My Little Investigations

Interrogations

The development team Equestrian Dreamers has been hard at work creating their flagship game - My Little Investigations. This crime-solving game takes inspiration from the Ace Attourney series. My Little Investigations follows Twilight Sparkle, who plays the role of an investigator in Equestria. The game will include crime-scene investigations, numerous interrogations, and the final confrontation to catch the culprit.

This game is far from completion, but so far, it looks absolutely brilliant! The content that they have for us is a series of engine demonstrations, representing different facets of gameplay. There are 5 videos in total, with around 50 minutes of content. You can watch the remaining 4 videos after the break!

Character Encounters

Locations

Partners

Confrontations

Pinkie's Hyperactive Chat is Shutting Down

 Due to a lot of its moderators losing interest and real life getting in the way of development, the current owner of Pinkie's Hyperactive Chat has decided to pull the plug on his web-based MMO by the end of the week, much to the chagrin of its active playerbase. It's quite a shame, I know, but at least Lordcerii has the decency to wait until sometime around Friday evening to shut it down, giving players a chance to exchange contact information so they can keep in touch after the end if they so desire.

The original announcement can be found here.


 To the best of my knowledge this will leave Ponyplace as the fandom's only active MMO, although opinions on its overall quality are mixed. Not sure if >CLOP counts as a MMO either...

Banner Contest

Speaking of banners and banner submission, we here at Equestria Gaming have decided to hold a banner contest, the first of its kind. Anyone can submit; you can even submit more than once if you want to. Just be sure to submit it by Saturday, January 21, 2012. Yes, we're announcing this pretty early, so if you want in, you have a big timeframe to work.

At that point, I'll make a post with all the submissions, Equestria Daily style, and you all can vote on your favorites. The banner with the 4th highest number of votes will be the banner from February 1st to 7th. The 3rd highest banner will be showcased from the 8th to 14th, and so on, until the grand winner becomes the banner for the last week of February.

Rules and more details after the break...

Rules:
1. It must be a banner (of course)
2. It must feature the name Equestria Gaming
3. It must feature ponies in some form
4. It probably should have something to do with gaming - not required
5. It has to be appropriate - keep it classy guys, nothing suggestive or gory
6. It has to have been made by you - no art theft please
7. It has to be submitted by Saturday, January 21, 2012


Email your submissions to me at enigma9994@gmail.com, along with the author's name and any additional information you feel inclined to include. The phrase "Banner Submission" should appear somewhere in the subject line. The four winning banners will be the banner of Equestria Gaming during their respective weeks in February, and will include the authors' names in the corner for recognition (feel free to add this yourself if you want to customize it).


Note: There are no specific dimensions that you need to use: you guys are smart, and I trust you to make banners that would work. We can scale banners down to fit, but not up, so it's better to make it overly large to be safe. For reference, our current banner has an aspect ratio of 16:9.

Note 2: If you want to use the classic Equestria Gaming font, its name is Celestia Medium. You can download it here. You do not in any way have to use this font, it's just there if you need it.

Note 3: This happens to be the 100th post on Equestria Gaming. Hurrah!

New Banner!

Well, I updated the website's ageing banner. It's only temporary, and was drawn by the DeviantART user Equestria-Prevails. We'll be updating the banner regularly, and yes, in case you were wondering, you CAN submit banners if you wish.

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 ).

New Favicon!

Well, I've been working on the site lately, fixing small errors and things like that, when suddenly I realized that we don't  have a favicon.

So...here it is!

Please note that this is not final, and may be replaced later. I also plan on updating the site's banner; as it's getting rather old. You can email me submissions if you wish.

Site on hiatus

Until I can find someone to run it/post more, this site is on temporary hiatus.

Sorry guys, there's just no time for it anymore.

EDIT: Got someone new, we may see some posts on here after all!

Starswirl Academy Goes Completely Non-Pony

Original Post

 After spending a couple months as one of the pony fandom's most popular projects, Hasbro decided to go easy on Starswirl Academy for some reason and ask that the characters be renamed, in addition to some slight modifications to their designs. This means that it is no longer pony-related in the slightest, but is now yet another generic "schoolgirl dating" visual novel with not much going for it aside from its pretty art and the reasonable cost of $0. They've taken down all their trailers and demos from the internet, by the way, so you might want to hang onto your copy for now.

