Choke on My Woona, YOU NASTY CHANGELINGS

Choke on My Woona
(Download)

 While taking a brief break from working on the 4th Nightfall beta, Night Breeze from Silly Mare Games decided to clone a favourite game of his, the name of which cannot be mentioned here for various reasons. Choke on My Woona was the result, a shooter involving Woona and changelings. Upon inevitably dying in the game Woona will respawn, and be assisted by the ghost of her previous self. This goes on for 10 levels although I haven't gotten nearly that far yet, given that it practically runs in slow-motion on Wine and I'm not as patient as I once was (having beaten an unstable version of SuperTux running at 5fps). If you aren't using Linux or OS X, however, the game looks pretty fun so I'd definitely give it a shot if I were you.

Meanwhile, I still haven't figured out how to get Windows 8.1 to play nicely with Linux.

 Come to think of it, for some reason those multicoloured changelings in this game remind me of Carnifex's creations. If these ever ended up making a cameo in a fangame...hoo boy. I'd probably puke rainbows.

Review: Megapony

MegaPony

 A strange trend noted by several people in the community is that whenever a pony fangame comes out and is at least partially based off of another game, it almost always ends up being more difficult than the original. Oddly enough, this usually seems to be entirely unintentional on the developer's part, and it is often debatable as to whether or not the increased difficulty is really a good thing. MegaPony is already an infamous example of this, sure, but is the game's quality negatively affected by this?

The answer, along with the rest of the review, can be found beneath the break.


 Your average gamer's first few hours with MegaPony will inevitably be filled with frustration and rage as they get used to the overly sensitive controls, the odd level designs and the titular protagonist's rather large hitbox. Most won't even manage to complete a single stage, but MegaPony is not for the faint of heart and for those that do press on, something magical happens. Levels that stumped them for hours on end will suddenly become a breeze as the player learns to master them, and with enough endurance one can overcome incredible odds. For a while it may seem somewhat repetitive, sure, but the exhilarating sensation one receives upon finally completing that one level and defeating that which earlier brought you to your knees makes it all worthwhile for those who persevere.

Contrary to popular belief, unicorns can climb ladders too.

 Despite its overall difficulty, MegaPony's gameplay is quite simple. The player runs around as a chubby robot and shoots stuff, all the while dodging bullets and jumping over bottomless pits. Upon completing a stage and beating its boss our hero is awarded a brand new weapon, which also happens to be the weakness for another boss. After defeating the brainwashed Mane Six, he unlocks the final stage along with itsboss, Discord. He can also access Zecora's shop to buy items and upgrades to improve his odds of victory, although purists might want to stay clear of the place (aside from a certain upgrade that adjusts the protagonist's hitbox to be closer to that of the blue bomber).

 Stages tend to have a surprising amount of variety, with little in terms of repetition when it comes to visuals and room layouts. Several of them also introduce new gameplay elements, such as the teleporters in MagicMare's lair and the fishing rod in GenerousMare's stage, the latter of which transforms the game into a weird autoscrolling shooter. Thankfully each level's gimmick is used in moderation, so for the most part they don't end up feeling overused or tiresome.

There's a distinct lack of flashback potions here.

 Aside from several areas (such as Applejack's stage), the game does quite well at staying within the NES' colour limits and still manages to look good in the process. Unfortunately the screen scaling options seem to be a bit off, as using them blurs the game's crisp pixel art, making it harder to fully appreciate the detail put into it. It also forced me to take screencaps with the default screen size and manually upscale them in Gimp, which kind of sucked. The music was pretty nice too: a fitting blend of Megaman themes and My Little Pony chiptune remixes, although to be honest the music gets old after being stuck on a stage for long periods of time.


 To be honest, I don't really have much to criticize MegaPony for. Sure, the main character vaguely resembles one of Clarence's hippopotamuses and there are still a few bugs/imperfections to be ironed out, but most of the possible changes would lower the game's difficulty and thus arguably reduce the game's main draw (aside from its containing ponies, of course). I wouldn't say this is anywhere near the best pony fangame yet, true, but those of you who are looking for a real challenge should ultimately find MegaPony to be quite rewarding.

