Twilight Sparkle Adventures

Twilight Sparkle Adventures

I received this preview in an email, and figured that I might as well post it. To be honest, I'm having trouble keeping up with all these pony RPGs under development right now. I keep getting them mixed up, with a whole bunch of them having similar premises and being "inspired by Zelda", and while there's nothing wrong with this, I personally wish for a bit more variety.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this video. I don't really have any details on the game right now, and I don't know the release date or anything like that, but like all other MLP fangames, I hope it gets finished.

XTUX345, out.

Pony RPG Video Preview

Well, apparently this Pony RPG trailer got featured on Equestria Daily, and I figured I might as well post this on Equestria Gaming. There are two more trailers after the break, in case you wanted to see more of the project.

Review: Super Lesbian Horse RPG

Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 One day Bobby Schroeder decided that he liked shipping cartoon horses enough to warrant creating a silly game about it: Super Lesbian Horse RPG was the result of his labour. Overall awareness of the game spread quickly after its announcement by virtue of its somewhat odd title, along with a rather amusing /mlp/ thread which claimed SLHRPG was something else entirely, and now here we are with the somewhat final product (given that there will probably be several bugfix releases in the near future). Expectations for the project have been fairly high overall, but does it live up to them? For that, dear reader, you will have to read the rest of the review.

Horse Time below the break.

 Super Lesbian Horse RPG starts off quite well, presenting itself as a comedic, dialogue-heavy RPG. Problem is, after a couple minutes of playing it becomes clear that Bobby's idea of "comedy" basically involves reusing the same couple lesbian jokes over again, rephrased and with different characters. The game would honestly be much funnier if Bobby didn't try so hard to cram in as much stuff as possible, most of which ends up being mediocre enough to make the player consider fast-forwarding all the dialogue. I wouldn't advise doing so, however, as there are a few gems here and there which deserve to be seen and make the game somewhat more worthwhile (coincidentally, most of these were carryovers from the 5-minute demo which I praised back in May).

 Even if the game's main draw also happens to be its greatest weak point, that doesn't necessarily mean everything else in it sucks as well. Bobby's experience as the operator of several Tumblr ask blogs, the most notable of which being Fluttershy Replies, has paid off incredibly well for the most part, resulting in some of the nicest pixel art I've ever seen in a My Little Pony fangame. The environments are fantastic, character portraits are pretty good and the battle backgrounds manage to be quite impressive, albeit not quite as much as Earthbound's animated extravaganzas. Enemies tend to be fairly creative for the most part, especially once the player reaches some of the more spoilery areas. It was also nice to see to see that Bobby took a cue from Earthbound and gave them some joke actions just for the fun of it (along with a completely useless enemy to boot, which resulted in a fair amount of snickering from my part).

Shh, the elves will hear you.

 Take away the custom assets, however, and what you have is a standard RPG Maker project. I hate to be rude to folks who like the engine, but after playing several games made with it I must say that after a while I start to feel some deja-vu, as if these are all reskins of one game. Then again this complaint doesn't only apply to SLHRPG; it's more of a general problem for RPG Maker and is kind of to be expected when one decides to play them. Some might find this annoying, others won't, still figured that I might as well mention it just in case.

 Ah, but is the game fun? At times, as more emphasis is put on advancing the plot than grinding, but after a while it tends to get rather...dull. Shame too, as the story takes an interesting turn partway through Rainbow Dash's basement but ends up falling apart soon after, accompanied by what is perhaps the saddest final bossfight I have seen. Heck, several encounters with groups of regular enemies posed an even greater challenge to my party than a reality-warping [REDACTED], although perhaps that was due to my following the convention of conserving items and MP for bossfights. Either way it was still kind of an overall letdown in general, punctuated by a few extremely promising moments that were, alas, misused. Bobby also tried throwing in some relationship melodrama as well, so let's just say that it didn't work out all that well and leave it at that.

He likes thinking about pants, unsurprisingly.

