Review: Equestria Daily: The Game

Play it Here!

Now some of you may remember a video Cereal Velocity posted a while ago called Equestria Daily: The Game, which joked about how much email the Equestria Daily team has to deal with - hundreds of messages a day, if I'm not mistaken. In case you missed the Equestria Daily post about this, it has been made into an actual game, currently being developed by Nitrouspony over on DeviantArt.

This simple side-scrolling platformer is still being worked on - Nitrous is going to add many things to it, including an Android and IOS version. But you can play the current version now at the link above. Find out more after the break!

The gameplay here is extremely simple. You take the role of Cereal Velocity (well, his pony). Your goal is to destroy as many evil gmail messages as possible, and make it to the end. Simple as that. There are 5 levels as of current, and they do get harder and harder as you go along. The controls are fairly standard: WASD with spacebar to shoot, C to switch weapons (you have an assault rifle and a pistol with infinite ammo), and P to pause.

The graphics, as you can see by the game's banner, are 8-bit inspired. The backgrounds, however, are of a higher resolution. The mix between the background and foreground works great, in my opinion. All in all, the art is very nice. Although the physics as of current are a bit wonky, Nitrous plans on fixing them up in later versions, as well as adding a whole bunch of new content (more characters, enemies, weapons, etc). The entire list of planned features is listed on the DeviantArt page. 

Those envelopes sure look threatening.

The piece of this game I enjoyed the most is the music. Seriously, the music really enhances the gameplay as a whole. Volume needs to be up to play this one. Credit to the music goes to Foozogs and Radiarc, used with permission.

Equestria Daily: The Game sure has promise, although it's in a very rough state at the moment. I'd still recommend giving it a play and supporting its creator, though, and I for one would definitely get the IOS version when it comes out.

And as a side-note, I, Enigma9994, am one of the new authors on Equestria Gaming. XTUX345 and I will try and make sure that posts come around a bit more frequently. Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it, and everyone be sure to have a fantastic holiday season!

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...

Review: Rainbow Dash Shooter Project

Rainbow Dash Shooter Project

Ever since their release the Desktop Ponies sprites have been used in almost everything. Yes, they are good-looking retraux pony sprites but at times one likes to see developers do their own sprite work for a change. I can say from experience that the main problem seems to be that four-legged characters are rather hard to animate properly and simply using a standard set of sprites saves much time and lets the developer work on things other then character animation. The creator of the dully-titled Rainbow Dash Shooter Project claims that his game's graphical resources were created entirely by himself, and this may be either a good or bad thing depending on his artistic talents.

Of course, it is not the graphics that matter most as the gameplay, so how has this project turned out? Find out after the break.

Of all the sidescrolling shooters that I've seen come out of this fandom this one has to be the most ambitious. The player starts off controlling either Rainbow Dash or an OC created within the game itself (more on that later), and can eventually unlock Fluttershy and Derpy, the latter of which must be obtained by finding a special code either ingame or in the game's comments. Each character has their own special abilities but they can all fly, shoot magic fireballs and enter "overdose mode", which basically speeds up gameplay and enables the player to fire at an absurdly fast rate.

At times one almost wishes that the entire game could be played in Overdose mode.

Unfortunately things get worse fast. Unlike other titles such as the splendidly-made Dash the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project lacks a sense of speed and the sluggish controls make you feel like you're not flying, but swimming in a pool of mud. There is also a very small variety of enemies, and until the first boss is complete the player is stuck fighting large swarms of parasprites. Thankfully once the player reaches Cloudsdale a couple new foes are added to the lineup, although you'll still be mostly fighting parasprites throughout the entire game. To be honest it gets boring quite fast, although the addition of a couple bosses helps considerably.

