Legends of Equestria Stress Test Weekend Overview

Pictured: Partying at Sugarcube Corner on Chrysalis server

I've been playing this game for about an hour and a half (has it been that long?), and I figured I'd give you guys my first impressions before I dive back in. I think it's safe to say that even though the current version is in pre-alpha, it's one of the most impressive pony gaming projects I've seen to date.

Yes, you heard that right. More of me waffling, a couple of tips, and a bunch of screenshots after the break!

There's actually a large range of functionality already implemented - the game supports the creation of multiple custom pony characters, running, flying, wearing items, and chatting, among other things.

The sheer amount of modeling that's already been done for this game boggles my mind. Locations include a massive Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, the Everfree Forest, and an halfway-finished Canterlot.

The game's riddled with minor glitches at this early stage - however, I found most of them more humorous than troubling. A couple of notable terminal bugs to look out for include getting stuck in the Canterlot meshes and being buried (or spawning) underground. Logging out solves most problems, although for some serious cases I've had to make a new character. However, the team is very clear that this is an early alpha and not representative of any final product, so I'm confident these problems will be ironed out.

The controls aren't very clearly explained in game, so I figured I'd give you the basic rundown here. Walking is controlled using the WASD keys - 'a' and 'd' rotate you while 'w' and 's' move you forward and back, asteroids style. To jump, hit the space key, and if you're a pegasus, pressing space again in midair lets you start flying. While flying, use space and ctrl to increase and decrease altitude, and the 'q' and 'w' keys to barrel roll. Touch the ground to land.

Many of the game's features are currently only usable through the in-game chat box. Type "/help" in the chat box for a full list of commands. Most commands instruct you on how to use them - for instance, typing "/additem" will prompt you with the message "syntax: /additem <itemId> [amount]". Executing this command, you might type "/additem 17 2" to add two pairs of goggles (ID #17) to your inventory.

Without further ado, screenshots!

Ahh, Ponyville. Look at all the pretty polygons.

Flying through Equestria at twilight is a pretty awesome feeling. Also, barrel rolls.

It's a good thing there don't seem to be any laws about breaking and entering in Ponyville.

Friendly warning: after talking to this character, I was unable to exit the dialogue pane and had to log out.

Wonder who lives here?

Canterlot!

Airships make every game better. Remember that, folks.

I get the Cutie Mark Crusader's clubhouse, but not Fluttershy's cottage? Grr.

Animal models in the Everfree!


The full inventory interface. Visible also are the chat window, emotes, and minimap.

Click here for a direct link to a Windows mirror, or hit up the team's facebook page for alternate downloads or to comment on the project. Kudos to the LoE team on their great work, now, let's flood the servers and make their test weekend a success! Remember, the demo will only be playable for a limited time. I'm off to play some more Parasprite Pac-Man in the Ponyville well.

Legends of Equestria Stress Test

Legends of Equestria (Stress Test)

We figured that you would all like to know that during Canterlot Gardens, Legends of Equestria will be undergoing a little stress test. What does that mean for our readers? Well, it means that from September 28-30 LoE will be open to the general public! That's right, for a limited time only everypony will be able to give Legends of Equestria a spin (except for Linux/FreeBSD users, who will have to wait for the release of Unity 4), and we'll be able to see how far the dev team has come. Once my extremely slow 20-90Kbps internet connection finishes downloading the game I'll test it myself and give you my thoughts on the game so far, but don't worry! Since the developers openly admitted that it's still in Pre-Alpha and not a finalized product I won't be unfair and give the game a score, but only a "first impressions" post. That sound good to you?

Also, there's a torrent for the LoE pre-alpha over at http://www.legendsofequestria.com/LoEPreAlphastresstest.torrent, which we advise that you use if you can. Have fun!

Twilight Sparkle RPG (Working title) Video Demo and Public Alpha 1.0

Twilight Sparkle RPG

This video is the third in the series chronicling the development of Fluttershy77's sandbox pony rpg. Although a ways from publication, the project shows promise - future development plans include a fully playable map of Equestria! Hit up the video above, and give the alpha a play to get a feel for the project. Then, if you're interested, give him a shout - he's on the lookout for spriters. 

Ponymon Dawn/Dusk 0.3 Alpha Release

Download it Here!

