Review: Catch the Scootaloos

Play it Here!

This one's for all you Scootaloo fans out there. The object of the game is simple: catch the Scootaloos falling from the sky, and use the bits earned from your played rounds to buy upgrades for your bucket or the Scootaloos, or even unlock a new game mode. Credit to this game goes to Sparklepeep, who made this game for the r/mylittlepony community on Reddit. It was also featured on Equestria Daily, but I felt this game was in need of a proper review. Read it after the break!

You start out the game with 35 bits. That's enough to get you a few cheap upgrades, if you want them. When you click the play button, you get right into the action, with Scootaloos falling from the sky. With your trusty bucket following your cursor's every move, you start catching the Scootaloos and racking up a score, to the tune of  I'll Fly Higher by AcousticBrony and MandoPony.

Now the simple gameplay can get old pretty fast, with Scootaloos falling in ever increasing abundance. What's more, one round lasts six minutes, which is a very long time for a game like this. Thankfully, you can cut the round short whenever you want by hitting X, which will get you the points you earned through however long you played. The music to this game has lyrics and distinct sections, so hopefully you won't get too bored with doing the same thing over and over again for several minutes. 

Why can't I hold all these Scootaloos?

Spoilers ahead!

The only thing that will keep you playing is the upgrades. The first set of upgrades is known as Scootadiversity. When you start the game, every Scootaloo in the sky is an instance of the same image. By the time you've fully upgraded Scootadiversity (Level 7), you will have 7 different types of Scootaloo to catch. This upgrade doubles in cost every Level, so it costs 5 bits to get from Levels 1 to 2, and 160 bits to get from Levels 6 to 7.

The next set is called Receptigirth. These upgrades are more costly, but max out at Level 3. It makes the buckets larger each level, making it easier to catch the Scootaloos raining from the sky. The Level 3 upgrade is a very large KFC bucket, a jab at the whole Scootaloo/chicken thing. It costs 100 bits to purchase Level 2, and 150 to purchase Level 3.

Lastly, you can purchase a secret game mode for 100 bits. This turns out to be Endless Mode, which is exactly what it sounds like - endless amounts of Scootaloos for you to catch. Don't worry, you can still hit X to exit and claim your points. It also has a different song: Adam Jensen, a version of Barbara Streisand with "Adam Jensen" as the only lyric in place of "Barbara Streisand."

End of Spoilers

All in all, this game gets old fast, and the gameplay is very simple, but the purchasable upgrades add content to this minigame. Although Sparklepeep has stated that the game is finished, I definitely see vast room for improvements. With more upgrades that actually change the gameplay, this could be a legitimately fun game.

As much as I want to give this a Crusader Grade (that's what it was earlier), the gameplay of Catch the Scootaloos just isn't varied enough for a 6/10. So a Trixie Grade it is.

Review: Muffins.exe (Creepypasta)

muffins.exe

 Today I was sitting around, expecting a creepypasta to show up in our email inbox as they usually do during this time of year, and what do you know? Some "Anonymous" person submits this game titled muffins.exe, created in GameMaker Lite and featuring a gratuitous amount of screamers (thus rendering it very NSFW).

 If you intend on playing this, I'd advise that you do so before reading below the break, as the review contains spoilers.



 Upon opening muffins.exe I was presented with options to quit (obviously for the cowards among us), start a new game or see "extras". The latter was blanked out, so I have no idea what it does, and thus I proceeded to play it with my volume lowered somewhat and without headphones. I also ran the game via windowed mode in Wine, just to ensure that my screen wouldn't get stuck on some gory Derpy picture run through a red filter.

 The player, as Roseluck, is tasked with finding Derpy's muffins and returning them to her. As is to be expected from games of this genre, the graphical style is purposefully tacky and the physics feel rather awkward. After doing this, Derpy  says that she has to tell her something very important, and then disappears for several days. Figures. You then go looking for her in the field, and surprise surprise, everything gets all red and screwed up in a completely original manner that I've never seen in a game ever before.

Wow, I never expected this.

 As Roseluck plods on through the madness, she is repeatedly subjected to jumpscares and the nasty sight of body parts lying on the floor. After a while you'd expect her to get annoyed and start demanding that Derpy stop messing around and just kill her already, but nooo. She is one of those silent types, and even if she did say anything Derpy probably wouldn't listen, because antagonists in creepypastas aren't known for complying with their victim's wishes because they are evil and stuff. Rawr.

 So why did Derpy suddenly decide to turn on her best childhood friend, as the game describes her? Perhaps she is fed up with Roseluck's slow, silent ways, and sold her soul to that shifty-eyed janitor in exchange for reality-warping powers. Then again, Roseluck could just be on a bad trip or something; I wouldn't put it beneath her to cheap out on the LSD and purchase a bad batch. I'm not entirely sure, since I'm pretty sure that I ended up with an early ending by falling on some spikes like a pleb.


