Review: Stroll

Stroll

I know what you're thinking: "A Pinkie Pie Platformer? I've played hundreds of those. Give it a rest, already." Well, hold your horses, so to speak. Just recently, Silly Mare Games released Stroll, which strives for an artsy, open-world feel rather than following in the hoofsteps of the rest of the genre. Does it find a successful niche, or is it just a bunch of walking around? You know where to click.

In the first few minutes of playing the game, I was struck by two things. First off, the game sounds like something you might play to fall asleep: rather than the customary bouncy electro remixes of pony songs, you're greeted by soft hoofsteps, mellow nature sounds, and the whistling wind. Walking around is a relaxing experience. However, I was initially a little put off by suddenly being dropped into the sandbox - I'm the kind of gamer who purposefully walks through a dungeon picking out the tunnels least likely to be the correct path, so I can make sure I haven't missed anything before continuing. Massive open worlds are intimidating.

After walking along for a few minutes, I began to get bored. I'd already found one of the ponies hidden in the game world, and I wasn't sure what to do next. The scenery was quickly becoming repetitive, and I had already been confronted by a couple of dead ends. If you're a fan of rapid-fire action games, this is probably not your cup of tea. 

Lyra doesn't sleep the way one might expect her to.

Then, after scrambling my way up a mountainside and between several precarious floating platforms, I was rewarded with another hidden pony. At this point, the game's central mechanic became clear: find your way into the game's most secluded spots, and you'll be rewarded with ponies and other secrets. Now that I'd determined my challenge, I was hooked.

There are 11 ponies, and several more easter eggs, hidden around the surprisingly expansive map. Although there's nary a cutscene, the trek from Ponyville through the Everfree forest to the outskirts of Canterlot still feels like a journey. For those of you  who like more low-key adventuring, this game provides a meditative experience: I certainly didn't expect to spend as long with it as I did, although I'm not disclosing the amount of time.

Here's the bottom line: this game doesn't possess universal appeal, and some of you will quickly find you'd rather spend time on something else. However, it's unique among the fan games I've played, and I expect it to win itself many charmed fans. Final verdict: 7/10.

Review: Innocent Luna Game

                                                     Download Link

First of all, happy Halloween/Nightmare Night everypony!

If you follow this site, I’m sure you at least know of the Luna games.  For those of you living under a rock, this series of creepypasta platform titles has become a viral sensation for its nightmare-inducing scares.  Much like Luna herself in the recent episode Luna Eclipsed, fan developer Dialgabrite wanted to prove that a good game featuring Luna doesn’t have to be terrifying with his project Innocent Luna Game.  Was he able to do it?  Let’s find out after the break. 

The game’s plot makes it clear from the start that this is a lighthearted romp.  As Luna, you’re thrust into different worlds where you must aid a diverse selection of characters, from assisting Whale Wars’ Paul Watson in taking down Japanese hunters to knocking sense into rogue Pokemon and Digimon bent on dominating Equestria.  The game is divided into numerous chapters, each consisting of a Sonic-esque act and a boss battle.

To advance, you jump around as in any typical platformer, attacking enemies with lunar bolts and collecting… Yu-Gi-Oh cards?  Sure, let’s go with that.  While these three things(collectibles, precise jumps, and attacks) are all crucial parts of the platforming experience that the developer has down, there are some issues to be found in this aspect.  First of all, your weapon only shoots in one direction: forward and diagonally down.  It would have been a lot simpler and more efficient if these projectiles had gone just straight forward a la Mega Man.  And there are no power ups or cumulative upgrades that allow you to make it stronger or change its direction.  Because of this, you must resort to jumping in order to successfully damage most enemies. 

                                                           We're whalers on the moon...

And that’s where the second problem comes in.  Unlike games such as Super Mario Bros. where the height of your jump is affected by how long you press down its respective button, Luna’s rather high jump goes the same height regardless.  This means that you’ll be moon jumping(no pun intended) everywhere you go, which can be irritating when attempting to make some jumps or avoiding enemy fire.  This is not the worst thing in the world, but it could definitely use improvement. 