 Musically, Super Lesbian Horse RPG is miles ahead of most of its competition, with an almost entirely original soundtrack made up mostly of chiptunes by our fandom's Tumblr community (with one semi-notable exception). There's not really anything to complain about here unless you're overly picky about video game soundtracks, in which case you can simply mute it via the options menu or something. Previous releases did have some missing audio files which caused the game to crash, but to the best of my knowledge the issues have been resolved in 1.0.3. Yay?


 ...Now that we're actually able to play the game, I get the impression that it's somewhat of a mixed bag. Sure, it looks and sounds great, but as a game it tends to get old after a while. Most of the humour is rather stale as well, which is really unfortunate as it originally showed so much promise (although that could have been because the creator threw all his best into the original demo and ran out of inspiration afterwards). Some people are still going to love this, as can be easily seen on Tumblr, and there's nothing wrong with that but in my opinion this is a prime example of style over substance. It may be worth a playthrough just to see the enemy designs and environments, but don't expect to get much for replay value out of Super Lesbian Horse RPG unless you miss the bonus boss or something.

  I should also mention that I have stripped away the title of "strangest pony RPG", as Fnagame still deserves it for its hilariously counter-intuitive gimmick. Sorry, and enjoy your Christmas (although come to think of it this is a little late for that).

Super Lesbian Horse RPG is Released

Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 Yes, it's finally here (and quite late as well, missing its original release date by a whopping 6 months). Quite likely the pony fandom's strangest RPG as of yet, Super Lesbian Horse RPG was created in the spare time of a fairly generic Tumblr user, the type who gets legitimately angry when folks assume his "SFW" game contains pornography based off of the title. Some of the fairly recent additions have been somewhat controversial, sure, but is the rest of the game alright?

...You'll have to find out in the morning, since it's past midnight over here and I'm going to bed.

Legend of Celestia Updates!

Legend of Celestia

Update:poll is over. Nightmare plot wins!

The Legend of Celestia blog has updated, and apparently they have a poll that will help them decide which plot to go with! If I were you, I'd head over the to their blog at http://www.legendofcelestia.com/blog.html.

Oh, and apparently they're releasing a video preview tomorrow. I won't be around then, but I should be able to provide a link on Monday (unless one of my fellow bloggers beats me to it, :P ).

MLP RPG (Fighting the Unknown) Update

MLP RPG

 So the MLP RPG has been updated, you know, the one with the ponies. There's apparently lots of new stuff in it, but since I haven't been able to find a detailed changelog I have no idea as to what Harvard Han added this time. I probably won't be able to review it anyways until it leaves the beta stage either, so in the meantime you might as well give it a shot.

...Enjoy, I guess?

A Release Date for Super Lesbian Horse RPG

Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 Apparently Super Lesbian Horse RPG is coming out on Christmas Day (Wednesday, in case you haven't checked your calendars yet). Since I just got from watching The Desolation of Smaug and am rather tired, let's just say that words cannot fully describe my excitement so I can get this over with and listen to the Electric Light Orchestra, maybe see if a friend of mine is online at this hour.

Good night!

My Little Investigations Demo 2

 It's been quite a while since Equestrian Dreamers last released a My Little Investigations demo, and now that their new one is out what does it have to offer? Nothing story-wise, but there are a bunch of minor tweaks and technical improvements. Hopefully the demo will actually work on my machine this time, but in case you want to give it a shot you can download it over at http://www.equestriandreamers.com/downloads/. Enjoy!

Breach of Harmony

Breach of Harmony

 Not too long ago somebody decided that what the My Little Pony fan community really needed the most was an online PvP arena game, and thus Breach of Harmony was born. It features everything you'd expect from this type of game: multiple player classes, gratuitous amounts of colourful horses and an unintentionally cheesy plot involving a secret society of rich ponies who apparently get a kick out of paying the lower classes to fight each other. I could dissect it further based on the preview video, but since it's still in the pre-alpha stage I shall refrain from doing so for the time being (given that most of the problems I have with it are related to the animations and will most likely be resolved in the near future).