The game's first boss is Trixie, who is apparently too lazy to perform a levitation spell like unicorn OCs can and is being pulled in a flying cart by Fluttershy. She starts off extremely boring, just slowly firing bullets at the player, but it's once you start to damage her that things get hectic. The game practically switches genres from a plain old shooter to a fully-fledged bullet hell game, although the execution is rather sloppy. In the final stages there is no logic as to where the bullets appear from, and the sluggish controls make dodging the high-speed magical projectiles nigh impossible. As almost everypony realizes it is far more fun to skillfully dodge bullets at high speed, not soaking up damage as possible without dying and with the grace of an overfed seal that can barely swim in it's aquarium pool without sinking.

Thankfully Cloudsdale isn't quite as dull as the stages before it.

As for the graphics...I'll just say that the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project looks quite dull. The occasional passing cloud makes things slightly more interesting, but in general the scenery which you will be flying by is completely bare. It also seems that like many people the artist has a difficult time drawing ponies, and it shows. It's nice that he made the effort of designing his own puppets in Flash, but I really wish that he had just used either the My Little Pony Flash Resource Kit or the Double Rainboom puppets instead of his own work, as it would have improved the game's look immensely. Letting the player use  OCs in the game was a nice touch, although it seems that cutie marks do not import properly  after uploading them and they come out as a garbled mess. There also seems to be a distinct lack of manes and accessories to choose from although thankfully it seems that more shall be added to the game fairly soon.


Let me get this straight: the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project could have been a great game, but poor execution ruined it. Put simply, this game was boring. The game looked dull, the controls were sluggish, and fighting endless swarms of parasprites grew tedious quickly. I had high hopes for this project, but they were shot down as soon as I began to play and were so heavily damaged that they were unable to fly again. To make this game better one would have to loosen up the controls, entirely revamp the graphics, tweak a couple bosses and BAM! We'd have a must play on our hands. Thankfully the game is still under development so hope is not lost yet, so why don't you play the game for yourself and give the creator some feedback, eh?

Review: A World You Should Not Know

A World You Should Not Know

 A while back some guy over at the My Little Game Dev forums thought it would be funny to make an Equestria Girls game with dubstep, lousy textures, and annoying audio. The resulting project took a mere two days to make, and along the way somehow turned into A World You Should Not Know: a horror game starring Twilight Sparkle as she tries to retrieve the magical crown from...whatever. Sunset Shimmer isn't involved at all: the story is basically just an excuse for the game.

The review continues after the break, as usual.


 According to AWYSNK, the alternate universe explored in Equestria Girls is actually just another one of your typical, not-so-abandoned facilities you find lying about everywhere in video games, and the aforementioned crown is locked behind some sort of cruddy door that requires six keys to open. For no reason in particular these keys are guarded by warped version of the mane six, who evidently have been just sitting in there, waiting around for some idiot to wander in without a shotgun so they could chase them down and make pony hamburger.

 Regardless of the weird premise, the game actually manages to be surprisingly scary due to its heavy use of claustrophobic spaces and creepy breathing made by your foes. Being stalked by anthro ponies may sound and look silly from the screencaps, but trust me; it is anything but ridiculous. Their messed-up textures and truly bizarre animation is quite disturbing to behold as they take massive strides towards you with their freakishly long legs, following you through the rusty corridors.

Neither words or pictures can convey how terrifying these things are in motion.

 Speaking of rust, the textures in this game are of a rather low resolution when compared to most of its modern contemporaries, although you probably won't be paying too much attention to them while peeking around the corners, carefully listening to see if you can hear any nearby footsteps or breathing. The darkness tends to make it difficult to see any stalkers until they're really close, so it's advisable to play the game with headphones. A map is also included in the game folder, which the player may consult if they're feeling too lost.


 I really don't know what else to say about A World You Should Not Know, or if there is anything else. The game wasn't bad or anything, but for various reason I've never really found this genre very interesting, although those of you who are into horror games might enjoy this. I'd still say that Derp Till Dawn was a much better game overall (and that it deserved a higher score than I gave it), so I'll just slap a 5 on this and be done with this review so I can get on to adding Twilight Wing to the Arcade.

