My Little Mahjong

Play it here!

Hubworld has released My Little Mahjong, a ponified version of Mahjong Solitaire. The game itself is pretty simple, and aside from a few technical bugs, quite well done. There are a few different puzzle layouts to try, and you can solve them all to an instrumental version of the Find a Pet song. There's also a shuffle button in case you get stuck.

Elemental Reaction

Elemental Reaction

 Puzzle games centred around chain reactions can be rather fun and Elemental Reaction is fun when you first start it, but after a while this one gets kinda dull. Then again, it could just be that this cold/headache is adversely affecting my enjoyment of this game, so maybe I'll have to give it a shot later when I'm not coughing up mucus every so often. Can't really think of much more to write about it, so...yeah.

Enjoy your day.

Temno Moves to Unity

TEMNO

 Multimedia Fusion 2 gets kind of a bad rap, and after spending over a year developing Temno with it Lexo Astonov grew sick of its quirks and decided he was just going to switch over to Unity. This provides several benefits, such as support for higher resolutions and native OS X/Linux binaries, along with the possibility of an Android app. Temno is also no longer a solo project; it is now being developed by a Czechoslovakian indie team currently known as Little Bit Interactive, which should help speed up development a tad (even if the game only features original characters now, to protect it from receiving a Cease & Desist order).

I'm still not sure what to think about OC-only fangames, to be honest, especially since the last one I encountered wasn't free.

Oh yeah, and some girl decided to draw an OC for me, although she hasn't coloured it yet or uploaded a high-rez picture. You folks like it?

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!

TEMNO Trailer

 If you've been following our Twitter account you may have been aware of a Limbo-style platformer/puzzle game through various screenshots that we have retweeted and given feedback for multiple times. Many times I have wished to see some actual gameplay footage of TEMNO, and last Saturday Astonov granted that wish with the release of a video update. Apparently the game takes place within a depressed Pinkamena's mind in which she is trapped inside and Twilight has broken into in order to rescue Pinkie. In a game like this graphics are of the uttermost importance, and hopefully Astonov manages to pull off a look reminiscent of Limbo (although I don't expect it to be as good as Limbo, since it is a solo fangame project after all). The fact that he is designing the majority of the game's environments with his DS is impressive, although I suspect that without some of Limbo's subtle effects such as grass blowing in the wind the environments may end up feeling flat and dull. That doesn't mean that the game will suck though!

Also, one thing that I think Astonov appears to have forgotten is that Pinkamena is not only depressed, but batsh** insane. If he realizes this and makes TEMNO reflect this somewhat...we might just have a winner on our hands.

TEMNO: The Prologue

TEMNO

 Along with the release of TEMNO's new website, one can find that the game's prologue has been released. It is mainly intended as a demo to teach players how the story works and contains little when it comes to story-related content, so...yeah. I wrote a "first impressions" article on it, but decided that there wasn't much of a point in doing so with such a beastly headache. Perhaps it's from listening to a little too much heavy metal or something (if there is such a thing as too much metal, of course). Shame the pills don't help...

Anyhow, I'll stop rambling about unrelated things and let you check out the demo while I wait around for Taylor. Enjoy!

Silent Ponyville

Silent Ponyville (Outdated Demo)

Our fandom has outputted a decent amount of creepypasta games, but for the longest time there has only been one true horror game and that would be Silent Ponyville. It has been under development for almost a year now and is based off of the well-known fanfic with the same name, and we've decided that it's about time this rather interesting game gets a (brief) post. I've never been a fan of the games whose so-called "horror" consists of trying to disgust players with horrific corpselike monsters, but hopefully Silent Ponyville will focus more on the psychological side of horror then many of its trashy peers.

By the looks of it development should take a couple more months and it is being produced with the Blender Game Engine which means that it should support most desktop platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and even FreeBSD! The game also has a playable demo from December '11 (Windows-only, so I didn't get to play it) that can be accessed over at http://silentponyville.blogspot.ca/p/demo-christmas-special.html in case you desperately give this game a shot, no matter how outdated the build is.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that the game's soundtrack has a Youtube playlist? It contains some great stuff, and I highly recommend listening to if you're interested at all in video game music.

Demo: Trilight

Download Trilight Demo

It's a cold, dark, stormy afternoon (at least, it is where I live) and that puts me in the mood for pony horror games! Trilight is probably better described as "puzzle-horror" - the game puts more emphasis on creatively interacting with the environment than creepiness - but it fills the void all the same.