You can find more detailed information about the game at breachofharmony.com.



...I'm just going to pre-emptively tag all newer Unity games on here as "multiplatform", since a developer using it would be foolish to not export OS X and Linux binaries these days.

Super Pony Wars Demo

Super Pony Wars

 Browsing the graveyard that is Ponychan's /collab/ board can occasionally bring up interesting stuff if you have the patience to wade through the endless corpses of once-promising projects, and Super Pony Wars appears to be one of the few which isn't quite dead yet, as a demo for it was released a couple days ago without much ado. From what I've gathered it's supposed to be some sort of strategy/RPG game based off of Super Robot Wars (which I have neither heard of nor played), featuring a cast made up of original characters, an unintuitive interface that could really use some documentation, and a bunch of placeholder RPG Maker sprites. It could probably become a pretty decent game if it were given enough love, sure, but it's been kind of overlooked on Ponychan and the creator seems to be losing interest.

Dunno if this one will ever come to anything, unfortunately, so in the meantime all we can do is watch and wait.

My Little Pony RPG: The Elements of Harmony

MLP RPG: The Elements of Harmony
Update 2: the link now points to a game version with some initial feedback implemented.

Man, you guys just keep cranking out these RPGs of epic dimensions! With 20-25 hours of advertised gameplay, Nurse Dashie has put together a game I'm not even ashamed to say I haven't finished yet. All you fans of pony games which you can really sink some time into: listen up! This might be just your cup of tea. More after the break!

A quick heads up after you download the game: read the ReadMe first! It contains important information on control, and how to get the game running - which I missed the first time through. Whoops.

Fluttershy used Snak!

The game doesn't get going immediately: in the tradition of classic RPGs such as Pokemon and Golden Sun, there's several mundane quests before you reach your first fight. However, once you get into the story, there's a lot here: you're gradually sucked in as you explore a massive world to recover the Elements of Harmony.

The game does suffer from 'RPG Maker graphics syndrome' - which is to say if you've seen the environment graphics from one game, you've seen them all. They're not lacking, but they get repetitive if you've seen them before. Then again, that's not the focus of the game.

The game allows you to play as all of the Mane 6, which is a treat. Additionally, some of the spell names and attack patterns are borrowed from Final Fantasy I, which is pretty cool. Fans of the game should check out the steam group (accessible via the link above).

MLP:Online Shut Down

 If you have visited MLP:Online's website at all during November you would have noticed that the game was no longer available for download, with an announcement that the game was no longer under development. No details were given as to why this might have been the case, but today our suspicions were confirmed in that the project had been taken down by Hasbro for copyright reasons. All hope is not lost, however, as the developers have stated that they are going to begin work on a new MLP-related fangame, and will give details on how to help fairly soon.

Anyhow, in case you want to read the original announcement you can do so via this link or just go down and read beyond the break.

 Just over a month ago, we released our first episode of our game. After a year and a half since the outset of the project, we were happy to present our first Episode to you. Though our servers suffered, we were pleased with the response and the great feedback we received!
 Shortly after that–exactly 4 weeks prior to now–we received a complaint about copyright and trademark infringement. We initially dismissed this it was most likely submitted by some trolls, as they could be submitted anonymously by anyone through our CDN. However, we continued to look into it, and by the following Monday, found it to be very real.
 Hasbro is not to be blamed here. As per U.S. Trademark law, as soon as an infringement comes to light, they are obligated to defend the trademark, or they will lose it. They had no choice in the matter, regardless of what they thought of the project or how it benefited them.
 The matter was quite strict: there was little that we could do to work around it. We removed the download link and development was suspended. Discussions continued through the month, but it came down to one fact: MLP:Online had come to an end.

MLP:Online: April 2015-November 2012. RIP. 

