Saddle and Steam: Dust and Distance - Player Guide

Welcome to Saddle and Steam: Dust and Distance.

In Dust and Distance, you ride a horse down a long country road. The horse keeps going by itself. You steer it past whatever is coming the other way, and you try to get as far as you can before it loses patience with you.

This guide covers the whole game, from your first ride to the things that are worth knowing once you can stay in the saddle.

---

Table of Contents

1. About the Game
2. Starting a Ride

3. Controls

4. Keyboard

5. Game Controller

6. Riding Your Horse

7. Steering

8. Gaits
9. Halting

10. What You Meet on the Road

11. Riders and Carriages

12. Cattle
13. Sheep
14. Animals Crossing the Road
15. Trains
16. Clears and Streaks

17. Patience

18. When You Hit Something

19. When Patience Runs Out
20. Carrots
21. Score
22. Audio Cue Reference
23. Useful Strategies

---

About the Game

Dust and Distance is a riding game with no finish line. A ride lasts until your horse has had enough, and the aim is to have covered a lot of ground and scored well by then.

During a ride you will be:

• Steering around riders, carriages, cattle and sheep
• Choosing how fast to go
• Building a streak of clean passes to unlock faster gaits
• Looking after your horse's patience
• Picking up carrots to win some of that patience back

When leaderboard submission is available, your final score is submitted when the ride ends.

---

Starting a Ride

Choose Play and wait for the road to load. You start mounted, in the middle of the road, and your horse sets off at a walk straight away.

The first traffic is already on its way toward you, so you have a little time to try the reins before anything arrives.

The road is 30 metres wide and has edges. You can't ride off into the fields. A railway runs along one side of it for the whole ride.

Before your first ride, open Learn game sounds in the game's menu. It plays the signals the game uses and explains each one.

---

Controls

The controls in this guide are the defaults. Open Game settings, then Control mappings, to add, replace, remove, or restore keyboard and controller bindings. Keyboard controls are stored by physical key position.

Keyboard

Riding

Key	Action
Hold Left Arrow	Pull the left rein and turn left
Hold Right Arrow	Pull the right rein and turn right
R	Ask for the next faster gait
F	Ask for the next slower gait
Hold V	Halt; your horse stands until you let go

Information and Menus

Key	Action
P	Hear how much patience your horse has left
S	Hear your score, your multiplier and the distance ridden
Escape	Pause or resume the game

Game Controller

Riding

Control	Action
Left Stick left or right	Pull the left or right rein
D-Pad up	Ask for the next faster gait
D-Pad down	Ask for the next slower gait
Hold Left Stick pulled back	Halt

The stick has to be pulled more than halfway back before it counts as a halt, so it won't stop your horse by accident while you steer.

Information and Menus

Control	Action
Y	Hear how much patience your horse has left
X	Hear your score, your multiplier and the distance ridden
Back	Pause or resume the game

---

Riding Your Horse

Your horse moves forward by itself. You never have to tell it to go, only where and how fast.

Steering

Hold a rein to turn that way. Your horse straightens out as soon as you let go.

If you are pressed against the edge of the road, the horse runs along it. You don't lose any speed for it.

An edge warning sounds once when a held rein pushes the horse against the road edge. Release and hold that rein again to hear another warning.

Gaits

Your horse has four gaits: walk, trot, canter and gallop.

Every ride starts at a walk. Trot is yours from the start, so you can ask for it whenever you like. Canter and gallop have to be earned with a streak:

Streak	Gait Unlocked
5	Canter
10	Gallop

When a gait unlocks you hear a longer, brighter sound and the game says which one it is. Your horse doesn't speed up by itself. Ask for the new gait when you feel ready for it, and slow down again whenever you want.

If you ask for a gait you haven't unlocked, your horse snorts and tosses its head, and the game tells you which gait is locked.

A faster gait covers more ground and makes every clear worth more points. It also gives you less time to work out what you're hearing.

Halting

Hold the halt control to rein your horse in. It slows down through its gaits and then stands for as long as you hold. Let go and it walks on, then builds back up to the gait you were riding.

You can still steer while you hold a halt.

Your horse doesn't like standing around:

• After about 5 seconds it starts pawing the ground and snorting.
• After 10 seconds it loses one patience.
• It loses another every 10 seconds after that.

