PoniPoni Visual Novel Creator

PoniPoni

 In an attempt to encourage the creation of more pony visual novels, Taivastiuku decided to create a web-based tool for that purpose and called it PoniPoni. It's still in a fairly early state, mind you, and the average person probably won't give this more than a passing glance at the moment, but I get the impression that if this ever gets anywhere it could become a rather useful tool for folks wanting to whip together a quick VN. Perhaps more developers would be attracted to the project if the source code were to be released on GitHub or something, I dunno.

...In memory of theabriged.com being taken down some time ago and the loss of my epic work of interactive fiction, "The Drakening of the Moon", I give you this illustration.

Legend of Celestia Updates!

Legend of Celestia

Update:poll is over. Nightmare plot wins!

The Legend of Celestia blog has updated, and apparently they have a poll that will help them decide which plot to go with! If I were you, I'd head over the to their blog at http://www.legendofcelestia.com/blog.html.

Oh, and apparently they're releasing a video preview tomorrow. I won't be around then, but I should be able to provide a link on Monday (unless one of my fellow bloggers beats me to it, :P ).

Ponyvania Intro

Ponyvania

 So it seems that Ponyvania game we posted a while back also has a pretty sweet animated intro, probably the best we'll ever see in a fangame. Shame it'll probably add a lot to the game's filesize and hurt those of us with slower internet connections, so if I were the developers I'd probably release a version of the game with the intro stripped out. Still, I've seen far worse examples of pointless filesize inflation in a particular game I reviewed on this site a while back...you probably know of what I speak.

 And yes, I'm still working on that Moonstuck part 2 review, so be patient. Reviews take time, especially when you possibly have two of them to write in one day.

 Imagine if this intro was actually rendered in-game instead of just being a pre-rendered cinematic. It'd probably be quite hard to code, sure, but it'd be really impressive from a technical perspective. Plus, yay for drastically reduced filesizes!

Ponyvania Demo

Ponyvania

 Back in 2012 some Texans decided that the My Little Pony fandom needed a Castlevania-type game and began to create one themselves in Game Maker, with the splendidly original title "Ponyvania". The project seemed to progress smoothly, with the latest demo being released in July '13, but I remained entirely unaware of Ponyvania until some Anon posted about it on /mlp/ last Saturday, bemoaning the overall lack of attention that it has seen (aside from an Equestria Daily post about a pre-demo trailer). The Anon also mentioned Legacy of the Pony, which I shall hopefully cover later now that I have a working dual-boot setup, but in the meantime I shall focus on this sadly neglected fangame.

My thoughts on the project can be found below the break, as usual.


 Ponyvania managed to give off a good first-impression when I first started to play around with it. After beginning a new game I was nifty little pony creation utility with which I promptly attempted to recreate Taylor's OC, but unfortunately I failed and instead ended up with a Berry Punch recolor. Then the game began, and I was impressed by the quality of the backgrounds/scenery sprites until I got a taste of the weird jumping physics, which took some getting used to. Ah well, so far so good, but then I decided to head outside...

...And things promptly went downhill from there. It seems that the developer's idea of difficulty involves plopping down a bunch of enemies and spawning monsters directly underneath the player, killing them in short order even if escape or combat is attempted. This, compounded with a bizarre decision to reverse the standard actions of the Z and X keys made the game much harder than it should have been, and changing this in the pause menu was more difficult than it should have been due to some rather confusing default key bindings (even after reading the Readme).

Borrowing this screenshot from Anon.

 After much annoyance and little progression I discovered the skill system, helpfully buried in the menu and requiring manual keybindings. The ability to shoot laser beams and dark energy balls seemed pretty cool, but alas, enemies in standard mode still spawned too quickly for me to effectively use my fancy stuff. Perhaps things would have gone better on the Easy difficulty level, I dunno, but I still consider Ponyvania's difficulty to be more due to poor design and balancing rather than presenting a real challenge to the player.

Since Ponyvania is still a demo I'm not going to give it a score or anything, but it's going to need some pretty huge balance adjustments to be considered "fun" (unless you're playing on Easy or in the multiplayer mode, which I wasn't able to test). Maybe I'll revisit it once some work has been done, but until then I'll just sporadically get back to redesigning Equestria Gaming's theme.

Sun and Moon (Strategy Game)

Sun and Moon

Now, this isn't a video game. It's a strategy board game for two players (like chess), created by Dave Bryant. You can find the game's rules, as well as printable game boards and pieces at the link above, so you too can engage in the epic struggle between celestial and lunar. It's simple to learn, but offers many strategic intricacies that could make matches of Sun and Moon true battles of wits. You can find a bit more info after the break...

Sun and Moon shares similarities with chess-like games like xiangqi or shogi. It itself, however, is rather unique in design. The gameboard features 12 circles rotated about the center point, and 5 concentric circles to form the paths of travel for each player's soldiers, with representations of the sun, moon, and earth forming the "heavenly bodies."

The Gameboard (with Notation Markings)

A player takes the side of one of the two royal pony sisters to determine whether sun or moon will rise victorious. Each side has 13 soldiers - 4 earth ponies, 4 pegasi, 4 unicorns, and 1 princess. Each of these unit types has it's own way of moving and capturing pieces. To win the match, a player must force their opponent's princess into a position where she may not make a legal move to escape being captured. This is called "banishment" (akin to checkmate in chess), and the winning princess prevails.