 It remains to see how Megamare X will compare to this, although I doubt it'll even come close to this one's difficulty.

Game: Unicorn Training

Unicorn Training
Demo | Full ($0.99)

 Adventures in Equica: Unicorn Training is a top-down shooter/RPG hybrid game developed by Yotes Games for mobile phones and tablets, which takes inspiration from the FiM universe but apparently manages to be distinct enough to get away with being a paid game. The game centers around a young unicorn named Clover, apprentice to Totally Not Starswirl the Bearded, as she trains in the ways of magical combat. While we posted about the project in its earlier days, when it was known as Unicorn Quest, the game finally released over the weekend for Android devices. The full version, which costs 99 cents, contains nine dungeons to explore, though only the first is available in the demo.

 While the game shows promise, my play session with the demo was disappointing; poor touch screen controls combined with tedious, monotonous fights and a dungeon that went on for too long to create an unsatisfying experience. Various bugs in movement and the interface served only to further dampen the fun. In addition, the boss at the end of the demo's dungeon simply vanished when I attempted to reload a save file, leaving me no other option but to exit without seeing whatever proper ending may have been there. An extra coat of polish and some more effort on dungeon design would greatly benefit this game; right now, I can't recommend much more than trying the demo out for a play session or two.

Defenders of Equestria Test Demo

Defenders of Equestria

 Some guy on deviantART decided he wanted to make games with ponies too, so he whipped out Stencyl and wrote up a brief Flash demo for a sidescrolling shooter. It has some obvious issues (such as the fact that you can get Twilight stuck in the lower bushes and that the player can fire projectiles way too fast), but with a little work it could become something worthwhile. There's also some kind of easter egg in the project, which I haven't bothered looking for yet today.

Also, happy Remembrance Day (or Veteran's Day, if you're from the United States).

Ponyvasion

Ponyvasion

 Next up from My Little Game Jam is...well, I'm not exactly sure how to describe Ponyvasion to be honest. According to the game's description the player is tasked to "Defend Unicorn-land against the invading pony's", and by that they mean "Kill Them All!". You are then given a variety of weapons that can be swapped with the keys 1-4 and thrown right into the thick of things. Shooting the multicoloured ponies increases your score, while hitting the fluffy white unicorns decreases it. In my opinino it is one of the worst fangames that we have ever come across, although as the case may be it might just be a trollgame. Either way you can give it a shot if you like, but don't expect to come back for more.

Lunar Defense Force

Lunar Defense Force

Man, what's up with you guys and best princess blasting aliens recently? It seems the Shroobs do have a use beyond comprising the low point in Nintendo's excellent series of Mario RPGs, anyway. FearlessPie over on DeviantArt's come out with another flash, this one dedicated to purging mycological aliens from the surface of Woona's moon. It's not very complex, but it has a nice degree of challenge, and it's a nice way to cap off a Saturday evening.

Speaking of Woona, I'm off to go mash f5 on the Moonstuck homepage - good night!

Trosh: The Movie: The Game

Trosh: The Movie: The Game

 For some reason it seems that fangame releases seem to all be clustered around the same time, followed by long periods of silence from everybody. These usually provide an excellent opportunity to search around a bit, find some projects that have been overlooked or remained obscure for long periods of time. I'm not entirely sure if Stabyourself.net's (they're the guys who made Order of Twilight, by the way) Trosh would count as a pony fangame or not, given that you run around shooting pony OCs that belonged to an annoying user on their forum, but at least it's something, right?

Last time I checked, the OS X build for this game was broken. And yes, I do have some more games to hopefully post later on today.