 GPL violations are magical

Luna Game 4 (Creepypasta)

Luna Game 4 (Creepypasta)

Alright, after a long wait, the fourth addition to the Luna Game series has been released! If you haven't already played Luna Game, Luna Game 2, and Luna Game 3, I suggest you go do that now.


YOU CAN ONLY PLAY THIS GAME ONE TIME NORMALLY.
Though thanks to a user who emailed me, a program was created that allowed you to replay the game.
You can download that program here


Yes, I'm being completely serious, I couldn't even grab a screenshot on my own because I didn't realize this until AFTER I had played through it (Stole this one from Ponychan). This game is by far the best of the four, so I suggest you play it. I'll throw the link before the break this time, making it easier to play it without spoilers.



DOWNLOAD GAME HERE

WARNING: SPOILERS - IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME, CLICK THE LINK ABOVE




Once again, you start out as Princess Luna, standing on a lice grassy cliff with a blue sky, and some kind of cheerful music playing. Though there is only one place you're able to go; off the cliff. After you jump down, you hit the ground at a high speed, and hear a splat as the screen turns black. The text "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" appears on the screen, and after a few moments, the game closes.

Trying to re-open the game is pointless, it won't do anything. After a few seconds, the game re-opens on it's own (It probably just turned into a background task for a few moments) with the words "It didn't have to turn out like this", after a few moments, "You didn't have to die". After this text appears, a few seconds pass by and blood splatters appear on the screen, with the text "BUT NOW YOU'RE IN MY WORLD" shaking madly while a roar plays.

When the roar stops, you see Princess Luna shoot from the sky, and hit the ground. The world is all red, almost appearing as if you're in Pony Hell. At this point, you have to quickly go right, if you're too slow, the darkness from the left will catch up to you, and likely kill you. Though if you DO manage to get past all the crazy terrain, and jump off the cliff (Pretty sure you can't make that jump), you get sent to the next part.

This part is the craziest, it starts with zalgofied text, that seems to be glitching out, and when that goes away, some sort of messed up 8-bit music plays in the background, while bugged up looking block start appearing on the screen. The blocks will randomly change appearance, even if you don't do anything. All the way to the right is a large wall that you cannot get over, the only choice is to head for higher ground. The higher you get, the darker the screen gets, making it very hard to navigate above the blocks to get on top of where you started. When you go back all the way left on the top layer, and jump over the pillar, a creepy pinkie pie is standing there, but disappears very quickly. Continue going right, and the music suddenly gets faster and the blocks start to fade away. Avoiding the terrain is difficult here, but if you reach the end, you run right into the same creepy pinkie pie, and the screen goes black.

You hear a heartbeat fade in, and see a picture of Pinkie Pie from Party of one, as the heartbeat gets louder, the image gets lighter, until it suddenly switches to a disturbing version of the picture with static. The picture goes back and starts fading out again, and you hear Pinkie Pie laughing in the background. The image and heartbeat fade and the game ends. For good this time.

If you try to reopen the game, it simply says "Your fate is already sealed" and doesn't let you open it.

This is a one time play through, so be careful!

HERE is a youtube playthrough of the game.

Dash Off - v1.05 update

Dash Off

Dash Off is a platformer created by distoorted where you play as Rainbow Dash. The music featured in this game is the Entire 8-Bit Collection by RainbowCrash88.

This goal of the game is simple, collect as many apples as you can before the time runs out. To collect the apples, you can run by holding either the left or right arrow key, and fly with either the spacebar or the up arrow. You have a Power Bar that regenerates itself over time, and if the power bar reached zero, you are unable to fly. Along the way, you do run into a few obstacles, but also a pretty nifty power up.