Finally, the items you collect are practically worthless, as you have unlimited lives.  That said, this as well as the save feature are useful considering the lengthiness of this adventure.  It took me a good few hours to complete the game- something I can’t say for any other pony game I’ve played yet.  Sometimes the formula is changed up a bit, but not always for the better.  There are a few scrolling levels, a rail shooter level, and levels in which you transform into another character.  While I thought that last one sounded really cool, these other characters(Nightmare Moon and Princess Celestia, to be specific) do nothing unique.  Their attacks have the same size, power, and function as Luna’s, not to mention they are slower than the protagonist.  This means the only thing that stands out about the two is a larger hurtbox- something especially noticeable in the battle against Leomon.  You must fight the boss while a barrage of meteors come at you from the sky, with your only defense being a single platform, which Celestia can barely fit under.  If Leomon is under the platform, receiving damage is practically inescapable. 

This is very hit or miss in the presentation department.  On the plus side, worlds are colorful and Luna is animated very nicely.  The music selection is fun and eclectic, ranging from MLP remixes to J-Rock.  However, none of these assets are original.  The enemies are almost entirely static images, and all the pony sprites are ripped from that batch that everypony and their mother use (some are even in our current banner).  That said, it’s clear that the developer was very ambitious and had all the right intentions. 

As such, I really want to go easy on this game.  I love a good platformer, and the fandom has sorely been lacking a traditional platformer of a sizeable length.  Unfortunately, it has a number of shortcomings I can’t ignore.  With that, I’ll give this game a:

 

If you do enjoy this and are interested in checking out more of Dialgabrite’s stuff, which he’s set up Facebook pages for here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/PokemonKindnessVersion

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minor-Details-the-homebrew-maze-game-Contains-Ponies/152336548181312

Review: Order of Twilight

Order of Twilight

 Being a Mac/Linux user I often lament the lack of multiplatform My Little Pony fangames, and often I wondered why nopony was using the excellent LÖVE engine to do so. However during the last My Little Game Jam a certain game named Order of Twilight was submitted to the competition by a member of a certain Stabyourself.net. Sound familiar? It should. Stabyourself.net was the team behind the famous indie game Mari0 (which was pretty much Mario with portals) and the fact that one of their members decided to contribute to My Little Game Jam is rather encouraging.

 Just because Order of Twilight comes from a well-regarded source doesn't mean that it's automatically a perfect game. To read our short review of it continue on after the break.

 Order of Twilight is a platformer with a puzzle-centric focus. You play as Twilight Sparkle who appears to have been trapped within her own mind by Discord and must escape using various spells while avoiding spikes and Diamond Dogs. The spells are cast via the arrow keys, and as the player progresses they will be able to cast more powerful spells such as teleportation, invisibility, and wall-walking. All this may sound somewhat confusing, but don't worry. The game does a wonderful job of explaining everything as it goes along, and like all good puzzle games should it gradually becomes more difficult as Twilight comes closer to breaking free.

Things really get crazy later on.

 Graphically OoT (no, not that one) is rather minimalistic, with a unified 8-bit style. This is probably a good thing since more complex sprites would have been distracting from the core gameplay, but I do appreciate the parallax scrolling effect that Maurice added to the background. The soundtrack only contains two actual songs and is 14 seconds long in total (not counting the sound effects and static), but tends to fade into the background and thankfully doesn't get annoying after being looped over and over.

 Since Order of Twilight was created in 27 hours it is rather short with 12 stages in total. A "challenge mode" that encourages minimal spell use adds a little replay value to the game, but once you have completed it there is little reason to go back. After looking through the source code (which can be downloaded here) I have discovered that with the use of a graphical editor and a minimal amount of coding one should be able to create extra levels, but since I haven't tested this out yet I can neither confirm nor deny that idea. It is possible that Stabyourself.net might release a level editor for the game; after all they did make one for Mari0, but don't get your hopes up.


 What could be done to improve the game? The level editor that several users have mentioned would be the only thing so far, since there really isn't much that I can think of to improve the game (maybe some of our readers have suggestions?). It would also have been nice to have more opportunities to use certain spells such as the invisibility spell, which is only required once. Giving a game like this a definitive score is hard, but for now I'm going to give this a 7/10.

