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| Pony Platforming Project |
"One fine day, when Applejack was walking innocently through the hills...suddenly, OWLBEARS! Thousands of them!" So begins the Pony Platforming Project, a simple platformer starring Applejack. It's developer, Mark Sprague, is a member of Mane 6, the dev team behind My Little Pony:Fighting is Magic. He also runs the webcomic Dragon Mango, which you may have heard of or read before.
Does the Pony Platforming Project live up to it's creator's rather impressive résumé? Find out after the break!
The first thing that struck me upon loading this game was the graphics. They're...beautiful. It's quite clear that Sprague has put a lot of work into this game, and it shows. The animation is incredibly smooth, far more so then I've ever seen in a released fangame. Although as I gaped in amazement at the work Mark Sprague put into this game an owlbear fell out of the sky and hit poor Applejack on the head. This was a rather strange design choice, but after giving the owlbear a good hard kick he flew off the screen and I moved on. It took me a while to get used to the odd controls, but I eventually got used to it, and discovered after my test session that I could adjust it to my liking.
The gameplay forumla is quite simple. It consists mainly of kicking/stomping on owlbears or chickens, and finding the hidden secrets hidden throughout the demo. It was fun at first, but after a while it grew rather repetitive, and I eventually got a feeling of déjà vu from the level design. The game would have benefited greatly if it had some parallax scrolling in the background, although with the creator busy with Mane 6 I don't really expect him to find the time to add it. The music was nice at first, but got fairly annoying after a couple minutes of playing the game, and I eventually muted the sound. I enjoyed finding all the secrets the demo had to offer, and trust me, there are a lot of them for a game this size. A couple of them were broken when I first played, although they have since been fixed...
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| Momma Owlbear doesn't look too happy with you.. |
There are many fangames out there, with varying degrees of quality. While most are mediocre at best, and unbearable at worst, the Pony Platforming Project manages to outshine most of it's (released) peers through it's high-quality animation and a bunch of hidden secrets and easter eggs. However, repetitive gameplay, music and a lack of documentation detract from the experience. Despite these flaws, it's still worth a play or two, although it may take more to find all the secrets the game has to offer.
8/10(image soon)
Oh, and by the way, I'm apparently Equestria Gaming's newest blog author, XTUX345.