 We apologize for the wait. The time that we were taking for our discussions and to announce this publicly was time-boxed. Salty will be posting a eulogy about the project.
 But all hope is not lost. While MLPOnline is officially dead and buried, the team is mostly sticking together. Some took their leave due to real-life considerations, but about 75% of the old team remains. We've officially changed our name to Starlight Studios, as per a team vote last week. We have selected a new project. It is pony related, but otherwise we're keeping most of the details secret. It is our goal to have it completed by Bronycon 2013, though this may be ambitious.
 You should expect to see something unveiled this summer.
 EDIT: If you would like to help out with our new project, keep an eye out. I will be posting information about how to within the next 8 hours.

 Kind of a bummer, eh? At least they're going to be working on another project, so at least there's that to look forward to.

Pony Tactics: Salvation

 For some reason it seems that nearly all of the of non-Flash My Little Pony fangames are RPGs, and most of which are announced are never heard from again and forgotten. This is probably due to the fact that making a decent RPG takes a lot of time and effort, which often proves to be too much for many developers to handle. A small team calling themselves "Slammin' is Jammin'" have recently announced their upcoming RPG and released a promotional video that shows off some interesting concept art and...less than impressive gameplay (although to be fair the game is still in the pre-alpha stages, so that is to be expected). 

Will Pony Tactics: Salvation ever be released? I have no idea, but you can find their promo video and some more information on the game after the break.

 From the information that has been given out so far Pony Tactics: Salvation will be a roleplaying game with a very heavy focus on tactics (obviously), taking place soon after Discord came to power. The player controls a herd of common villagers who decided to flee from the Lord of Chaos and find a better place to live, while beating the crap outta various giant monsters along the way. Celestia and Luna's origin story also plays a major part in the story, as does the discovery of the elements of harmony.

 According to Slammin' "Unlike most tactics RPGs Salvation does not have a classic jobs system. Instead each unit falls uniquely into a role, with skills and abilities maintained by the story instead of jobs/levels. Smart uses of a team's abilities and items is rewarded, as health/mana is not fully replenished after each battle." I may be no veteran when it comes to tactical RPGs but that does sound kind of interesting to me, although how the final product shall turn out is yet to be seen.

 The game is being made in Unity3D, and due to the fact that they're not listing Linux as a platform I'm going to assume that they are not using Unity 4. The sprites used in the trailer appear to be only temporary placeholders (thank God), and due to some of listed positions on the "join our crew" page it appears that the ponies themselves will be drawn as 2D sprites in contrast to the 3D world. This is quite unlike most other pony RPGs which either rely exclusively on sprites such as The Lost Kingdom or use only 3D models like Questria; the former of which is far more common.

Any thoughts? Leave them in the comments!

Canterlot Siege Comes to Android

Canterlot Siege (Android)

 There seems to be a decent portion of the fandom that is addicted to playing Canterlot Siege, and Nitrouspony has decided to feed their addiction with an Android port of the game. Now I don't play Canterlot Siege myself that much, but for those that do (and aren't iOS users, who'll have to wait a bit longer for a port) this must be a godsend. Interested in giving the port a shot? You can download the .apk file over at http://sta.sh/0k8abuu6ijo. Have fun!

Elemental Reaction

Elemental Reaction

 Puzzle games centred around chain reactions can be rather fun and Elemental Reaction is fun when you first start it, but after a while this one gets kinda dull. Then again, it could just be that this cold/headache is adversely affecting my enjoyment of this game, so maybe I'll have to give it a shot later when I'm not coughing up mucus every so often. Can't really think of much more to write about it, so...yeah.

Enjoy your day.

Curse of the Lost Kingdom: Old Demo

Curse of the Lost Kingdom

(Download)

 If you were here back in July of '12, you might remember us posting about a promising RPG known as The Lost Kingdom, along with an assurance that a demo for the game was "almost complete". However, as time went on that demo became increasingly out of date when compared to the actual game, and Super Writer forgot about it entirely...until two days ago, when he decided to put it online for all to enjoy, as an extremely pleasant surprise. It may be old and nowhere nearly as polished as the game is in its current state, but it's still a fun diversion that should be well worth a playthrough or two.