What did you think of the game, eh? Let us know in the comments!

Review: Canterlot Siege

Play it on the Equestria Gaming Arcade

or on DeviantArt

Good (late) evening, mares and gentlecolts! For all of you teaching and learning this fall - myself included - who are regretting the end of another fantastic summer, I have just the thing. As for the rest of you, you'll probably enjoy this too. 

Yes, the fabulous futzi01 has once again landed a game upon my reviewing table. And it's a tower defense title, no less - something which we can never have enough of. Can the mane 6 blast their way through parasprites, griffons, and diamond dogs to become a fandom classic, or do they fall a little short? All this, and a secret code, after the break!

In Canterlot Siege, one places ponies around a the map in order to defeat waves of enemies - pretty standard tower defense fare. All of the mane six are available, and each one has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Each can be upgraded five times, becoming immensely powerful by the final upgrade. The game includes a pleasant amount of strategy, forcing you to optimize your tower layout for each enemy type while not becoming overwhelming. Additionally, it includes targeting options: you can set each pony to target the weakest, strongest, or farthest forward enemy within it's range.

I found the game playable, polished, and balanced - meaning that it definitely met my expectations for a tower defense title. In addition, the difficulty increases to the point where even more serious fans of the genre should find an enjoyable level of challenge. My only qualm was that occasionally, when the option to target the farthest forward enemy was selected, your ponies would fire on enemies further back along the path.

Strategy-wise, figuring out pony placement and how quickly to upgrade was key. Earlier upgrades buffed your ponies' attacks only slightly, but were cheap enough that they were well worth buying. Keep in mind that while one pony, depending on it's placement, might not need a range upgrade, it might be essential for another. Augment your bits by calling waves just far enough apart so that no tower has to fire upon multiple waves at once (unless your infrastructure can handle it.)

[MILD SPOILER ALERT] I told you I'd give you a secret code, right? As in a few of his other games (I'll leave it up to you to discover which ones) futzi has included a secret unlock related to the Konami Code. By keying in the particular sequence (up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a) on any level, you unlock Twist Mode, which turns all enemy types into the unlucky filly.

There's not a lot to fault in this game. It's charming and very polished, and, thanks to it's rare qualification as a tower defense game, I'd give it a high spot on my list of pony flash. While perhaps not a massive undertaking, it stays within it's limits and solidly lives up to it's billing. 

Review: Rainbow Wake: the Game

Download it Here!

Man, I find out about two top-down pony shooters in a week? I must be dreaming.
DeftFunk's relatively new game is based off of the thestoicmachine's unusual comic Rainbow's Wake. Rainbow Dash has stolen Twilight's horn, and the resulting insanity lends itself perfectly to bullets and explosions. 

Does the game live up to the oddball humor of the comic? Yadda yadda yadda and more, after the break.

While Rainbow Wake lacks the trademark flood of bullets emanating from it's bosses, it still has several elements similar to a bullet hell shooter, and it's tagged for being 'close enough'. It does contain a number of complex attack patterns that the player must exploit in order to beat each boss.

This is as cluttered as the screen gets, besides a couple of Celestia's more linear attacks.

Rainbow Wake: the Game consists of a series of escalating bosses, following the comic's storyline. After overcoming Pinkie Pie's killer robot and Fluttershy's army of wildlife, the player must defeat Rarity's fashionable, yet deadly airship and finally Princess Celestia herself. The game contains some excellent original voice acting, and, true to the comic, it's a little difficult to tell who's really the villain here. While Fluttershy pleads with you throughout your battle to just return the horn and apologize, Rarity seems to relish hurling mines at you and Celestia appears positively tyrannical, screaming "Die!" as she bombards you with high-powered princess lasers.

These two are just screaming because Ponyville's getting cratered. Nothing else is going on here.

Unlike some top-down shooter games, as you weave your way through enemy attacks, you can aim your own fire using the mouse. This gives you the option of moving to the top and sides of the screen to dodge as you attack, giving you an advantage if you move more vertically than you might otherwise be inclined to. From time to time, the errant Derpy Hooves will drop power-ups which allow you to improve your fire or unleash a powerful, stage-wiping sonic rainboom upon your enemy.