Before you ask, this does mean that yes, we won't be posting about Starswirl Academy anymore (unless an "unofficial mod" comes out to make some...erm, adjustments to the VN).

 It'd be amusing if they ended up renaming the characters really close to the original, in the Fnagame tradition, because we totally need to see more of Twibright Spankle and her friends.

My Little Game Dev Marathon Pt. 2

Announcement & Rules

 Some of you may remember the My Little Game Dev Marathon which was held earlier this year, and I'm (would say "we're", but the others aren't here so...) happy to announce that they've recently launched another one. The requirements for entries are fairly simple: at least 1 level playable level, bare essentials, decent graphics, no R34 content, and finally the marathon logo should be present somewhere within the game. The deadline is December 30th: so if you're interested in participating then you should probably get started soon and have your project ready before then, where they'll pack all the games together and send them to various prominent fansites for reviewing.

More detailed information can be found on the thread at http://mylittlegamedev.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=1105&pid=5933

 Being the only active poster on this site makes me feel rather lonely sometimes. Wonder when Enigma Sage and Arctic Lux will come back...

Shattered Kingdom

Shattered Kingdom

 There are a lot of story-based games circling around the pony fandom, but not many have the strong player-influenced dynamic that Shattered Kingdom aims to provide. The project, being developed by a group known as Alicorn Games, is a turn-based strategy RPG centered around an Equestrian civil war between the Celestial Empire and the New Lunar Republic. The game will be heavily story-oriented and non-linear, with the player's actions influencing various story elements throughout the course of the game.

 The game is still early in development, and no public demo exists (at least that I can find), but a recent video of their panel at Bronycon 2014 showcases some of the team's current progress. More information can be found on the team's official blog.

MLP: Online Sprite Sheet Dump

A little while ago, I got a chance to commiserate with one of you over the gradual disappearance of Desktop Ponies. Although I'm saddened that MLP:Online came to such an abrupt end, it's cloud has a silver lining: enough free pony sprites to power an army of fan games. Find them here!

To Urimas, and the rest of the MLP:Online team: thanks for your generosity. You deserve a salute from all of us here at EQG. To the rest of you: what are you waiting for? Get to work!

My Little Game Dev Re-Opens

My Little Game Dev

(Forums)

 After spending several months in a more or less inaccessible state, the My Little Game Dev community has finally relaunched its main site and forums to the general public. The forums (along with their quirky Cloudsdale group) are still the main draw for MLGD, of course, while the main site will apparently post articles on pony game development and whatnot. The latter I find to be an especially interesting idea if they manage pull it off well enough, as it's something I've always wanted to do myself once I actually manage to finish one of my own games. After all, articles on game development written by people who've never actually tried it tend to go horribly wrong, as The Round Stable unwittingly demonstrated for us back in August.

If you're interested, you can check out their forums at http://mylittlegamedev.com/forums.

Another Legends of Equestria Open Server Weekend

 In order to ensure that their upcoming public stress test gets as much publicity as possible, the Legends of Equestria team decided to announce this one over a month in advance. As can be mostly deducted from reading the header image (unless you're a hardcore CLI fanboy browsing this site with Lynx, in which case you should probably ignore this game and go back to Angband), the event starts on January 24th at 12:01am EST and ends at 11:59pm on the 26th, and will most likely feature overworked servers crammed with seas of ponies to murder your framerate, along with a snazzy new Linux client. You'll also have to register on their forums in order to play, which can be done at http://forum.legendsofequestria.com/index.php?action=register.

 This will also coincide with their Ohayocon panel, where you'll be able to watch people demonstrating a game that you could have played yourself had you stayed at home.

What do you want to play next? For me it's Airships

What do you want to play next?

With an ever changing work schedule and the holidays hitting hard and fast I haven't been getting in as much gaming as I've wanted to. I recently took a trip up to Toronto where I spent far too much money on new games. The sad part though is that I still haven't had a chance to try some of them yet. So right now the top of my playlist is Airships from Queen Games.