There are the bad cupcakes, Derpy Hooves (The one who enjoys dropping bad cupcakes on your head), and the infamous water holes. The bad cupcakes prevent you from regaining power to fly for a short time, and the water holes are just annoying holes with water in them, forcing you to fly to get over, or out of them. The power up on the other hand, would literally bring your power up to over 9000. This would allow you to fly for as long as you want with no consequences or worries about bad muffins.

Rainbow Dash Flying like a pro

The concept of the game is good, and since the newer control updates, the controls have been running very smooth! It still has a few problems, such as being able to noclip through the tips of walls by flying, but overall, the bugfixes have fixed most of the noticeable and troublesome problems.

Overall, the game was pretty good, the control fix was a huge improvement, and the other bug fixes took care of all the other major complaints.

ReReview: Pony Platform Game Engine Test

Play it Here!

One thousand years ago, when Luna was freshly banished, we reviewed the Pony Platform Game Engine Test. Believe it or not, the Pony Platform Game is a platformer where you play as a pony. Like so many awkward situations before it, the game begins when Spike enlists the services of another (namely, you) to help him defeat a bad case of the munchies.

Does the Pony Platform Game stand out from numerous other... pony platform games? Is 8-bit the art medium of the new millenium? Can one manage to get their OC's head stuck in a floating earth island? All this and more, after the break.

As you start the game, you are offered a choice of hair, mane and eye color for your pony. Although not a selling point, the ability to play as the pony of your choice (in color, if not in mane and tail style,) is a nice touch. Your colors can be randomized at any point during the game by pressing 'R'.

A brief message details the game's interesting control style - while you can run and jump, which is perhaps a little faster on land, holding the jump key allows you to fly. Flying is smooth, but on the ground the controls feel a little unresponsive and clunky. The power of unlimited flight allows you to explore the game area with greater ease, but also leads to some awkward interactions with the environment. Thankfully, you've been blessed with the magical power of upward motion through dirt, so you can't get permanently stuck.

Look, ma! I'm an earth pony!

The game greets you with a blast of Eurobeat and the rich, visually diverse 8-bit graphics of Sonic 3, both pluses that make flying around seem like less of a chore. Additionally, the transition from walking to galloping on the ground is smooth. There's plenty of sensory appeal, for such a short game.

Snag all the scattered gems, and return to Spike. This game is technically a test of the Pony Platform Game engine, used to make Cupcake Dreams. It's short and perhaps not fully finished, but worth a play through (or a few, if you're attempting to beat my smashing high score of 55 seconds.)

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies 2 - Version 2 Update

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies 2 by yeaka

Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies 2 is a platform game where you play as Pinkie Pie, it is a sequel to Collect Cupcakes, Lick Ponies. This game features the music Art of the Dress Eurobeat Remix



The controls are are identical to the first game, Left arrow to move left, Right arrow to move Right, Up arrow to jump, Spacebar to lick/talk, and a newly added control using the mouse to click on certain objects to get cupcakes.

The Game features six full levels, and an extra short ending level. The goal of the game is similar to the first, collect cupcakes and lick ponies. This time around, the backgrounds are custom, and there are actual platforms to jump on. The game has working health, and three ways to get hurt; Running into Derpy Hooves, Touching spikes, and jumping off a cliff (Or just touching the bottom of the map). The movement and platforms are slightly glitchy, but the version 2 update fixed most of the problems. (A small warning, if you die you cannot respawn, and have to restart the entire game.) Once again, cupcakes give you one point, and licking ponies gives you three, and you can talk to Dr. Whooves after you have fifteen points to progress to the next level.

The plot in this is a little more defined than in the first game, but still mysterious. The game opens up with Dr. Whooves assigning Pinkie Pie a very important and dangerous mission. The mission is revealed to be collecting provisions (Cupcakes) and licking things (other ponies). The nice doctor also warns you about not hitting Derpy Hooves. I won't spoil the ending (You have to play it to see for yourself >:3 ), but it is slightly humorous, and I found myself chuckling.

Version 2 release was mainly a bug fix, nothing else visible (That I could tell at least) had changed. The bug fixes mainly dealt with the movement, which is significantly less glitchy and awkward.