A lot of work clearly went into the development of this game. Besides the voice acting, the cutscenes (panels taken from the comic) are cleverly woven into the storyline and animated. Although the game is brief, bosses are detailed and have a wide variety of attacks. Kudos to those who manage to beat Celestia - she's pretty hard.

I could just post screenshots of this all day.

Occasionally, this game seemed rough around the edges. Depending on your personal sense of humor, you might not find the comic's screwball comedy, and therefore the game's cutscenes, very tasteful. The hit boxes of several enemy attacks were a little too large and bulky at times. Some obstacles knock you off course, sending you pinballing frustratingly between them and dealing a disproportionate amount of damage. In a couple of places, such as the pause menu, the graphics seemed neglected.

However, I have to applaud the amount of work put into this game and the way it made me laugh. It's engaging, difficult, and fun to play, which is what counts. Although tricky to quantify,  Rainbow Wake: the Game is a unique experience, and rates a nifty 7/10.

Review: Twilight vs Walking

Play it Here!
Or on the Equestria Gaming Arcade

Few online games have reached the same level of legendary infamy as the infuriating QWOP. It's frustrating. It's bewildering. And, unfortunately, it's addicting. Meanwhile, the Equestria Gaming R&D department developed the Pony Proliferation Postulate: one minus the reciprocal of the Faust Constant to the power of internet notoriety times time since the premier of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is equal to the probability of content ponification, or P(p) = 1 - (1/F)^tN. The brilliant Donitz applied one to the other and discovered it was high time we controlled a jelly-legged Twilight Sparkle attempting to cross her own floor. 

C'mon, guys, QWOP with ponies. Read on after the break! [WARNING: SOME SPOILERS]

Playing this game would be a completely different experience if one controlled two different pony muscles per leg, as in QWOP. While Twilight vs. Walking is markedly easier than QWOP (Twilight's four relatively stable legs, along with checkpoints between rooms, allow you to take breaks) and shortens the play time. However, the resulting control scheme is infinitely preferable to QWASOPL:.

Your epic odyssey begins in Twilight's upstairs bedroom, and, over the course of three levels, almost to the front door. You'll stride gallantly over mighty book forts - if you can make it there. Twilight vs. Walking has replaced QWOP's insolent hurdle with a much scarier flight of stairs. It's not as great an obstacle as it appears, but expect to bobsled down at least your first couple of times. 

"Spike, take a note. My foreleg seems to have melded with my flank."

In an unforeseen twist (this is the spoiler, if you haven't figured that out already,) just as you're about to cross the final room, a chasm opens in the floor and Twilight seems to plummet into an infernal pit. Red light glows from somewhere below as your body fades to black and breaks apart, adding an air of darkness to an otherwise cheerful game. An alarm clock rings, explaining your failure to walk and your lack of a horn away as elements of a dream.

Twilight Sparkle vs. Walking fully serves it's purpose as a QWOP clone. It's tough to complain about the responsiveness and ease of the controls in a game where that's intentionally the problem. If you liked QWOP, this is a pretty great game. If QWOP isn't your type of game, well... you're probably not reading this. Twilight Sparkle vs. Walking snags a peachy Spike Grade.

Review:Adventure Ponies

Adventure Ponies

It is not often that the Hub releases official My Little Pony games, and when it does they are usually simple little puzzle games intended for the target audience or underused pony creation utilities. The problem isn't that the games are bad, it's that your average Brony doesn't find them all that interesting. But all this changed a couple weeks back when the Hub announced an 8-bit pony platformer. It was supposed to be exclusively for attendees of the San Diego Comic Con but somepony kindly leaked the code to Equestria Daily (the code is HUBMLP8BIT by the way). Now you probably know what comes next...

It's review time, obviously! Check out our review after the break.

At it's core Adventure Ponies is a rather simplistic platformer. You start out with Twilight Sparkle as your character and unlock the other ponies with their own abilities (well, except for Rarity: she's a Twilight clone). Twilight and Rarity can both teleport when standing on special bases and fire magic projectiles, Applejack can climb ladders and use a powerful buck attack, Pinkie Pie can also use ladders and fire exploding balloons from her party cannon, and Rainbow Dash can fly and use a ramming attack. Meanwhile Fluttershy is ridiculously overpowered as she can both fly and use a hard-hitting stare attack that will have any boss begging for mercy (and make brick walls crumble to the ground).