Letting go for a moment doesn't reset this. The horse only calms down while it is actually moving, one second for every second it stood. A halt costs you patience but not your streak or your gaits, since nothing was hit.

---

What You Meet on the Road

Everything on the road keeps to its own line. Nothing will swerve into you once you have picked a way past it. The game also never blocks the whole road with oncoming traffic, so there is always a gap somewhere.

Riders and Carriages

Riders come toward you on horseback at a walk, a trot or a canter. Some of them are pulling a carriage, and those come at a walk or a trot. A carriage is wider than a horse.

A horse and the carriage behind it count as two obstacles, so passing both is worth two clears.

What happens when you hit one depends on which part you hit:

• Hit the horse and it is taken off the road, but its carriage keeps rolling toward you. If it reaches you before it stops, it crashes into you and costs another patience.
• Hit the carriage and both the carriage and its horse are taken off the road, for one patience.

Cattle

Cows are slow and they take up room. You meet them in three ways.

A stray has wandered onto the road and stopped to eat. It stands sideways across your path, so it is wider than you might expect, and it isn't coming to meet you. All the closing is yours. Listen for chewing and the clank of its bell.

A cow may also be walked toward you, alone or in a group two or three abreast. A group covers a lot of road, but there is a way through. Each cow counts on its own, so a group of three is worth three clears.

Cows call to each other as they come, and if you hit one you'll hear about it.

Sheep

Sheep turn up as a stray eating in the road, one sheep walking toward you, or a whole flock.

A flock is two or three sheep wide and up to six rows deep. It is either walking toward you or standing in the road grazing. It's long, but it is no wider than its front row, so you can go around it.

A flock counts as one obstacle:

• Touch any sheep in it and you lose one patience, and the whole flock leaves the road.
• Get all of it past you and your streak goes up by one.

Sheep wear small bells, pitched higher than a cow's, and a flock rings with a lot of them at once. Each sheep has its own voice. One that you hit lets out a sharper, louder baa.

Animals Crossing the Road

Sometimes cows or sheep cross the road in front of you instead of coming along it. It can be a single cow, up to three cows in single file, or a column of sheep two abreast and up to six rows long.

They wait in the field first, eating, ringing their bells and calling. That tells you which side they're coming from before they step out.

They set off so that they are on the road at about the time you get there. They walk straight across at a steady pace and don't stop, and a column can fill the whole width for a few seconds. You have three choices:

• Get past before they reach your line.
• Go round behind the last of them.
• Halt and let them cross, keeping in mind what standing does to your horse.

Getting through without touching them is a clear, whether they end up behind you or make it off the far side ahead of you. A column of sheep counts as one. Each cow counts on its own.

While animals are crossing, no other traffic comes and no train runs.

Trains

Every so often a steam train comes down the railway beside the road. You'll hear it from a long way off. It may whistle, ring its bell, brake, or change speed as it goes by.

Trains are scenery. They can't reach the road and they don't affect your score.

---

Clears and Streaks

A clear is an obstacle that gets fully past you without touching you. Each clear adds one to your streak, and a collision puts the streak back to zero.

You hear a short tone for every clear. It rises in pitch with each one, and after the fifth it starts low again.

A pass only counts if it was reasonably close. Something that goes by more than about 20 metres to your side, which is two thirds of the road's width, was never in your way. It earns nothing and it costs nothing, and your streak stays as it was.

A longer streak does three things:

• It unlocks canter at 5 and gallop at 10.
• It raises your score multiplier.
• It brings more traffic. The road gets steadily busier as your streak grows and is at its busiest from a streak of 30.

Because a collision resets the streak, it also gives you a quieter road for a while.

---

Patience

Your horse starts every ride with 5 patience. Press P, or Y on a controller, to hear how much is left.

You lose patience in two ways:

• Hitting something costs 1.
• Keeping your horse standing costs 1 for every 10 seconds.

When You Hit Something

It doesn't matter who ran into whom. Traffic that walks into you counts as well.

After a collision:

• Your streak goes back to zero, and your multiplier back to times one.
• Your fastest gait locks again, one step. If you had gallop, you are back to canter. If you were riding at the gait you just lost, your horse drops to the one below. Walk and trot never lock.
• Your horse stops for two or three seconds and then sets off again by itself. You can hold a rein while you wait.