Flipping between Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and the Great and Powerful Trixie, the player must make their way through a darkened landscape full of traps and mysterious shadow ponies. Each of the three playable characters has their own powers - bucking, flying, and conjuring shadowy blocks - to help overcome obstacles along the way. The demo's only a few short levels long, and never gets very technical along the way, but it's enough to hint at the puzzles and thrills to come in the game's full version. 

My only complaints are a couple of hit box bugs that occur when you run or jump into an immovable object - sometimes, you'll end up sliding backwards or stuck when trying to jump upwards. Still, that shouldn't slow you down much. Have at it!

Edit: The team's looking for a writer and artists - check the comments for more information.

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...

Puzzle Games: Pony Mahjong / Pony Jigsaw

Play Pony Mahjong | Play Pony Jigsaw

Anyone in the mood for some low-key puzzling? I could do worse. Several of you sent these two in over the last couple of days. This jigsaw puzzler and cutie mark-inspired mahjong game come from team Darkkyshadow, creators of MLP RPG: Fighting the Unknown. 

Pros include several tile layouts and a seemingly infinite number of puzzles to skim through. While playing, I noticed a couple of minor bugs, but certainly nothing game-breaking. Enjoy!

Game: MLP Matching Is Magic

Play My Little Pony: Matching Is Magic
Or download via DeviantArt (high scores not enabled)

Some games grab you with graphics and a flashy intro, and others gradually grow on you until you're hooked. Surprisingly, I found MLP: Matching Is Magic to be the latter. The game revolves around a very simple concept: assemble pony-containing blocks into groups of three or more to eliminate them, a la Shariki (Bejeweled).

The twist is that there's no time constraint - rather, the number of pony types on the board increases based upon your previous matches until the rather easy game becomes an impossible one. Whenever you match a group of three for the first time, a block containing a new pony appears in its place, until you've worked your way through the Mane Six and beyond!

Where's Derpy? 3

Where's Derpy? 3

 Effectively a gamification of the fandom's favourite pastime (aside from participating in drama), Where's Derpy? 3's title practically explains itself, and in an entirely unsurprising manner it's pretty much exactly the same as its predecessors except with new screenshots to examine. Not that this is a bad thing, of course: there isn't really much that one could add to the formula anyways aside from recreating each scene from scratch in Flash and animating it (which would probably make things even more difficult).

TEMNO: Testing Da Magikz

TEMNO

 Lexo Astonov recently released another video preview of his upcoming game, TEMNO, and I'm quite impressed with how much progress he has made since he released the first few screenshots of his pet project. The video seems to be mainly showcasing the improved grass and "physics"; although in my opinion the one thing TEMNO could use the most is some decent level backgrounds. Sure, it has a couple hills here and there, but some trees, rocks and whatnot would really make the game feel much less static than it does in its current state.

 Also, I'm kind of surprised that since the game takes place in Pinkamena's mind it isn't a little more, you know, crazy? I'd expect to see fewer mysterious stallions standing silently in the distance and more axe-crazy unhappy birthday cakes. Then again, Astonov isn't exactly making an Earthbound fangame so...

Update: looks like Astonov has decided to throw some trees into that scene. They still need some work, but they're there...and below the break, because this post would be too big if it were above the break.

Magic Hexagon

Magic Hexagon

 As can be gathered from the game's announcement on Tumblr, Magic Hexagon is basically an open source clone of Super Hexagon with pony cutie marks, placing it under the "barely pony related" category. There's not really much to offer for feedback here without either essentially reviewing the original or commenting on the developer's taste in libraries/programming languages, although it would be nice to have some more variety when it comes to songs (the creator is looking for a musician though, so that might be resolved in the near future), along with pre-compiled OS X and Linux binaries in the near future.

 In case you're interested in contributing to the project or compiling it yourself, you can check out Magic Hexagon's GitHub repo at https://github.com/meh2481/magichexagon.

Castle Pinkiestein

Castle Pinkiestein

 If you've been following the Spike's Quest blog, you may have heard that its creator was alternating between working on it and a side-project titled Castle Pinkiestein, a first-person shooter/puzzle game starring Twilight Sparkle as the protagonist, trapped inside some sort of cruel nightmare in which she is forced to kill mutated Pinkie Pie clones. Aside from this there really isn't much else for info on the game (aside from what we've heard of it formerly being a minigame in Spike's Quest), so I guess we'll just have to wait for now and see how the project turns out.

 My apologies for the overall lack of content lately as well, I'm just waiting for the My Little Game Dev Marathon to finish so I can post about the results (it officially ends at some point tomorrow, which will be followed by a one or two day delay until I get the go-ahead to write the compilation post).

 

 Oh hey, you'll also be able to play this game with your dorky 3D glasses.