The game features six levels, although you will find that the levels undergo slight modifications depending on which pony you play as. Scattered around the level are apples that you can collect to increase your score, hearts to replenish health, and extra lives. There is also a timer for each stage that will give you bonus points when you beat the clock, and at the level's end a boss shall be found. Overall it's pretty standard stuff, but the old formula has withstood the test of time and remains fun as ever.

I must say that the 8-bit graphics are quite well done and have a nice, retro feel. It actually feels like a game that one would play on an Nintendo Entertainment System or another older console, a feel that most of our 8-bit fangames lack except for Story of the Blanks. Come to think of it several boss levels use a parallax scrolling effect in the background which looks pretty but probably would have been impossible for a NES to handle. This is not a bad thing (especially when you consider my infamous love for that visual effect), but it might end up offending some ultra-sensitive retro games out there. As for the music...it's just there. Not particularly memorable music I might add, but at least it doesn't get annoying after being played over and over for most stages.

The game sounds pretty good so far, eh? It is, but sadly there are a couple issues that detract from the overall experience. First off, jumping feels somewhat off, making precise landings difficult, and for some strange reason the clouds are slippery! Even if you land on a cloud (which can be fairly difficult in itself) you might slide right off and fall to your death, and since the game has no savepoints you'll have to start the level all over again. Eventually one gets used to the weird controls, but for your first couple playthroughs you'll feel a strong urge to ragequit (thankfully it's not quite as frustrating as Crazy Pony).

In conclusion we must say that Adventure Ponies is a great game. The 8-bit style looks fantastic, the gameplay is fun, it has bosses, it's official, etc etc. If it weren't for the maddening controls and those slippery clouds I would have had no complaints about this game, but since these get in the way of the fun I'm going to have to give this game a 7/10. Sorry Hasbro!

...What? It's not like 7/10 is a low score, right?

My Little Pony 3D Open Source

My Little Pony 3D Open Source

No Music Version (Smaller)

My Little Pony 3D is a Three-Dimensional game created in blender. This game is currently open source, and editable by anyone. The songs featured in this game are Always, What is Love?, Propane Nightmares, Lux Aeterna, and Bittersweet Symphony.

The readme (Includes the controls and lot more info) can be found HERE

Currently, the game is only an open world sandbox, where you can control a pony and walk around. There is nothing to interact with, and no actual point to this game. The 3D models have a very Nintendo 64 type feel, and they're not bad at all. The controls are your average WASD movement, Shift for running, and F for flying. Pressing the numbers 1-6 will spawn different ponies that you can control, and pressing 0 will spawn an NPC that moves around randomly (Applejack only at the moment). The VBNM keys will change the music, BUT BE WARNED, THIS WILL CRASH THE GAME IF YOU ARE ON A 32-BIT SYSTEM.

Holding shift while flying long enough will result in this

The game is very simplistic at it's current state, and the world is fairly boring, with a few buildings and trees scattered. It is possible to fly off the world, and past the sky bubble. There are many things that this game could use, more polished controls, borders, blinking, better models for everything (Though I kinda like the whole N64 Style).

The creator is currently open for suggestions of any type, and for people to help with the game. Whether it be art, programming, or even organization, send an email to CreatorOfPony [at] gmail [dot] com

The game is extremely well made for such an early release, and such a young developer (Age of 14). The controls feel a little sloppy, and the camera is a pain to control while flying. While the models could use a lot of work, they're still really good. This Open Source game is going to lead to a lot of amazing things.

Rainbow Dash Attack

Rainbow Dash Attack by chiefwrigley

Rainbow Dash Attack is a parody of the widely popular side-scrolling Robot Unicorn Attack. Instead of a robot unicorn, you play as Rainbow Dash. The music featured in this game is Always by Erasure.