With the extended  levels and additional features also comes some game bugs and slightly glitchy gameplay. The plot is more thought out, but still missing a lot of things. This game gets:

Dancing Pony Gorgeous Flames Insomnia Labrinth Demo

Dancing Pony Gorgeous Flame Insomnia Labrinth Demo by Professor Neighton

Dancing Pony Gorgeous Flame Insomnia Labrinth Demo is a side-scrolling game where you play as dash. The music featured in this game is Fluttershy's Lullaby Eurobeat Remix and Giggle at the Ghostie Eurobeat Remix.

The game's controls are simple, Left Arrow to move left, Right Arrow to move right, Up Arrow to move up, Down arrow to move down, Space to fire energy beams, and 'X' to use a one-per-level bomb.

This game has three levels, two normal levels and a boss. In the levels, the goal is to last through the waves of Parasprites, you can destroy the Purple and Gold ones with your energy shots, but the red and blue ones will duplicate when shot.

This totally made me think of Touhou

The boss is a giant parasprite that can spawn more red parasprites, and is a PAIN IN THE BUTT to destroy. You start out with 3 lives, and can run into more in game, alone with a double shot power-up that allows you to shoot two bullets at once instead of one.

There is no specific plot, though I'd assume Rainbow Dash is trying to save Ponyville from a parasprite invasion or something like that.

The game is pretty epic looking, but very short. The graphics and gameplay are pretty good, except for the major lag that seems to activate in the second level because of the rain effect. The lack of a real story behind it is also disappointing. This game gets:

My Little Platform Game

My Little Platform Game by Inkwell-Pony

My Little Platform Game is a platformer game where you play as a generic Blue pony with Pink hair. The game features the songs 8-bit Giggle at the Ghostie and 8-bit Art of the Dress. This game was created using the EDWARD Platform Game Engine. This game is currently only a demo.

The controls are very simple, Left arrow or A to move left, Right arrow or D to move right, hold shift to run, and Spacebar to jump.

The game is very short, featuring only one very small level. The goal of the game is to collect the fifteen apples scattered throughout the map, and either avoid or squish the strange looking green-haired creatures. If you tough the creature anywhere other than the top, you will die and respawn at the start, but because you have infinite lives, there are no penalties.

There is no story line at all, and not even a proper ending.

The game has good physics, and the graphics are top-notch, but the game is incredibly short and has no plot. It gets:

Review:Derp till Dawn

Derp till Dawn

 Despite not being nearly as famous as the big name fangame developers, Donitz has had a pretty good run so far with his line of creepy fangames. Story of the Blanks is undoubtedly his most famous creation, while Twilight vs Walking is more remembered for its difficulty than its Twilight Zone-inspired twist at the end. Since according to him "everyone, their mother, their dog and evil clone" had already made a Slender clone he decided to make one himself, and the results can be seen in his newest game "Derp till Dawn".

 Dous the humorously unfittingly-titled Derp till Dawn live up to Donitz's other respectable fangames? To find out, head below the break to read our review on it.

 As with most Slender clones, Derp till Dawn takes place inside a dark forest centered around finding several pages and trying to avoid the dreaded Slenderman (or in this case, a Slenderpony). Unlike most of its peers it does tell a story, although it is kept quite vague and mainly told through the pages you collect throughout the game. It also takes place mainly from a top-down perspective, but upon going indoors the game switches to a first person viewpoint that would have reminded me fondly of Doom if it wasn't for Derpy's mane getting in the way of my vision and breaking the immersion.

If you think the house is nerve-wracking, just wait till you reach the well...