Review: Rainbow Dash Shooter Project

Rainbow Dash Shooter Project

Ever since their release the Desktop Ponies sprites have been used in almost everything. Yes, they are good-looking retraux pony sprites but at times one likes to see developers do their own sprite work for a change. I can say from experience that the main problem seems to be that four-legged characters are rather hard to animate properly and simply using a standard set of sprites saves much time and lets the developer work on things other then character animation. The creator of the dully-titled Rainbow Dash Shooter Project claims that his game's graphical resources were created entirely by himself, and this may be either a good or bad thing depending on his artistic talents.

Of course, it is not the graphics that matter most as the gameplay, so how has this project turned out? Find out after the break.

Of all the sidescrolling shooters that I've seen come out of this fandom this one has to be the most ambitious. The player starts off controlling either Rainbow Dash or an OC created within the game itself (more on that later), and can eventually unlock Fluttershy and Derpy, the latter of which must be obtained by finding a special code either ingame or in the game's comments. Each character has their own special abilities but they can all fly, shoot magic fireballs and enter "overdose mode", which basically speeds up gameplay and enables the player to fire at an absurdly fast rate.

At times one almost wishes that the entire game could be played in Overdose mode.

Unfortunately things get worse fast. Unlike other titles such as the splendidly-made Dash the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project lacks a sense of speed and the sluggish controls make you feel like you're not flying, but swimming in a pool of mud. There is also a very small variety of enemies, and until the first boss is complete the player is stuck fighting large swarms of parasprites. Thankfully once the player reaches Cloudsdale a couple new foes are added to the lineup, although you'll still be mostly fighting parasprites throughout the entire game. To be honest it gets boring quite fast, although the addition of a couple bosses helps considerably.

The game's first boss is Trixie, who is apparently too lazy to perform a levitation spell like unicorn OCs can and is being pulled in a flying cart by Fluttershy. She starts off extremely boring, just slowly firing bullets at the player, but it's once you start to damage her that things get hectic. The game practically switches genres from a plain old shooter to a fully-fledged bullet hell game, although the execution is rather sloppy. In the final stages there is no logic as to where the bullets appear from, and the sluggish controls make dodging the high-speed magical projectiles nigh impossible. As almost everypony realizes it is far more fun to skillfully dodge bullets at high speed, not soaking up damage as possible without dying and with the grace of an overfed seal that can barely swim in it's aquarium pool without sinking.

Thankfully Cloudsdale isn't quite as dull as the stages before it.

As for the graphics...I'll just say that the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project looks quite dull. The occasional passing cloud makes things slightly more interesting, but in general the scenery which you will be flying by is completely bare. It also seems that like many people the artist has a difficult time drawing ponies, and it shows. It's nice that he made the effort of designing his own puppets in Flash, but I really wish that he had just used either the My Little Pony Flash Resource Kit or the Double Rainboom puppets instead of his own work, as it would have improved the game's look immensely. Letting the player use  OCs in the game was a nice touch, although it seems that cutie marks do not import properly  after uploading them and they come out as a garbled mess. There also seems to be a distinct lack of manes and accessories to choose from although thankfully it seems that more shall be added to the game fairly soon.


Let me get this straight: the Rainbow Dash Shooter Project could have been a great game, but poor execution ruined it. Put simply, this game was boring. The game looked dull, the controls were sluggish, and fighting endless swarms of parasprites grew tedious quickly. I had high hopes for this project, but they were shot down as soon as I began to play and were so heavily damaged that they were unable to fly again. To make this game better one would have to loosen up the controls, entirely revamp the graphics, tweak a couple bosses and BAM! We'd have a must play on our hands. Thankfully the game is still under development so hope is not lost yet, so why don't you play the game for yourself and give the creator some feedback, eh?

TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNGSHE Trailer

  TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVENGSHE

The "Twilight Sparkle defence shooter" genre may not be as oversaturated as the Pinkie Pie platformers and cloud dodgers, but Penta Studios (those loveable folks who created Waiting is Magic) seems to think otherwise with the announcement of TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVENGSHE. Slated for release on the 10th of August TSR seems to be the joke game at its finest, with absurdly powerful weapons and perhaps the ugliest parasprites we have ever seen. There's almost no doubt that it will be a blast to play when it comes out given its origins, so be sure to check back on the 10th for this awesome game.

And will it cure cancer like Waiting is Magic did? We have no idea, but beta testing has proven that every 1 minute of playtime adds 1 year to your life. Play this game enough and you'll be practically immortal!

Twilight Sparkle Shooter Game Demo

Twilight Sparkle Shooter Game Demo

A while back this one guy put a preview for a Pinkie Pie platformer up on Youtube, which doesn't sound that impressive except for the fact that it was created in RPG Maker of all things. Now he's back, and by the looks of it he's trying to create some kind of shooter in the same engine. If it is ever completed I expect the gameplay to turn out somewhat like a singleplayer version of Realm of the Mad God, although it's rather doubtful that it will ever be released.

Oh yeah, are you interested in playing it? The creator released a playable demo on Dropbox and can be found over at https://dl.dropbox.com/u/77265517/Pony.zip. Perhaps he's appreciate it if you give 'em some feedback in your comments, eh?

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: Bullet Hell Ponies (My Little Pony vs. Starcraft II) v1.6

Download it Here!

I promised myself I'd beat this game on Pony Mode like a man before I reviewed it. Two days later, I've emerged bloody but victorious, and I'd call myself qualified. For over a year, huod umop apisdn (get it?) has been developing this classic Touhou-style game, which we posted way back in the day. The download link above goes to the games' development blog, which also contains download links for the XNA and Microsoft .NET frameworks required to play the game. If you want to see the game before committing to downloading all this stuff, the team released a trailer here.

Bullets! Ponies! Bullets! Starcraft! Friendship! Bullets! That stuff, as well as some (hopefully useful) advice, after the break!

Man, pony games this hard are unusual. Bullet Hell Ponies has four modes: Derpy, Filly, Pony, and Trollestia. If you're new to the Bullet Hell genre, get ready for a finger workout. Dodging waves of bullets may seem a little overwhelming at first, but you'll get better quickly after a little practice on Derpy Mode.

All of the mane 6 are playable characters, each with their own abilities and styles of play. You're allowed to choose which pony you start the game with, and you can switch between them in-game by grabbing power-ups that bounce about at the top of the screen. Said power-ups take the form of balls with cutie mark icons indicating which pony they will transform you into, and give you a health boost. Small packets dropped from defeated monsters refill your magic bar.

Getting screenshots of this game was a trying experience.

Of the mane six, I found Twilight to be the most useful. Her twin magic bolts are powerful, especially when focused into a single pulse of energy, and they fire rapidly. Her special launches a magic bomb that explodes into smaller bolts. Pinkie Pie was also useful - as her magic increases, the amount of cherries that she fires increases from two to four. Rainbow Dash fires a rainbow-colored beam that penetrates all enemies, and is therefore useful for clearing the back of the screen. Applejack's giant apples (what?) are also powerful stage-clearers, but their firing rate is slow. Her special attack (the only one besides Twilight's to focus on offense) launches even larger apples. Fluttershy's cloud of butterflies lacks the density of the other ponies' fire and is tricky to aim but effective if your aim is lacking. Rarity's gem shower is very hard-hitting but it's short range made it the least effective in most situations.

Each pony has a standard shooting attack, as well as a focused version used by holding the shift key. For some reason, when focusing your attacks, your pony can move only to the right. However, if you can spare an unmoving second, the focused attacks are more efficient at dispatching bosses. Additionally, each pony has a third most powerful attack that consumes your magic. You'll want to hold these attacks back for emergencies, as most of the ponies' standard attacks are more powerful when their magic bars are full. 

I took this AND THEN survived to beat the game. Stick that in your juice box.