No gameplay has been changed from the original Robot Unicorn Attack Game, and only a few other things have been reskinned. The game has no story, the only goal being to jump over cliffs, and not run into solid objects in order to make your points reach the highest they can. Collecting the butterfly things will give you point bonuses, along with Dashing into the giant stars.

It's Rainbow Dash!! :D

All in all, there is little to say about this game as a whole. So even though nothing has changed gameplay wise in this game, the rating I would give this game:

Review: Waiting Is Magic

Play it Here!

Many of you may remember this scene from the episode Read it and Weep. Well, DaBernd from Penta Studios made a game about it. The concept it simple - bounce the ball off the wall as many times as possible before it rolls to a stop on the floor. But this game is incredibly addictive - so play at your own risk. You can read more after the break...

First off comes the gameplay. You can see from the screenshot above that you must "Press E to toss the ball!" This is the gist of the game. You press the E key in rhythm to try to keep the ball bouncing off the wall. You are graded on your performance for each hit - Worst, Bad, Good, or Perfect. The longer you keep going, the higher the score multiplier gets, and combos drive the multiplier higher.

The mechanics of this game look smooth and show realistic. This game, simple as it is, is animated very well. The bouncing sounds of the ball are also simple, and though they can get a tad irritating after a while, they are well done as well.

You can customize your ball as well, by hitting the T key. Protip - make the ball completely black at the beginning for a hardcore gaming experience after reaching encapsulation (after your score reaches 5,000). A black ball will be moving on a black background - the only time you can see it is when it actually strikes the wall, and you must guess for the actual timing.

Shown here - a hardcore gaming experience.

All in all, this is a great game for when your bored. When I have nothing to do, this will most definitely be my new default pastime. You have to play it for yourself to see how addicting it can be. And plus, it's still being updated! So without any further ado, I give this game a...

Rainbow Dash's Flight Training

Rainbow Dash's Flight Training by Coder Brony

Game Mirror

Rainbow Dash's Flight Training is a simple Side-Scrolling game where you play as Rainbow Dash. The game features the song Rainbow Dash Likes Girls (Stay Gay Pony Girl) by Renard.

The controls for the game are simple, hold shift/left mouse button to fly higher, and let go to drop. Though the controls are simple, the game itself is actually quite challenging. The game consists of one continuous level, randomly generated each time you start over. The goal is to avoid the clouds on the top and bottom of the screen. Easy, right?
Wrong.

Yeah, I stink at this.

The speed you move at is considerably fast, and the sensitivity of the buttons are ridiculous. Though neither of these things are bad, in fact, the only thing I found legitimately wrong with the game was a strange bug that allowed you to shoot above the clouds at the beginning of the game, though it would only let you get a hundred or so meters before you crash into something.

The game had no storyline mentioned in the actual game, though the PONYCHAN POST states that Rainbow Dash is training for the Best Young Flier Competition.

468m, that's pretty good! Right? ...Right?

The game is challenging and fun, features many games are missing, and even though I couldn't break 1000, I think this deserves:

Review:Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream

Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream

Despite the impression you may have gotten from my previous review I do believe in the concept of "beauty in simplicity". However, some simple things are, to put it mildly, not beautiful at all. Quality, not simplicity, is paramount to a beautiful game, but what about when a game combines the two of them? Well then you get something extraordinary, although not many simple games make it that far. 

But what about Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream? Does it manage to be beautiful in its simplicity, or will it turn out to be yet another boring "catch the falling objects" game? Find out after the break.

Since Derpy is one hungry pegasus she is no doubt thrilled when she discovers that food is inexplicably falling from the sky, and decides to eat it all. Judging from the title screen and the game's title this appears to be another of Derpy's dreams, which actually gives the gameplay a fairly logical explanation (quite rare for this sort of game). The player controls Derpy via the mouse, and must move quickly to eat as many goodies as possible before the timer runs out. If however enough points are gained in under sixty seconds the timer resets and the player moves on to the next level. As the player progresses further through the game food falls faster and becomes scarcer, requiring the player to have almost superhuman reflexes and awareness in order to survive. Also, certain foods give more points than others, and buckets of frogs are occasionally dropped that reduce points and must be avoided at all costs.