 In a horror-centric game, having a scary atmosphere is key. A forest at night is spooky enough without elderitch abominations mucking about, but unfortunately both Slender and Derp till Dawn slipped up in these areas and made it feel more like walking through a vast, flat field of telephone poles, with the occasional bathhouse or camper lying about. In your average forest one would expect to at least find some little streams, hills and whatnot: in here you can't even find a single stinking bush! The game's first portion also had a distinct lack of dark purple which would have contrasted well with the green and given it an aura of mystery: unfortunately the caves below the well utterly abuse the most garish shade of it and feel more like something out of a cheesy "Barney's Dungeon" WAD than a horror game by one as talented as Donitz.

 Even if it looks and feels right, a horror game will fall flat if the audio was only an afterthought. Derp till Dawn has its fair share of unnerving music and scare chords, and like the original Slender you will be met with a scare chord and some static when you stumble across your well-dressed stalker. Some forest ambience sounds such as the ones used in Derpy's Story would have greatly increased immersion, but the place already feels dead anyways so there isn't really much of a point to it anyways. Ah well, at least the music is quite effective.

Some ominous circles of doom.

 I've said a lot about the graphics and audio already, so how about the gameplay? Pretty much it's just Slender in 16-bit and viewed from an isometric perspective, or at least until you head indoors and things go all first person. It's a unique twist on the experience, sure, but the problem is that the indoor portions are infinitely more scary than wandering around in the "forest". Some might find it scary for a while, but given the game's over-reliance on jump scares it just becomes annoying after several deaths. A couple puzzles would have been a very welcome addition and helped with breaking up the overall monotony.

 My original hopes for Derp till Dawn were quite high, although after playing the game I must say that it did not quite live up to my expectations. As technically impressive as it may be for a Flash game it lacks polish, and if only Donitz had delayed release for a little bit, gotten some feedback from playtesters and made some relatively simple changes it would have been an incredible experience. At least it's fun for the first while, and if you're looking for some jump scares then this might keep you entertained for a couple minutes.

Equestria Daily: The Game now on Android

Download it Here!

That's right - Equestria Daily: The Game, a production of Equestrian Innovations: Game Division, and AirGlow Labs, is now available on the Android for free, with iOS capability just around the corner. Some of you may remember our review of this game by Nitrouspony, based off a video made by Cereal Velocity parodying the amount of email submitted to Equestria Daily every day.

You can still play the game here at Nitrouspony's DeviantArt. Equestria Daily: The Game is still a work in progress, and has added some new features since it was last reviewed, such as menus, an intro animation, and tutorial of sorts. It's still worth a play even for those without Android devices, in my opinion.

Review:Cider Attack

The Apple Family's Cider Attack

Sometimes, one does not create a game with the intention of creating an epic masterpiece. Sometimes, it's nice to just have a small, highly addictive game to kill time, have fun and get a good highscore. Well, that's exactly what Cider Attack is. We've seen a couple games created with that intention in mind, and with varying degrees of success.

How did the cider turn out? Find out after the break!

In Cider Attack the player controls the Mane 6 (along with Big Macintosh and Applebloom) as they try to make as much of their high-quality, trademark cider as they can. The player is assigned points for every barrel they create (although they are only assigned once ten barrels are created), and accidentally making lower-quality cider will decrease your highscore. Additionally, the player must produce the cider within the time limit, or else the game ends.

No Pinkie, Applejack's tail is not scented.

Cider (well, the Apple family's brand) is apparently made in three simple steps, and the gameplay revolves around this. In the first part, you first play as either Applejack or Fluttershy and buck the apples from the tree (shook from the tree if you are playing as Fluttershy), and then you switch to Applebloom/Pinkie Pie and catch them. This is the meat of the gameplay (simple though it may be), and arguably the most crucial step to getting a good highscore. Not to mention that it's the most fun of the three steps, and involves the most skill. However, the apples always seem to fall in the same pattern, which makes this step far too predictable.

Lovely!