At long last, my favorite fan project returns! Yesterday, Flutteryay's team released the 0.3 alpha update of Ponymon Dawn/Dusk, allowing you to catch more of your favorite ponies than ever before! Here's a refresher on the project, for those of you who missed the last post:

Ponymon Dawn/Dusk is a fan project dedicated to producing ROM hacks of Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. Battle, train, and evolve 151 ponies with custom move sets and their own type trump chart. More information can be found on their handy wiki, which also contains an faq for those unfamiliar with using emulators or concerned with updating their save files to the new version. The new version includes a ton of new ponies and new areas, and I really can't recommend it highly enough to Pokemon fans. Happy hunting!

Gates of Tartarus 0.3.1

Gates of Tartarus

 After his latest game received negative reception from us a week ago, Bhaalspawn finally decided that it'd be a good time to fix up his game after letting it sit for several months, and has released a new patch for it that apparently addresses most of my complaints from the review. I haven't tested it out myself, but if you were disappointed with the previous version, now might be a good time to give it a second chance.

Release notes below the break.

• -Game Data is no longer encrypted 
•  -RPG Maker VX Ace RTP is no longer included in the game files 
• -Several dungeon maps not accessible to the player can be viewed in RPG Maker 
• -Due to popular request, the Game Over screen and music can be reverted to it’s 0.2 state if the player so wishes. See the Customization Folder for instructions. 

BUG FIXES

• -The Healing Pool in the first Hub is no longer made of colored concrete. 
• -The Lighting Engine should no longer bleed into maps where it isn’t programmed. 
• -FlutterShed’s level has had it’s lighting bugs fixed. 
• -FlutterShed’s level no longer traps the player inside it’s map. 
• -"Stunned" is no longer overwritten by every other state in the game. 
• -The game should no longer CTD when attempting to flee an encounter. 
• -Several events have had their animations improved 

NEW CONTENT

•  -Trixie Lulamoon’s dungeon has been added, with plans to expand it in the future. 
•  -Queen Chrysalis’ dungeon has been given more detail. 
• -Quest Journal has been added to give context to what the player is doing until cutscenes are added. 

BETA AREA

• -FlutterShed, Queen Chrysalis, and Trixie Lulamoon have been removed from the testing area.
• -Nightmare Moon has been added as a boss in the Test Area. 
• Speak to Ascentia to test her boss fight. 
• -The Matriarch has been added as a boss in the Test Area. Speak to Ascentia to test her boss fight.
• -King Sombra has been added as a two-phase boss in the Test Area. Speak to Ascentia to test his boss fight. 
• -Sunset Shimmer has been added as a three-phrase boss in the Test Area. Speak to Ascentia to test this boss fight. 

CHANGES GENERAL

• -"Bandage" has been removed from the game entirely. 
• -Character skill progression has been more thouroughly fleshed out. 
• -All bosses now strike 2 times per turn, with a 50% chance to strike a third time. 
• -The ghosts in the third dungeon are no longer visible, and can be fled from in battle. 
• -Spiderling encounters have been added to the third dungeon. 
• -Several bosses have had their battler sprites replaced with MLP-themed monsters. 
• -The third dungeon boss has not has it’s battlers replaced yet. Thinking of replacing the boss with a survival-style parasprite horde. 
• The player can now choose between playing on Normal Mode, and Permadeath Mode (Reviving dead party members is no longer possible)
• The intro cinematic can now be skipped. Praise Celestia!

TRIXIE LULAMOON

• -Trixie’s boss fight behaves differently if the player has found the Alicorn Amulet. 
• -Trixie now has a 35% passive chance to reflect magic attacks made against her. 

 QUEEN CHRYSALIS

• -Chrysalis’ health and attack power has been increased. 
• -Spawned Changelings have more health and attack power.

Review: Gates of Tartarus

Gates of Tartarus

 Last year I reviewed Doomsday Ascending, a 2D RPG adapted from a mediocre fanfic by the same name. The game's creator, Bhaalspawn, has made a point of telling his followers not to submit his various works to Equestria Daily or other fansites, so until today I was not aware that he had later created another My Little Pony RPG under the name "The Gates of Tartarus". The game seemed to be in a decent enough state (although still in an unfinished state), so I downloaded it in hopes that it would be better than its predecessor...