 So did I like muffins.exe? The constant jumpscares got a bit ridiculous after a while, but if you like that sort of thing than maybe you'll find Muffins.exe to be a fitting diversion for this night.

Hope you all enjoy the evening! I'll be sitting around, listening to Glenn Miller and watching cartoons to calm my paranoia.

Review: Welcome to Ponyville Act 1

Welcome to Ponyville Act 1

As I said in my previous post I have never been entirely sure as to why the Brony fandom seems to have fallen in love with Welcome to Ponyville. The one that seemed most likely to me based on my observations was that they really wanted a game in which you could date ponies (which isn't really that strange, given that there was a pigeon dating simulator of all things) and this game promised both that and a fairly decent visual novel experience. Now that Act 1 (which is essentially a demo of the final thing) has been released we can play this game for ourselves and decide whether it really has lived up to the hype.

Just how good is Welcome to Ponyville? Find out in our review which we have conveniently placed after the pagebreak.

You would expect that a visual novel demo would have a fairly small download, right? Wrong. Imagine my surprise when I began the torrent and found to my horror that the demo took up over 1GB of hard drive space. Just let that sink in for a moment. But if the game is that large it must be really substantial, right? Wrong again! Act 1 is a very short demo, and what contributes the most to the game's filesize is actually the audio. It's quite a shame that the team didn't even bother to put the game in a zipped folder (which in tests has been shown to almost halve the game's size) in order to save on download time, but let us get on with the actual game, shall we?

Bon Bon introducing herself.

Pretty much Welcome to Ponyville is your basic visual novel and has a very small amount of actual gameplay. Most of it is spent talking to the various ponies in town with a minimal level of interaction, with the player just clicking the left mouse button to advance the conversation and occasionally having a choice between saying different things. In my opinion the game would greatly benefit from making greater use of the latter, since at times it felt like I was just an observer and had almost no say as to what went on in-game. Players in general like to have plenty of choices when it comes to interactive stories but sadly Act 1 drags them along, forcing them to be nice when they are feeling naughty and vice versa. Hopefully the developers will realize this and make the necessary changes in the next few acts, or else I (along with many others) shall feel greatly disappointed with this.

As most of you probably already knew by now Welcome to Ponyville only uses a minimal amount of original sprites, and uses community-created vectors instead. While I must admit that this was a good idea the execution was quite flawed. You see the vectors are often scaled inconsistently, creating the effect of a pony growing and shrinking as they talk. For some reason it seems that Filly Games refused to zoom in to some of the various backgrounds used in-game which introduces black bars on the top and bottom as you can see in the screenshots. This is only a minor setback but it would make Act 1's environment even more immersive then in its current state. As for the music...it's good, but nothing special. It does its job and does it well but most of the time you won't even realize that it's there.

I get the impression the Vinyl Scratch will probably be the easiest character to ship yourself with early on.

One final complaint that I have about this game is the engine. Sure, it was nice that they actually went through the trouble of creating their own engine and it runs smoothly in Wine but much development time could have been saved if they would have used a free visual novel engine instead such as Ren'Py. The current engine also has several annoying quirks such as ponies disappearing during transitions, which makes it look like they are popping in and out of existence and actually ruins what could have been a genuinely scary scene near the end.


From this review most readers would probably conclude that I am rather disappointed in Act 1, and they would be correct. However one must remember that this is just the first chapter in Welcome to Ponyville and that hopefully things will get much, much better. Still, I would not say that this game has so far not lived up to the hype and for that I give it a 4/10. Let's hope that the next few instalments will be somewhat better, eh?

Oh, and here's a warning to any of our readers that happen to be both autistic and have sensitive hearing.  You may want to turn down your volume for the bell chimes, as they can aggravate your noise sensitivity and cause varying degrees of pain. This was discovered during my first playthrough and resulted in around an hour of pain for yours truly.

A couple of additional notes from Arctic Lux:
An alternate download link can be found here. The file's a little smaller, only about 600MB.

If you attempt to run the game and get the error "The program can't start because d3dx9_43.dll is missing from your computer," click here to update DirectX on your computer. Make sure to uncheck the box to install the Bing toolbar...

Also, I figured I'd add my unasked for personal opinion on the game: I'm more a fan of story-oriented games, and I had fun with this one. I think Xtux is right about a lot of the problems, but I'd still recommend it to fans of similar games.

Luna Game 2 (CREEPYPASTA)

Luna Game 2 (CREEPYPASTA)

Recently, I received an email by somepony asking for me to try out their game, and included was a nameless (and quite suspicious) .exe file. I launched the game (After virus scanning it over and over and over) and it reminded me almost immediately of the Luna Game. And that's exactly what it was. It is unknown if this game was created by the same person who created the first Luna Game. The music featured is Super Ponybeat - Giggle at the Ghostie.