The second step gives you control of Rarity (or Granny Smith), and has you select which apples to put into the cider. Just toss in anything that isn't brused! This part is quite easy, although if you are in a rush to beat the clock it could become a living nightmare (and leave you with the worst-tasting cider ever manufactured). For the last step, all you have to do is hold down the "S" key for Rainbow Dash and Big Macintosh to grind the apples into tasty, tasty cider. In my opinion, that part wasn't even necessary, and could've been easily combined with step two, but it does make things more hectic if you're running low on time.

I seem to have noticed a trend going on lately that has people in need of sprites for their pony games using the sprites from the Desktop Ponies project, and even though they are pretty good sprites, I am getting rather sick of them. I mean, can't someone just draw their own sprites for once? Anyways, other then that (and mind you, the sprites aren't BAD, just a little overused) the graphics are decent, considering that it's a quick flash game, but the background is kind of fuzzy, which detracts from the overall look of the game. The music, while not original, is quite fitting, and thankfully does not get annoying after long periods of playing the game, which is particularly useful for this kind of game.

Couldn't you two have just done this during the second step?

The Apple Family's Cider Attack aimed to become a simple, addictive game, and it succeeded in it's goal. It's main objective was fun, and that it is, nothing more, nothing less. It's well worth a couple plays, or maybe more if you wish for a really high score. Even though it's most certainly fun, I cannot give it a very high rating, and thus I give it a 5.

(See what I did there?)

Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue

Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue

 Fluttershy seems to be a fairly uncommon main character for fangames; which is understandable given her gentle demeanour, and when she is a playable main character the game almost always draws attention to her poor flying skills. It's about time that the gal gets her own game, but the fact that it's about rescuing bunnies is somewhat disappointing. Don't forget that this is the same pony that stared down a dragon and redeemed the god of chaos; shame everypony seems to forget those bits.

 Still, a game can still be good even if it's not exactly epic in scope, right? True, but to find out whether that applies to Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue one must continue to read past the break.

 Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue is another perfect example of a game that is summarized by its title. In fact, I'd be surprised if the game had the player do anything other than retrieve rabbits from the supposedly threatening Everfree Forest. About the only thing remotely unique about this game is that Fluttershy is capable of fully-fledged flight, limited only by the invisible boundaries of the level. If at any point Fluttershy has trouble finding one of the stupid mammals she can go back to the beginning of the level to visit Twilight, who is apparently too lazy to actually go out and search for the bunnies. She has a spell that detects lifeforms, and usually only comes in handy towards the end of the game when only one or two more bunnies are left.

 Graphically the game is not that bad, but it's not especially good-looking. As with most other pony fangames it utilizes the infamous yet undeniably useful desktop ponies collection of character sprites, but given the difficulty of animating four-legged animals this is excusable. I was quite pleased with the incorporation of parallax scrolling in the background, although given the scale of the trees it makes the ponies feel almost bug-sized. The tileset is fairly bland, with the notable exception of the grass tiles. As for the music...FlutterWonder isn't a bad song, but it would be annoying if your friend looped it on his MP3 player while you were out in the woods at night, looking for that blasted rabbit of his who escaped from his hutch a couple hours ago.

There isn't much more to the game than this.

 The most important thing that the game lacks is replay value. Since the bunnies are "hidden" in all the same places Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue is only fun for the first time around, after which the game becomes tedious. I'd go so far as to say that this game is inferior to its predecessor, Cupcake Dreams, which actually had a time limit and conditions for failure (falling into the abyss, touching baked bads, etc). Mind you, there is an alternate mode of gameplay in which it is possible to fail, but it can only be activated by playing at a certain time of night.

 According to InfinityDash this game was initially supposed to be far broader in scope, but he decided to make it simpler so he could focus on some other projects of his. I can understand why he would do that, but it's still a shame that the game lacked random level generation to help with the replay value. At least the hidden gameplay mode makes Bunny Rescue into a much more enjoyable experience, but I still cannot give the game a good score. Then again Fluttershy's Bunny Rescue was never supposed to be an exceptional game or anything, so a Bloomberg grade isn't too bad for a game of this type.