Sounds simple, right? That is correct, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You see, unlike some other simple games I have reviewed, this game is fun, and that is ultimately the most important part of a game. If I walk away from a game and I didn't have fun I would consider that game a failure, even if it had the most amazing graphics and music one could ask for. Thankfully, this game also has both, although I have seen better.

You see, Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream has very smooth animation, and contains some of the best animation I have ever seen in a fangame. Derpy's wings flap smoothly, the food looks like it came straight from the show, and the background is a visually appealing image of Cloudsdale, although sadly it suffers from some ugly compression and could use some parallax scrolling (as most other games in this fandom, according to my opinion). But really, there is one thing that really makes this game great. Although fun, it's not the gameplay, nor is it the graphics. It's the music. The soundtrack's single is so wonderful, so relaxing, it actually adds a huge amount of polish to the game. Playing the game with the soundtrack off is a completely different experience. It suddenly becomes just another falling food game, and one with rather floaty controls at that (although with the music on, those same controls somehow feel dreamlike).

Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream is an interesting game, and it owes a lot of it's sheer goodness to the amazing music. With the music on, it's a wonderful, dreamlike experience that could suck up hours of your time, while with the music off you'll quickly grow tired of Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream and go find something else to play. So both for the game's successes and shortcomings I rate this game:

I would have given this game a higher score, but despite it's beauty Derpy Hooves Sweet Dream cannot warrant anything higher then this. Also, sorry for how long I took to get around to writing this review. Hope you found it an interesting read!

Pony Platform Game Engine Test

Pony Platform Game Engine Test by Infinity Dash

Pony Platform Game Engine Test is a platformer where you can play as a pony created by Infinity Dash. The game features the My Little Pony theme and Art of the Dress Eurobeat Remix. It's currently only at version 1.1, with plans for more features later on

The game starts out unpromising, an almost white title screen, dull text, with a pretty boring and incomplete feeling to it. Though there was one thing that stood out, after starting the game, it would allow you to choose the pony's eye, mane, and body colors. This is a feature not implemented in many My Little Pony games as of now, and the range of colors was VERY large (Basically any color you could ever want). Version 2.0 will contain different Mane and Tail styles, along with the ability to play as the mane cast.



You start off as your custom colored pony in a very Sonic-like environment as spike slowly makes his way over to you. Her explains to you that he wants you to find 10 gems that are scattered through the map so he can eat them.

(Original Character Do Not Steal)

(OMG ITS LIGHT PINK THE PONY!!! SHE CAN FLY AND KILL EGGMAYUN SO FAST!!!!)

After you press Space, Spike begins wandering aimlessly around his gems instead of helping you, leaving you to gather them all on your own. The map is fairly large, and your wings allow you to go everywhere with no current limitations. There are 10 randomly colored Gems scattered around the map in different hiding locations, forcing you to actually look for them. Once you gather up all the gems, you return to Spike and the game is over. 

The game is overall tons of fun, and one of the few with an actual goal, but even with its positives (Such as the amazing ability to choose your colors), comes its negatives. Some of the more annoying things I found in the game were involving the movement. When running or flying, I felt you decelerated way too slow when trying to turn around, and accelerated extremely too fast after a few moments of moving, this made making exact movements very difficult.

DERP

A smaller annoyance was the collision with platforms in mid-air, your pony would start flipping out and try to walk inside the platform, but other than that, the game was very well put together for such an early stage, even the map was put together well, and I can honestly say I enjoyed playing it. This game gets:

Derpy Delivery

Derpy Delivery by Grit
(Broken link, guess it'a an abandoned project.)
(I'll try to find an older file for you guys)

Derpy Delivery is a Platformer by Grit where you play as Derpy Hooves.

The controls for the game are Arrow Keys to move, Spacebar to skip scene/restart level, Esc opens up the menu, 'X' picks up items and 'Z' to give letters to other ponies and continue chatting.

The game currently has only two levels, and a mysterious third 'Twilight Zone' level. The first level opens up with a cut scene, where Derpy manages to accidenly scatter a bunch of letters, the goal of the level is to collect said letters, and return them to the other mail pony. The game itself features some very nice movement, mostly smooth and working collisions, and pretty great controls. After returning the three letters to the other mail pony, another cut scene plays and then you enter Ponyville. This time, your task is to deliver letters to the ponies who need them, but mainly to find the mail bag. The second level is VERY large, and you can go pretty much everywhere. There are many things that make the level fun to just roam around in, and many things you can mess up for other ponies.

