The game interface

Sulkyland works the same way everywhere. Once you have these few landmarks in hand, you will know how to use any screen in the game, including the ones you have not opened yet.

Three areas: the menu, the list, the card

The menu gives access to the whole game. Its entries are grouped by trade — owner, trainer, jockey, breeder, racecourse manager, trader — plus your personal sections. On a narrow screen it steps aside, and the button at the top left brings it back.

The list occupies the centre: your horses, your races, your messages, depending on the entry you chose. That is where you spend most of your time.

The card opens when you click a name in a list — a horse, a race, a player, a clan. It shows the detail of that item, and the cross at the top closes it again. Depending on the width of your screen, it sits beside the list or replaces it.

Two gestures worth knowing in the menu

• Clicking again on the entry of the page you are on refreshes it. A counter tells you a new message has arrived while you are already on your messages? Click My messages again: the list reloads, with your filter. That holds for every list in the game — your horses after a race, the sales, the forums.
• A right click on an entry opens the page in a new tab, through your browser's usual menu (“Open link in new tab”). The menu is just about the only place in the game where that gesture is possible. Bear in mind that each tab is a game session in its own right: it does not see what you do in the others until it has been refreshed.

The filter, above each list

Every list carries a filter. Folded, it fits on one line and sums up what it applies; unfold it to choose your criteria, then Filter. The Reset button clears everything.

Two things worth knowing, because they come as a surprise:

• Your filter is remembered. You find it just as you left it, even after logging out. That is convenient, but it is also the first explanation for a list that looks empty or incomplete: read the filter summary before concluding that an item has disappeared.
• Each list has a default filter, which is not necessarily “show everything”. Your horses, for instance, show only the active ones: neither the foals still to be born nor the retired ones.

The first criterion is almost always the sorting: that is what decides the order of the list.

In a list that scrolls endlessly, the filter acts as you type, on what is already loaded, and the list fetches more as long as the screen is not full. On a very long list, a search that finds almost nothing stops after a while and offers to continue the search: it is up to you to say whether to go further.

Acting on several items at once

Next to the filter, an actions menu applies to a selection. Tick the items you are interested in, in the list, then choose the action: you handle ten horses as fast as one. The actions offered depend on the list.

The action windows

Some actions open a window over the page — entering a horse, selling, sending a message. It closes with the cross, or with Cancel. If you had started typing something, the game asks you to confirm before closing: nothing is lost through a click beside it.

The help

The ? button opens the help, at the bottom of the screen. It does not cover the page: you read and you act at the same time, which is rather the point. The + and − buttons give it more or less room, down to shrinking it to its title bar alone to keep it at hand.

The help follows the screen you are on: it offers the matching section straight away. The Search field, at the top, digs through the whole help by keywords, and the Summary gives access to all of it. You find the ? button again in the header of a card and at the foot of an action window: the help stays available even when those take up the whole screen.

Setting all of this to your taste

In My account, three settings change the look of the game:

• Graphic style: the colors of the site, from the lightest to the darkest.
• Columns displayed: how many of the three areas share the screen. “Automatic” decides according to the width you have, and suits most players. “Top-of-page menu and floating cards” brings back the look of the previous versions of Sulkyland, with cards you can move around.
• List presentation: a card list, a continuation of rows in a table, or a table cut into pages of a fixed number of rows. Cards read better on a phone; the table lets you compare at a glance on a large screen.

These settings commit you to nothing: they only change the display, never the game, and you can change them as often as you like.