Airships is an interesting looking dice based game. Each player is trying to build the best fleet of zeppelins while at the same time contributing to the building of the biggest zep. of them all: The Hindenburg. The interesting part about this one is that you start with just a simple crew and very little tech and you have to roll dice to get better stuff. Your starting bits give you two white D6. Now on your turn if you want to buy better engines, you have to roll these two dice and try to get the target number on those engines. If you make the roll you get them and if you fail your turn is wasted. What those engines do is give you more dice to roll, either more white or the better Red or Black dice. You continue like this using dice to buy better bits to give you better dice to buy better bits, scoring points for completing airships along the way.

The mechanics are unique to any other game I own and I really want to give Airships a shot. I'm hoping to bring it out to the Board Games at the Green Bean event this Friday.

Airships is the top game on my to play list. What game do you hope to get to the table next?

Press Release: Equestrian Robotics

Equestrian Robotics

(Megamare X)

 The Equestrian Robotics Initiative is proud to unveil its face to the world-wide internet. We are now announcing our brand-new site, which can be found at EquestrianRobotics.org. This site, we hope, will provide answers about our many upcoming projects and products to make the speedy recovery of our world smoother for all.

 As always, questions and comments can bseasoned via our twitter account, @EQRobotics. We appreciate all feedback we receive regardless of any profanity-laced responses that come from Jay’s desk. Please don’t sue.

– From the desk of Dr. Atelier.


 The indefatigable minds at Starlight Studios have created some new content concerning popular retirement simulator/action game for reprogrammable computers, Megamare-X. The site has been a project of theirs since the events of BronyCon 2013, and will be updated with in-universe, in-character game info concerning the rich world of Equestria 21XX. As the game draws closer to its completion, the blog will become more and more relevent to the events of the game, and will eventually serve as a direct portal for download and support as well.

Curse of the Lost Kingdom: Old Demo

Curse of the Lost Kingdom

(Download)

 If you were here back in July of '12, you might remember us posting about a promising RPG known as The Lost Kingdom, along with an assurance that a demo for the game was "almost complete". However, as time went on that demo became increasingly out of date when compared to the actual game, and Super Writer forgot about it entirely...until two days ago, when he decided to put it online for all to enjoy, as an extremely pleasant surprise. It may be old and nowhere nearly as polished as the game is in its current state, but it's still a fun diversion that should be well worth a playthrough or two.

Also, some players (myself included) are unable to run the game without first installing RPG Maker 2003, which you can conveniently find on the demo's download page.

24 Hour RPG 2012 contest results

The official results are in for this years 24 hour RPG contest over on rpggeek.com.

Congratulations goes out to everyone who entered. I now know just how hard, and how much fun entering one of these is. Special props to the winners. Lowell Francis Todd Sanders and Steffen O'Sullivan.

It is difficult to split the results down in great detail due to the nature of the single transferable voting system, but here are the top few positions that are at least partially discernible (with the proviso that these results are not directly meaningful, but rather a rough guide):

1st - Arclight Revelation Tianmar
2nd - Our Dust Earth
3rd - The Wind in the Willows RPG
4th - Men of Romance
5th - Eaten Away
6th - Breathless
7th - The Diminutive RPG
8th - One Night Only
9th= - Debrief / Noah's Mark
11th= - The Oathbreakers / We are all Star Stuff
13th= - Farmtopia / Holiday Heroes

Here's the official post on rpggeek:
http://rpggeek.com/thread/889328/2015-rpg-geek-24-hour-contest-results

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?

Tim Kask shares more Gygax info on Dragonsfoot

Dragonsfoot is probably the most well known online gaming forum dedicated to the old school. It's definitely one of the biggest and most respected. It makes sense that Tim Kask would choose that forum to share quite a bit more info about the upcoming Gygax Magazine.

"The last couple of days have been more fun than I have had in a long time. I refer, of course, to the leaking of the news that a new magazine called Gygax Magazine is coming out next month. Just monitoring several FB threads yesterday took a lot of time.