Did I win?!

After completing the second level, you are taken to a mysterious level known as 'The Twilight Zone' (As of version 0.02.00), the background is all weird and there is a large image of Twilight and a few boxes just lying around. You cannot actually win this level, it is the end of the game.

The plot for this game is pretty well thought out. Derpy Hooves is a mail pony, and you're supposed to go about on a regular mail delivering day as the clumsy pegasus. You start out by knocking the mail your partner mail pony is brining to you everywhere, along with the mail bag, and have to retrieve and deliver all of it. The game is still in its early stages, so not much more of a plot is present, but for the little that's there, it's pretty good.

The game is currently at version 0.02.00, and there is a thread for it here on Ponychan. Or you can visit the Derpy Delivery site here.

Here's a Playthrough of the game so far on youtube, made by SirTapTap

The well thought out plot, fun gameplay, and great graphics give this game:

Review: Stop the Bats!

Stop the Bats!

 The pony fangaming scene has a good share of games inspired by particular episodes. Stop the Bats! is one of them, created by Versimer in a mere 8 days using C++ and the SFML library. That's fairly impressive in itself, considering that some fangames use premade engines and still take longer to complete.

But just how good is the game itself? Well, you're gonna have to hit the page break to find out.


 The game's premise is fairly simple; you are Applejack, defending your apple trees from bats (and Flutterbat) as they try to suck the nutrients out of their fruits. Your primary weapon is your bucking ability, which takes the bats down in two or three hits. The concept is easy to grasp quickly, which is good because the game doesn't give you much time to learn.

Knocking a whole swarm of bats off of a tree with one attack is oh so satisfying, both visually and audibly.

 The first thing that should be noted about the gameplay is that the difficulty ramps up aggressively quickly. While the first couple of waves are easy enough, with bats that are easily fended off, the second variety of bat marks a sharp difficulty spike, as they start to come faster and become harder to take down. Flutterbat's presence also adds to the difficulty, as she will directly interfere with your attempts to take out the bats, knocking you down and costing a few seconds each time. She's difficult to avoid, much less attack directly, while the player is already focused on taking down the bats attacking the apple trees.

 Upgrades are required early on for any chance of survival, and they must be chosen carefully, as your coins are limited. They must also be chosen quickly, as the action does not pause while the shop screen is open, leaving bats free to destroy your apple trees - and more annoyingly, leaving Flutterbat free to swoop down and attack you directly, knocking you out of the menu anyway.

 This is not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination, and the controls only contribute to the difficulty; attacking requires a long wind-up time, even with the final bucking speed upgrade, and
initiating the attack cuts your jump height, making it difficult to aim at the bats. Thankfully, the attack's range is fairly generous even before upgrades, which helps alleviate the issue somewhat. The lack of a keyboard-based option to purchase upgrades is also a relatively minor inconvenience, and although the game isn't terribly impacted by it, having the option would be convenient for those who prefer to set up JoyToKey bindings and play with a gamepad.

As often as this screen's going to show up, it could stand to be a little flashier. Just sayin'.

 In terms of presentation, the game is well-presented but nothing special. The retro aesthetic of the game looks good, and the C64-esque 8-bit rendition of Stop the Bats fits well with the game (even if it starts to get old after a while). However, the lack of any high score logging system is a disappointment in a game which draws it appeal mainly from score attacking; games of this type draw their replayability from being able to compare scores with other players, and even a local "most apples saved" score (or "most waves survived", for those of us who aren't good enough to last the whole game) would give players motivation to keep trying to improve their score. It also irks me that the game closes out entirely after a defeat instead of allowing another try.

 Overall, the game is entertaining and well worth a play or two. The concept is simple, addicting, and well-executed, if a bit rough around the edges, and the game is very easy to pick up and play, either for a quick session or for hours at a time. The sheer difficulty may turn some players away, but others will find an enjoyable experience.