 Does Gates of Tartarus manage to overcome its predecessor's flaws and become a decent game in its own right? Find out in our review after the break.



 After opening the game and sitting through an unskippable cutscene, it becomes fairly clear that Gates of Tartarus is a different kind of game from Peet's last project. Gone was the story-centric design, and in its place one can find a heavier emphasis on combat and more traditional dungeon crawling. This is somewhat of a relief at first, until the player realizes that the game lacks quests of any sort, leading one My Little Game Dev member on their Cloudsdale group to (rather unkindly) remark that Gates of Tartarus shouldn't even qualify as an RPG. In fact, there is very little plot in the first place, aside from "Go to Hell and kill stuff" and some dialogue between Twilight Sparkle and a character who may or may not have appeared in Doomsday Ascending.

These are scorpions, of course.

 Since Tartarus is where all the bad ponies and monsters go after they die, it's no surprise that GoT features plenty of combat. Problem is, it contains "more grinding than a highschool homecoming" (as put by Fearless Pie, another fangame developer from the MLGD community). The first dungeon is especially bad for this, as it contains hoards of identical slimes that are easily defeated, and thankfully easily avoided if you don't mind being a bit weaker for the boss, who is just another damage sponge. If you don't get bored and quit after that, the incomplete second dungeon is much better for variety, although the third regresses in that area a bit. The entire level is filled with ghosts that can instantly kill any one of your characters, and this is before you have any items or skills capable of reviving, which pretty much forces the player to either hope for impossibly good luck or participate in some save-scumming.

 Shortly after beginning the first dungeon and murdering a few slimes, Fluttershy gains a game-breaking skill titled "Bandage" that heals a relatively small amount of HP for free. Problem is, she can use it multiple times per turn, which leads to GoT becoming one massive FREE HEALING PARTY™. With this skill, combat with anything but an instakill ghost is risk-free (and therefore rather boring), as Fluttershy can heal away any damage her friends have received for free. It can also be used outside of combat, making all other healing skills and items completely pointless unless she is killed.

Apparently this was supposed to be funny. Also, Bhaal keeps getting Equestria Daily and Equestria Gaming mixed up, perhaps because he secretly wishes that his games really were featured on such a big fansite.

 The strangest part of this game, however, is that the current build supposedly features two new dungeons with a Chrysalis and Fluttershed boss, but they are inaccessible because Peet spawns the player inside of a swimming pool which they are unable to escape from after completing the third dungeon. If his word is to be believed, it's because he somehow forgot that noclip isn't a part of normal gameplay and thought that players would just be able to, ya know, walk through the walls. Just...let that sink in for a bit. Yeah.

 There are many more things I could complain about in detail, such as the fancy lighting in the bonus dungeon leaking out into the regular levels, the quirk about players not being able to backtrack and a couple instances where escaping the map is surprisingly easy, but you probably get the general idea already. Gates of Tartarus could make a decent game with a little work, but there isn't much point in playing the game at the moment unless you really like the non-sexual variety of grinding and staring at yet another game using RPG Maker's default tilesets and monsters. Even if the game is ever fixed up, you'll probably be much better off playing Super Lesbian Horse RPG or Curse of the Lost Kingdom unless Bhaal manages to pull off some kind of miracle.

 No, this game does not feature pony porn. Also, Led Zeppelin would be insulted to find their music being used in GoT.

Daring Do Flash Game v.89 Alpha

Daring Do v.89 Alpha

A couple months back we posted about a very promising Daring Do Sidescroller Demo, and never heard anything else about it afterwards. Unbeknownst (and unreported) to us was that the project was updating behind almost everypony's backs, and until today we had no idea it had even made any progress. But my, what progress has been made! The game has evolved from a simple (and very pretty I might add) framerate test into a full-fledged fangame with loads of levels, a couple bosses, beautiful graphics and a great soundtrack. While we can't provide a review yet due to the state it's in and the game's large size for a Flash game makes putting it on the Arcade a tough decision, we can say that this game is a must-play, and is undoubtedly the greatest My Little Pony platformer we've seen to date.