Pausing the game pauses that wait too.

Whatever you hit is taken off the road and can't count toward your streak afterwards.

When Patience Runs Out

When the last patience is gone, your horse has had enough. It neighs, throws you off, and runs on up the road without you.

Once the horse is out of earshot, the ride is over and your score is posted.

---

Carrots

While your horse is short of patience, carrots turn up on the road ahead. A carrot plays a steady beacon so you can find it.

To collect one, steer onto the sound. Your horse grabs it on the way past at any gait. You don't need to be exact, since anything within a couple of metres will do.

Carrots Eaten	Result
1 to 4	The game tells you your count
5	Your horse gets 1 patience back

After the fifth, the count starts again.

A few more things about carrots:

• Patience never goes above the 5 you started with.
• There is only ever one carrot on the road.
• Missing one costs nothing.
• None appear while your horse has all 5 patience. They start again a little while after you lose one.
• The other animals on the road leave them alone.

---

Score

Press S, or X on a controller, to hear your score, your multiplier and how far you have ridden.

Points come from three places.

Source	Points
Distance	1 for every 10 metres
Clear	10 at a walk, 20 at a trot, 30 at a canter, 40 at a gallop
Close pass	15 more when the obstacle went by within a metre of you

Clears and close passes are multiplied by your streak. Distance is not.

Streak	Multiplier
0 to 4	1.0
5 to 9	1.1
10 to 14	1.2
15 to 19	1.3

It carries on like that, a tenth more for every five clears. A collision takes the multiplier back to 1.0, but points you have already earned are never taken away.

---

Audio Cue Reference

Your Horse

Sound	Meaning
Saddle creak	You asked for a faster gait and got it
Bridle jingle	You reined in, to slow down or to halt
Bridle jingle with a snort	You asked for a gait that is still locked
A hoof striking the ground, with a snort	Your horse is tired of standing
Neigh	You hit something, or your horse is throwing you
Chewing	Your horse is eating a carrot
A body hitting the ground	You have been thrown

On the Road

Sound	Meaning
Hooves coming toward you	A rider
Hooves with rolling wheels	A horse pulling a carriage
Wheels with no hooves	A loose carriage, still rolling after you hit its horse
Low bell and slow chewing	A cow standing in the road
Low bell with hooves and mooing	Cattle walking toward you
Small, high bells	Sheep; a lot of them together means a flock
Bells and calling from one side	Animals waiting to cross
A cow's cry or a sharp, loud baa	You hit that animal
Carriage crash	You hit a carriage, or a loose one rolled into you
Whistle, bell and engine to one side	A train going by; nothing you need to act on

---

Useful Strategies

Getting Started

• Use the first ride to learn the reins. Staying at a walk is fine.
• Listen to the game signals in Learn game sounds before you play.
• Work out which side the railway is on early. A train is loud, and it helps to know it isn't on the road.
• Check your patience with P now and then, not only after a crash.

Passing Traffic

• Decide early. Moving a few metres to one side while something is still far off is easier than swerving late.
• Let go of the rein once you're clear so the horse straightens up.
• Treat a carriage as wider than the horse in front of it.
• After hitting a horse, listen for its carriage. It is still coming.
• A standing cow is side-on to you. Give it more room than a walking one.
• Go around a flock, not through it. It is long, not wide.

Choosing Your Speed

• You don't have to take a gait the moment it unlocks.
• Drop a gait when the road sounds crowded, then build back up.
• Gallop pays four times what a walk does for each clear, but only if you stay on the road.
• A short halt can save a collision. A long one costs the same as hitting something.

Keeping Your Horse Happy

• Count your carrots. The fifth one is the one that matters.
• Don't chase a carrot into traffic. Missing it is free and a collision isn't.
• When animals are waiting to cross, try slowing down first. That can let them clear the road without you having to stop.

Scoring Well

• Protect your streak. It decides your multiplier and your top gait.
• Passes that are far off to the side don't count, so riding down one edge to stay out of the way won't build a streak.
• Pass close when you're sure of the gap. Each close pass is 15 points before the multiplier.
• Distance always counts, even when your streak is at zero.