Because this community has been very kind to me, I will share with you in what detail I can before the release. So, here are some snippets of the advertising packet or quotes from replies I wrote yesterday:

* Gygax Magazine will be released next month, December 2012.
* The magazine will be available in both print and digital formats.
* The name Gygax Magazine refers to Ernie and Luke.
* We registered the TSR trademark in 2011, but we are a new company, and not associated with the original TSR or Wizards of the Coast.
* Gygax Magazine will cover a wide variety of RPGs and strategy games, focusing on the games of today while preserving the traditions and history of the industry.
* We'd prefer to talk more about the contents of the first issue when it's available, but we hope people will love it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Gygax Magazine is myself, Ernie Gygax, Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, James Carpio, and Jim Wampler. Our first issue is out in December; since it's not finished yet, we've been pretty quiet about things until it's ready.

Just to address some of the questions, I thought it was best that I leave a reply. We do own the trademark for TSR, and have since December of 2011. We are a new company, not the old TSR, as they were purchased by Wizards in the '90s. The trademark was abandoned about nine years ago, and we registered it in 2011. 

We decided the best thing to release first as TSR was a gaming magazine, because we wanted a way to bridge the traditions of the old guard with the awesome new games that are out today. " - Jayson Elliot

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

When I googled Gygax Magazine earlier this evening, I was taken aback by the number of hits. Some of the stuff I read was nasty and suspicious, even a bit mean-spirited; the speculations ran the gamut of possibilities; most of the buzz is very positive.

I was approached by Jayson nearly a year ago and asked if I might be interested in allowing him and his incipient staff to pick my brain regarding putting together a crackerjack new gaming magazine. Jayson produced his bonafides in the form of a very classy music ‘zine he had produced. I enthusiastically agreed to come on board as a consultant, and am glad to say that they always listened to both my answers and my suggestions, and I shared my publishing philosophy with them, still pretty much the same as when I started Dragon, Little Wars and Adventure Gaming. Jayson has assembled a very impressive, small and tight staff. My position with the mag is merely Consulting Editor; additionally, I will produce a regular bully-pulpit column each issue and the occasional game article. (My first feature article will be in #2, an in-depth look at a game called Samurai Battles that is part minis, part board and has overtones that are remarkably similar to the currents running through minis at the dawn of role-playing.)

Our initial publicity has been a bit misleading and incomplete—this will not be a one-trick-pony magazine. We want this to have the same zest for capital G gaming as the early days of The Dragon andLittle Wars, and a philosophy I followed with Adventure Gaming. That means that we will spend our time showcasing what we think are great games regardless of who makes it. We want to have a little something for everyone in every issue. I proved that it could be done with the success of the aforementioned magazines.

I was asked if the new TSR planned to produce “the next great rpg”. Good gawd, NO! In an interview I did with a blog, I pointed out that we at EE were asked the same thing. My reply was that there was no way that the four of us could possibly agree on a set of rules; we had no plans to even try.

We have an absolutely stellar Table of Contents in this first issue, crammed with names of talented writers and designers, both old and new. We have some eye-popping art by some big names and names that we expect to be big soon. Our first cover is outstanding: our second will blow you away. We plan to have pieces about all sorts of games, some rules/brand-specific and others not. We are considering a regular figure feature, and perhaps one on painting them. By the same token, we might steer you to a great card game (though pretty probably not CCG’s). We have so many approaches to our beloved hobby that we can take; we plan to take a variety each issue.

We are in no way legally connected to any company in existence before 2011. Gary’s widow owns all of his IP and has already shown by her overt hostility that it is not worth going there.

Our intent is to celebrate gaming in its myriad forms. Gary’s two oldest sons are not going to do anything cheap or tawdry to diminish their father or his legacy; he raised them better than that."

You can find the original post as well as follow up conversations here: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=23223&p=1301822#p1301822

Update: in addition to this it looks like Luke Gygax has done an interview over on Loremaster:
http://loremaster.org/content.php?282-Loremaster-Interview-with-Luke-Gygax

MegaPony Episode 3

MegaPony Episode 3

 After spending over a year working on and fine-tuning MegaPony, Khao Mortadios has finally released Episode 3, completing his fangame and giving us yet another needless reminder that the other Episode 3 still isn't complete, and probably won't be for quite a long time. Yes, the main character still resembles some sort of mutant hippo and has a rather large hitbox, but the game should still provide a fairly rewarding experience for those who don't mind a little challenge and its somewhat unusual artistic style.

Also, I dunno if I'll have time to review this tomorrow or not, since it'll be my birthday and whatnot, but I'll try to get it done within the next few days.