Also, some players (myself included) are unable to run the game without first installing RPG Maker 2003, which you can conveniently find on the demo's download page.

Review: War of Harmony IV

War of Harmony IV 

(Download)
The game does contain some grimdark content, in case that bothers you.

 On May 12th a demo for some RPG Maker game named War of Harmony IV was released, oddly enough without other WoH games I to III. Perhaps Marshall Ruffy thought the roman numeral 4 looked neat, and decided to quietly include it with the game in the hopes that nobody would ask about the missing first three instalments in the "series", or he could be planning on releasing the other entries later on and out of order (the latter of which seems the most likely, given some of his recent tweets). Either way, it's still kind of a weird decision in naming, one that the game itself will hopefully make up for.

As usual, you can find the rest of the review after the break.



 Unlike a good portion of fangames (the vast majority of which are relatively simple Flash games), War of Harmony IV actually has somewhat of a plot, albeit one that vaguely resembles a somewhat generic piece of "epic" fanfiction. It starts off with Rarity and Pinkie Pie venturing into the Everfree Forest to find their missing friends and shortly thereafter throws them into a "Lunar Republic vs Solar Empire" conflict, with Sethisto's non-dragon waifu being involved somehow and using her "regretful victimized woobie" persona. More can be discovered about the plot by following the various alignment paths, if the player decides the game warrants another playthrough.

 Thing is, completing one playthrough takes much longer than one might expect, thanks to some rather annoying bugs that can obscure the screen with gothic script upon entering a room or even give the player an entirely unusable save file after using a certain save prompt that appears shortly after beating a boss. Using multiple save files per game and saving every couple minutes is a pretty good idea unless you're some kind of especially determined sadomasochist. As of now, I've already had to restart the game several times and spent much time replaying large sections that could have been spent advancing the plot if things worked properly.

Touching a statue with glowing eyes probably isn't the brightest of ideas, but Rarity doesn't have much of a choice here.

 Regardless of its issues, WoH IV can be fairly enjoyable on those occasions when it is working properly. It places far more of an emphasis on dialogue and exploration than grinding, which is quite a relief because the combat tends to be somewhat unsatisfying. Bosses tend go down far too quickly, and when combined with the overabundance of health and mana restoration areas the player is rarely in any real danger, which is quite disappointing even for a RPG not focused on combat. I kind of got the impression after playing for a while that Marshall's intention is more to tell an interactive story than anything else, which is fine with me because War of Harmony IV manages to accomplishe that goal for the most part (notwithstanding a few grammatical errors).

 As with the majority of RPG Maker projects I've seen, this one makes fairly extensive use of the default tilesets and music, but stands out by using them in a tasteful manner and not taking advantage of the default enemies (which get really old after you see them in a half-dozen games). Mixed in with the soundtrack are several original pieces by Som3thingUX, which are pretty good but don't stand out as being particularly memorable. There's also some minor visual effects, such as drifting fog and blood rain, that aren't really impressive from a technical perspective but are fairly nice touches, even if the blood felt a bit out-of-place in this type of game.


 To put it bluntly, I have rather mixed feelings about War of Harmony IV. It's not bad or anything like that, but some stability issues prevented me from getting far enough into the project to decide whether I liked it or not. Until a bugfix release comes out, I'll just slap a temporary 5/10 on the project and re-review it once Marshall is able to fix it up a tad.

 Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the issues I encountered may have been related to my running the game in Wine, although since Windows 8.1 broke my dual-boot setup I'm unable to confirm or deny this. If it's true, however, I might have to re-review things sooner than I thought...

MLP: RPG Part 1

MLP: RPG

Good afternoon/evening/morning, fillies and gentlecolts! If you've already recovered from your Pinkie-induced highs, then listen up. For the last several months, the DarkkyShadow team has been hard at work upon the bluntly named MLP: RPG, an open world ponies-on-earth role-playing game. More about the project after the break!