Sun and Moon is very interesting in concept, and provides many opportunities for the employment of strategy. It's still being tweaked at the moment, but I can definitely see this game eventually becoming a niche staple. Pretty soon, we'll have to establish a governing body to rank the various grandmaster-caliber players which are sure to appear! 

Board Game: Randleshackle (Playtesting Version)

Download Randleshackle Rules

Seems Sun and Moon inspired a little more interest in pony board gaming! I'll bite. This game was actually sent in a while back, but I've got quite the backlog to get through.

In the style of its predecessor, Randleshackle is a chess-like game played between two players marshaling the forces of Celestia and Luna. The goal of the game is to amass points by capturing the opponents mules, unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies, and ends when the opponent's alicorn is captured. A 3-player mode is in development, but it looks like it has a way to go at the moment.

On their turns, players can empower their ponies to use special racial powers: resilience for earth ponies, flight for pegasi, and magic for earth ponies. The powers function as a roshambo mechanic - unicorns have the advantage against pegasi, who trump earth ponies, who in turn stymie unicorns.

The best thing about the game? It's still in play-testing, so your feedback determines how the final project comes out! Enjoy.

Simple Othello

 

Simple Othello

 We don't seem to have an official policy on board game clients, so I figured that I might as well post this Reversi implimentation. It doesn't have way too much pony aside from the game icon and background, but why not? The Brony fandom could use some more presence on the Windows Store anyways. Spread the love!

I was going to blab about news being slow, but maybe I should shut up and get back to work on my visual novel. Wonder how much production will cost in paper and crayons consumed...

Princess Civilization

Princess Civilization

 So far this month has been rather slow for fangame-related news, as most of us have been busy preparing for our final exams and whatnot. Thankfully it appears that a few developers have been able to sneak in some time for development; for example, some guy named Petr Hudecek is getting close to completing his Princess Civilization game, but needs voice actors for Spike and Princess Celestia before he can do so. In my opinion he could probably use some better spriters too, because frankly the terrain looks awful. Gameplay should come before graphics, yes, but your average gamer tends to notice a game's art first and will make their decision on whether to play it or not based on how appealing its graphics are.

 Interested in helping Petr out with his project? Check out his design document over at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PEARgE6fq206J_9PI9NmxRx1qJ6VePRwuJ6rs4M1xY8/edit, and then you can send him an email over at petrhudecek2010@gmail.com.

Legend of Celestia Team Seeking a Tilemapper

Are you good at tilemapping and want to be a part of an indie dev team? Well the Legends of Celestia team are wanting a tilemapper to help them with their RPG, and if you're interested in applying for the job then you can email them at 00lucan00@gmail.com and supply them with your Steam username, what you want them to refer to you as, and a sample of your work. Good luck with your application!

Celestia's Cake Golf Adventure in Space

Celestia's Cake Golf Adventure in Space

 I was pleasantly surprised to hear that futzi01 would be participating in the MLGD marathon; this odd little game of interplanetary golf is probably one of his better recent creations (most of which were unfortunately a tad dull). It starts off well enough and introduces some interesting gameplay mechanics as it goes along, but suffers from a massive difficulty spike partway through the game that would make bring the chosen undead to his knees. This probably has something to do with the game's being created within several days and there not being too much time for playtesting, so it's still pretty impressive: just don't expect a superbly polished experience.

 Also, I thought I might as well use this spot to apologize to Wishdream for how harsh the "compilation" post turned out. There's more I'd say, but it's probably best that things be worked out in private conversation than on here.

Battle Royale: Forward to the Past

Battle Royale: Forward to the Past

 Xinef's main entry into the marathon also proves to be one of Silly Mare Games' first forays into multiplatform development; no longer will users of Unix-like operating systems have to run their games at abysmally low framerates. Even those of you who don't care about such things should still enjoy this fun little deathmatch game, especially since Xinef is planning on adding online multiplayer in a future update (whereas for now you'll have to either find someone to play with or exploit the AI's shortcomings).

 I'll probably review this once they add online multiplayer, but if you can find a friend to play it with I'd highly recommend giving Forward to the Past a shot.

The Legend of Celestia Team is Seeking a Pixel Artist!

Ok, so apparently the team behind "The Legend of Celestia" has lost their sprite artist, and they're looking for a new one.

Copy & paste from their blog below after the break 

" I'm afraid RevY is delayed due to complications.

    Also - We are looking for another sprite artist! It's a LOT of work, but it is deffinetly worth it! Soak is going to be inactive for a while, but we still need more sprites! Think you have what it takes? Apply! We have high expectations, but maybe you can fit them!

    Also, Happy New Year from the Legend of Celestia Devellopment Crew, to you!

~ Lucan, looking for an excellent spriter

NOTE: We are NOT doing Voxel, or whatever it's called. These are sprites, pieces of pixel art, in a 16 bit artstyle."


If you wish to apply, please visit their apply page at http://www.legendofcelestia.com/apply.html.