The game takes you from Equestria into space and back again before the ominous "To be Continued" flashes on the screen. After beating down Terran, Zerg, and Protoss alike, you face down corrupted Derpy, Zecora, and Trixie bosses. The controls are snappy and responsive, and the size, music, and number of attack styles are all laudable. 

Bullet Hell Ponies is an impressive member of it's genre, with engaging patterns and too many bullets to count. It's difficulty (and the ability to change it) was just the icing on the cake, and thus it receives an impressive 9/10.

Fnagame

Fnagame

 The Brony fnadom is pretty large, sure, but one thing it has always lacked was decent fnagames. But fear not, my friends! The world's first-ever fnagame (ingeniously titled "Fnagame") has been released to the public, starring Twibright Spankle and her friends Pokey Pi, Paddlejack, Pearity, Flutters and Colorful Speed as they do battle against a bunch of goons from the My Little Game Dev forums. Alicorn Cheerilee is there too. It even has a highscores list!

 Expect more fnagames soon.

Megapony Beta

Megapony Beta

I've always wanted ponified remakes of classic videogames, and we don't get them very often (and no, Pony Fantasy 6 doesn't exactly count as it is a mod, not a complete remake). A couple months back a rather interesting game called Megapony was announced that promised to be a MLP Megaman game, and despite my personal opinion that it would never come to fruition a playable beta version has been released. Now I won't lie to you: I am terrible at Megapony but it is great fun and I look forward to the eventual release of the full game so I can review it, and trust me when I say that this game will be getting a very high score from me as it is already one of the best playable fangames out there right now (and way better then PurpleTinker's Quack Quest, which was apparently intended as a trollgame).

Interested in playing Megapony? You can download it over at http://www.mediafire.com/?99hvd3x7sibkv8g. Hope you like it!

Review: Twilight Sparkle: Pest Exterminator

Play it Here!
Or on the Equestria Gaming Arcade

In light of the encroaching parasprite swarms, a desperate Princess Celestia grants Twilight Sparkle a new spell. Now, anything that stands in her way will be "obliterated into tiny bits of dust." Made by the notorious InfinityDash, this game features cute bunnies, bloodthirsty pests, and one trigger-happy purple unicorn. 

Spine-manglingly stoked yet? Read on after the break!

Twilight Sparkle: Pest Exterminator is a simple shooter with relatively straightforward gameplay. Dodge and weave your way around the screen, blasting away at parasprites to clear each level. Although incinerating the occasional bunny is fun, saving them instead refills the blue bar at the top of the screen, allowing you to temporarily transform into gatling pony mode. The bunnies' vulnerability is cheekily irritating: seemingly without fail, your current rapidfire attack will accidentally destroy the bunny needed to charge your next.

One thing the game has going for it is a well-crafted difficulty ramp. Parasprites quickly get tougher and faster as the levels progress, and beating the game's 10 levels is challenging, but not impossible. When you're engulfed by a wave of demonic parasprites and your health bar is emptied, the screen flashes red, indicating that Twilight has given up and invited the parasprites over for cherry kool-aid.

No! Not the bees!

Ponies and blowing up things both have a certain undeniable allure, which they pass along to this game. While short and simple, it's fun due to it's solid mechanics. Twilight Sparkle: Pest Exterminator is surely worth a play, and thus earns a sturdy 6/10. Happy blasting!

Pony On the Moon/Parasprite Invaders

Pony On the Moon/Parasprite Invaders

Pony On the Moon and Parasprite Invaders are two unfinished Java games. The first one is a gravity-based platformer starring Luna, who has been trapped on the moon yet again. In order to survive she must eat, and somepony has conveniently left some muffins drifting around. You'd think that she would also need an oxygen supply if she requires food, but then again this is just a fun platformer that could really use a dedicated artist.

The second game is a simple asteroids clone, except instead of a spaceship you control Twilight's horn, and in place of asteroids you get parasprites. Again, it's in an early state and once again shows that programmers in general are terrible artists, but if you somehow managed to get bored of Waiting is Magic (which we reviewed earlier) then this might be a fun little time waster.