MLP: RPG is certainly still in its development stage, with many game aspects unfinished. However, much of the game framework has been completed, and there's certainly plenty of world to explore.

The game starts off promisingly, with a clear menu interface and a flashy intro sequence. With characteristic impetuousness, everyone's favorite lavender unicorn casts a powerful incantation at a mysterious altar, sending herself and many other ponies hurtling across space and time to earth.

The game starts out a little slowly - at the beginning, when you're limited to a low-level Twilight Sparkle, most battles consist of spamming the attack button until all your enemies have folded. Soon, battling becomes more diverse: multiple attacks and enemies lend some needed variety. The mining skill is similarly button-mashy, but it's currently a minor part of the game. At the beginning, hold the shift key to walk more quickly, and make sure to obtain some antidotes before plunging into the abandoned mine.

Seriously, it's like the Viridian forest in here.

The game's strengths lie in its length and its usability, specifically its fully fleshed-out equip system, bestiary, and comprehensive list of achievements. The game uses vocal music from various brony artists instead of more traditional background fare, which can be a plus or a minus depending on your taste in music.

The game continues to grow more interesting as you add more ponies to your party and unlock more locations to explore. However, at higher levels, fighting is often severely unbalanced - enemies can be killed three times over with many special abilities but shrug off normal attacks without taking damage.

MLP:RPG is still in development, and thus not at a place where I'll review it as a finished title. Submitted as is, I'd give it a sturdy 6 or 7, as there's already a lot of promise. If you're a fan of RPGs and projects under development, get it while it's hot!

My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic (Gameloft Game) Released!

My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic

Gameloft's anticipated take on MLP:FiM has been released! Unfortunately, it's only available in Australia and New Zealand at time of writing, but its download page (the iTunes NZ site is linked above) has plenty for you to slobber over even if you can't yet get it working on your iPhone or iPad. More after the break!

Update: The app is now available in the US. Find it here!
Update #2: The android version can be found here.
Update #3: Looking for a boatload of friends? Check out EQD's official name share post.

Currently, it appears the game contains elements of both single-player adventure and town-building. Development by Gameloft as well as the inclusion of dialogue from the show's VA's both bode well for its success. Have some copypasta:

"Saddle up for adventure with Twilight Sparkle & friends! After being locked away in the moon for centuries, Nightmare Moon is set free and spreading night across Ponyville! Only Twilight Sparkle and her friends can free Ponyville from her grasp and bring light and friendship back to the land. Help them rebuild the town and reach their dreams in exciting quests!

✰ Your favorite ponies are here: Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Applejack and more!

✰ Make your Ponyville the most magical place in Equestria.

✰ Play fun mini-games with your ponies: Ball Bounce, Apple-Picking and Magic Wings!

✰ Interact with your friends and feel the Magic of Friendship!

✰ Enjoy official TV show voice talents featured in the game!"

Installation instructions for those outside the game's release area (courtesy of Lusht on Reddit):

1. Log out of your iTunes account.

2. Download the app. 

3. When given the option, create a new ID. Don't set up payment, as you'll need to provide valid billing information from Australia or New Zealand.

4. Download the app (it's free).

Unfortunately, I'm without an iDevice, so I'm assigning this one to you guys. Play it and report back!

Super Lesbian Horse RPG Update

Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 For those of you who don't follow Bobby Schroeder's tumblr, you may be wondering how SLHRPG is coming along, so he created this Youtube video to give you folks some incentive to visit it more often. Most of the progress updates are too short to be posted here (for example, a recent series detailed his work on a particular rock sitting in the forest), but at least Bobby is being fairly open about the development process when compared to most of the other fangames I've seen which get this far, since they tend to be relatively silent for the most part.

So...yeah. You can follow Super Lesbian Horse RPG's development here.



*waits for DialgaBrite to complain about me posting this again*