The Adventures of Pinkie Pie

The Adventures of Pinkie Pie 

(Source)

Most of the web games that we receive on Equestria Gaming are Adobe Flash, and although we do get the occasional Unity game I have noticed that HTML5 games are relatively rare. This is probably because of the somewhat steeper learning curve, the lack of full-featured engines (libraries, on the other hand, are in no short suppy), and the fact that usually you need your own web host to make it publicly available. So far this is only the second HTML5 game we have came across on our website, with the first being Pony Wings, and only the former was in a complete state. For indeed, The Adventures of Pinkie Pie is still in alpha and only contains a couple unfinished stages, but it seems rather promising and every game deserves a chance, right?

In case you're interested in following the game's development they have a website over at http://pinkamena.tripod.com/, and our arcade recently added the game if you want to check it out every once in a while and see if there's any new content.

Equestria Jukebox's Alpha is Released

Equestria Jukebox

 In January I wrote about Equestria Jukebox, the unusual pony creation utility/chat app successor to the Pony Avatar Creator, and its alpha client came out on this Monday. It looks pretty neat so far, although there's a distinct lack of manes and accessories for users to pick from and I was unable to save my abominations to the server, leading me to believe that they have gained sentience and are actively discriminating against ugly original characters. Do note that the userbase is fairly small at the moment, so if you do make a chat group it'll probably take quite a while to grow (unless the service undergoes a sudden growth in popularity).

There's always Lunasync as an alternative, of course, although nobody seems to use it ;~;

EqJ needs a Deadhead room.

Another Fallout: Equestria Adaption

Fallout: Equestria (Overmare Studios)

  A while back a group calling themselves Overmare Studios were working on a Fallout 3 mod with ponies, but eventually decided to move to the Unity3D engine and release a standalone game based off of the influential fanfiction Fallout: Equestria. Months of painstaking development lead to this video, showcasing the incredible, never-before-seen ability of picking objects without resorting to hands or magnetic hooves: magic (i.e. how Gordon Freeman picks up the can before he is given the Gravity Gun). Hopefully this will lead to HL2-like shenanigans such as tossing kitchen sinks at hostile wasteland inhabitants, but even if it doesn't there should still be plenty of fun to be had...hopefully.

 It's more than a bit early to form a real opinion on the game, although I do have doubts about the team's ability to create enough textures, given the probable size of the game.

 Obligatory pony.

Equestria Jukebox

 Despite the infamous Pony Creator utility being the most commonly-used of, well, pony creators, there are still a fair amount of people who prefer the Pony Avatar Creator demo for various reasons (even if its pony model looks a bit off, and it doesn't have a really wide variety of manes or accessories). The creator could have kept it in its current state and simply added more stuff, but it seems he has other plans for it and is in the process of transforming it into a full-fledged web service called Equestria Jukebox, with chat rooms and whatnot.

 Will this take off? We'll see once the open alpha comes out, but in the meantime you can find an exclusive sneak peak of the service below the break.

 

 From what I've gathered, the pony creation service will be available to all, although users will have to sign up to have access to some of the more advanced features such as joining/creating chatrooms.

 Upon signing up users will be given a quick tutorial on the site's usage or something. The Youtube player from the original app has been carried over to this new version, allowing the owner to cycle through music tracks and whatnot while people chat about stuff. User avatars will also be automatically generated from the OCs that they create with the site, which is pretty neat I guess.

...Come to think of it, this is a lot like Lunasync but with OCs instead of Luna.

 The homepage has a list of currently active, password-free rooms. In the future Lexuzieel is planning on implementing playlist voting so rooms may still be active while the group's owner is away. Yep, there's totally no way this can go horribly wrong...

 And now we've come to the feature everybody cares about the most: the pony editor. Users of the service's predecessor should feel right at home, and will probably be quite pleased once more manes/accessories are added. This time around the Lexuzieel apparently has some people to help him make these, so hopefully the project won't stagnate in quite the way that the Pony Avatar Creator did.

 In a way I almost wonder if Equestria Jukebox really needs to be this big, frankensteinian web service instead of just a pony creation utility, or exactly how Lexuzieel plans on getting the money for hosting this, but we'll get to that once the open alpha has been out for a while. Lex is also looking for translators or something so the site will be accessible to a wider audience, so if you're interested you could contact him via his steam account (Lexuzieel) or his Skype account, alexrurm.