If you want to play these two games you can find Pony On the Moon at http://ponies-in-space.appspot.com/ while Parasprite Invaders is located at http://ponies-in-space.appspot.com/paraspriteinvaders.html. Have fun!

Unicorn Quest

Unicorn Quest

 Coming in to fill another spot in the "pony games comprised entirely of OCs" lineup (which seems to be getting distressingly popular as of late) is a project by the name of Adventures in Equica: Unicorn Quest. The developer, Yotes Games, describes the project as an action-RPG, with a battle system reminiscent of top-down shooters and exploration similar to 2D Zelda titles. The game is still in the conceptual phase at the moment, unfortunately, but the developer promises daily updates for those of you who are interested in the development process. You can read more about the project, including the developer's long-winded explanations of various game concepts, in this post on his blog.

Personally, I'm interested to see how far this project goes; while anyone can write up a pie-in-the-sky game concept without necessarily being able to bring it to fruition, the developer already has some completed projects outside of ponies under his belt, which gives me some confidence for his. Plus, there seems to be a lack of Android pony games that aren't just ports of Flash minigames or clones of other, more popular mobile games; this project has a chance to please that under-served niche in the
fandom.

Demo: TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2

TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2

Coming from Penta Studios, of Waiting is Magic fame, TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2 is the sequel to the first game about defending Ponyville from parasprites and other assorted creatures of the forest. The demo released for the MLGD competition contains an introductory sequence, three levels (allegedly; I keep messing up and dying halfway through the second) and five upgrades. Not a ton of content, but certainly enough to discuss a bit, yes?


This time around, Twalaght has overcome her paraplegia and can roam freely around the arena, including flying around on those fancy new wings Celestia gave her last year. This gives a new twist over the first game, even if most of the game is spent hovering in the middle of the horde and shooting at whatever comes by. Unfortunately, in its current state, levels drag on for far too long, turning a fun shooter/defender to tedium by the time the player reaches wave 25 of 30 on the first level and has only encountered a few unique patterns.

Regardless, the game so far is impressive, and definitely a worthwhile play; the upgrade mechanics are engaging, mowing through enemies is a fun experience, and I guess there's a story of some sort to justify this? I kinda skimmed past that part...

The game definitely doesn't go easy on you.

In other news... hi! You probably haven't seen me around here before. Tuxxy asked me to help out with writing for the site, so I'll be around more often to ramble on about games with candy-colored horses. Hopefully I've made a good impression so far!

Spes Fractus

[Warning: some profanity] A one-man project with original animation? I'm impressed already!

Playing as an OC unicorn, dash through a darkened Equestrian landscape, battling what appear to be corrupted Ponyville residents with a gradually evolving set of spells. So far, Spes Fractus's strongest points appear to be its spell animation and rich vector backgrounds. Hopefully, the gameplay lives up to the visual appeal - but that's impossible to know until a demo is available.

Update: Gameplay trailer after the break!

Raridoom Beta

Raridoom Beta Download

Ahh, Mondays. Good time for a first-person changeling smackdown? Yes. Actually, that holds for pretty much any day of the week.

Raridoom is actually a ponified mod of Chex Quest (read: Doom), with spells, hand-to-hand combat, and voice acting. Difficulty settings are a huge bonus: if it was too easy the first time around, crank the setting to Nightmare Mode and see if you can still knock corrupted Bon Bon for a loop. Posters with slogans like "The Queen is Watching You" scattered around the dungeon corridors add a touch of humor to the otherwise dreary setting. Also, make sure to select the menu option marked "Read This!" to get a hang of the controls.

The beta's still a little rough around the edges: the title screen could use a revamp, and starting certain levels on certain difficulties caused the game to spit errors. Still, if you're a Doom fan, this is a project you won't want to miss - bon appetit!