WARNING: SPOILERS - IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME, SCROLL TO BOTTOM




This game starts out as you playing as Luna on a very simple platform level. It tells you immediately you can hold Shift and run. After you get going, you start to notice cracks forming in the ground. The cracks get bigger and bigger until they completely cover all of the ground. Suddenly, the screen flashes to a disturbing image of Pinkie Pie and plays white static for about a second, then flashes back to the game. Now, the background and the blocks are all tinted dark red, and you move very slowly. There is some disturbing music playing in the background.

At this point, the only thing to do is go forward until you reach a giant hole in the ground. After falling, the background fades to black, and you eventually fade after it, revealing a Game Over screen of Luna falling. The image used at this point is Luna's Descent. More creepy music begins playing, and after a minute the game closes. During this whole time, you are unable to close the game normally, and after the first flash you are unable to move your mouse, just like in the first Luna Game.

HERE is a youtube playthrough of the game.

The major difference between this and the first Luna Game, is that it does not create any extra files, an annoyance the first one was more famous for. This game is best played in dark room with headphones for the full effect.



You can download the game HERE IT WILL SHOCK YOU, so be careful.


The platforming had a few glitches, such as getting stuck, but was done fairly well. The scare was also done fairly well, but because this is not a full game, it only gets

Rainbow Dash Attack

Rainbow Dash Attack by PerianArdocyl

Rainbow Dash Attack is a side-scrolling game where you can play as Rainbow Dash. The Game does not have any built in music, but is 'intended to be enjoyed with a thumping beat'.

The controls are extremely simple, Press Spacebar to jump, and hold Spacebar to fly.

The game only consists of one single, continuous level. The goal of the game is to get as many points as you can before losing all of your lives. Touching a regular cloud will give you three points, and if you manage to hit the dark storm cloud just right, it'll give you five points. In Easy, you get an extra life every 500 points you earn, and in Hard you get an extra life every 1000 points you earn.

There is no plot for this simple side-scroller.

The concept is very simple, and the gameplay is fairly easy, but it's very repetitive and can get old very quickly.

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies by yeaka

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies is a platform game where you play as Pinkie Pie. This game also has a sequel, Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies 2. The game features the song Dragostea Din Tei.

The controls are very simple, Left arrow to move left, Right arrow to move right, Up arrow to jump, and Spacebar to lick and open doors.

This game contains four different levels, each with several backgrounds. The goal of the game is to collect all the cupcakes and lick all the ponies. To advance to the next level, you must obtain a certain amount of points. You get one point per cupcake, and three for every different pony you lick. There is a health number display at the top of the screen, but no way to actually lose health, so it has no actual purpose.

There is no plot in the game, or any high scores.

The game is cute, and the concept behind it unique and simple, but the lack of content and story really brings it down.

Twilight Sparkle Adventures Beta

Download it Here!

Some of you remember the post we made last month about a new pony RPG by the name of Twilight Sparkle Adventures. Well, now the game is out of demo mode and into beta mode. The game is still very similar to its demo, which included most of the content seen here. The beta adds the rest of the story line, as well as adding graphical improvements. For a full review of this game, I'd recommend clicking this link, as this post is just an announcement. If this game gets released fully, it will most likely be re-reviewed. Thanks, and have a good night!

Twilight Sparkle Adventures Demo

Download it Here!

A few days ago, XTUX345 posted a video preview of a pony RPG by the name of Twilight Sparkle Adventures. The version of that game in the video is now available for download. In this game, you control Twilight Sparkle on her quest to obtain all six Elements of Harmony. This is a pre-beta release, so it's very short, and quite rough around the edges. You can read more after the break...

Twilight Sparkle Adventures, as of this point, consists of walking around, collecting Elements of Harmony. It's said to be inspired by the Zelda games, working your way through different areas and completing various puzzles to achieve your goals. This is the basic premise of the game.

Although TSA includes save/load features, for this version, they are completely unnecessary. The entire game up to the latest version can be completed in five minutes. The majority of the gameplay is very simple and easy, and consists mostly of walking to and from places, completing simple puzzles, or button mashing to defeat enemies. And this pre-beta demo was stated to be about 3/4 of the content of the beta version, so this will definitely be a quick game.

Just pushing a box - nothing to see here...

There is a wide selection of music, although the transitions between songs could definitely be worked on; at some points the music just stopped altogether for me, and then resumed randomly. Also, all of the characters' voices are done by Text-to-Speech, which adds an altogether creepy effect, at least in my opinion. There are other miscellaneous bugs and whatnot in the game - I've gotten stuck on walls and boxes a couple of times, and you have to be just in the right spot when you hit enter for anything to happen.

All in all, this game has promise, but it would definitely have to be much, much longer to have a good RPG feel to it. If more gameplay elements and actual voice acting were added, as well as more involved combat, this could turn out to be a good little RPG. For now, though, it's just not there.