new Disney Princess Royal Horse Show game for the PC, which is a title that allows you to decorate and ride horses with four of the characters from the popular line.

Royal Horse Show takes Princess fans to the royal fairgrounds as Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, and Belle are getting ready for the big horse competition. Players get to help the four princesses decorate the horses and the fairgrounds, and ultimately compete in the big horse riding and jumping show for the kingdom. There are also some collectable cards to earn along the way, some additional printing activities, and a few secret surprises to get unlocked as you go.

There are four areas to play in with Royal Horse Show. There are the stables, which is where you decorate and make the horses pretty and ready for competition, the decorating area, which is where you change decorations for the fairgrounds like flowers, curtains, etc., the arena, which is where horses are ridden and shown off for the kingdom, and the craft cottage, which is where players can go in and view the number of collectable horse picture and fact cards that they have unlocked, or even print out a growth chart to hang on their wall to see how big they are getting. 

Royal Horse Show is similar in many ways to other titles that are out for PC, since most of the game takes place on static 2-D backgrounds that have point and click options. Changing bows and flower arrangements is simply a matter of placing the cursor over the glowing areas and clicking, and the same goes for fixing up the decorations on the horses themselves. Everything was made simple so even the youngest Princess fan and gamer can sit down and do a little work on their own with minimal assistance from Mom or Dad.

The horse riding part is a little different though, since the horse can be manually controlled and made to jump by either the keyboard or mouse directions. The horse will run on a set path around the track, and will go around jumps if they are missed, and in the beginning there is a little bird to pop up and help new players try and get adjusted to their timing to help out later on. By winning the competitions, more collectable horse cards (and maybe a couple of other surprises) are unlocked.

While Royal Horse Show will probably be a lot of fun for younger fans of the series, it really doesn’t add anything different from other similar titles out … and in some areas feels like it actually has less. Some other decorating games that have been out like Kelly’s Pet Parade allow players to add decorations wherever they see fit to help add to their creativity, but RHS has everything from saddles to drapes in certain places only which can quickly get repetitive, even for the biggest fan of the genre. While there are some unlockable things to get, many are things like “decorate two separate horses and you get another one”, so if they are getting bored with the static decorations that they already have adding a new horse to the picture may not be as good of a thing as it seems.

Overall, Royal Horse Show is probably going to sell a bunch of copies due to the characters involved, and it’s a great “limited adult help” game for younger girls who are fans of the series. Older gamers and fans of Disney Princess may not have as much fun with it though, and will probably get bored or find it getting too repetitive too soon.  

Gameplay: 7.0
The controls are very easy to figure out even for the youngest Princess fan out there since everything is simple point and click. While there are a lot of different combinations to use, it’s all been done before and the lack of free placement in items on the horses and fairgrounds can cause the game to get repetitive quickly. There are collectable “horse facts” cards to get and a lot of pictures can be printed which may help add to overall enjoyment.

Graphics: 7.5
The graphics looked good, and the characters from the Princess series were well animated. The game is very colorful, and almost all of the screens take place in static 2-D backgrounds. The horse riding was a neat idea, since players will see only the back of their horse’s head and the surrounding area in front while riding to help them feel like they are really in the game.

Sound: 7.6
The voiceovers are pretty true to the animated movie idols that they represent, and the music has that royal orchestrated Disney kind of feel to it all the way through.

Difficulty: Easy
The whole game is very easy to figure out due to the point and click style, even for younger gamers, so it won’t be too much of an “I need help with this” title for even younger Disney fans.

Concept: 6.9
Obviously it’s a good idea to take Disney’s popular animated heroines and place them into a PC game for young girls, but there’s not really anything new that’s been done (except for the Disney characters of course) and the lack of free placement actually may make it get boring a lot faster.

Overall: 7.0

Basically, Royal Horse Show is a good game to get for your 3 – 5 year old Princess fan in the house, since it’s easy enough for them to play with and navigate through with out a lot of frustration due to not being able to figure out what to do. Older players ( 6 and up), whether fans or not, may find the static item placement and repetitive nature to be a little on the boring side though since it’s all been done before and probably wont get as much out of it.