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.

PoniPoni Visual Novel Creator

A sample screenshot of PoniPoni
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.

Review: Super Lesbian Horse RPG

A gameplay screenshot of Super Lesbian Horse RPG
Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 One day Bobby Schroeder decided that she liked shipping cartoon horses enough to warrant creating a silly game about it: Super Lesbian Horse RPG was the result of her labour. Overall awareness of the game spread quickly after its announcement by virtue of its somewhat odd title, along with a rather amusing /mlp/ thread which claimed SLHRPG was something else entirely, and now here we are with the somewhat final product (given that there will probably be several bugfix releases in the near future). Expectations for the project have been fairly high overall, but does it live up to them? For that, dear reader, you will have to read the rest of the review.

Horse Time below the break.

Super Lesbian Horse RPG is Released

Super Lesbian Horse RPG

 Yes, it's finally here (and quite late as well, missing its original release date by a whopping 6 months). Quite likely the pony fandom's strangest RPG as of yet, Super Lesbian Horse RPG was created in the spare time of a fairly generic Tumblr user, the type who gets legitimately angry when folks assume his "SFW" game contains pornography based off of the title. Some of the fairly recent additions have been somewhat controversial, sure, but is the rest of the game alright?

...You'll have to find out in the morning, since it's past midnight over here and I'm going to bed.
- Tuxxy

MLP RPG (Fighting the Unknown) Update


 So the MLP RPG has been updated, you know, the one with the ponies. There's apparently lots of new stuff in it, but since I haven't been able to find a detailed changelog I have no idea as to what Harvard Han added this time. I probably won't be able to review it anyways until it leaves the beta stage either, so in the meantime you might as well give it a shot.

...Enjoy, I guess?
- Tuxxy

A Release Date for Super Lesbian Horse RPG



 Apparently Super Lesbian Horse RPG is coming out on Christmas Day (Wednesday, in case you haven't checked your calendars yet). Since I just got from watching The Desolation of Smaug and am rather tired, let's just say that words cannot fully describe my excitement so I can get this over with and listen to the Electric Light Orchestra, maybe see if a friend of mine is online at this hour.

Good night!
- Tuxxy

My Little Karaoke: Additional Content Disc

My Little Karaoke

 For those of you who are into karaoke and ponies, My Little Karaoke must be practically a godsend, and you'll be pleased to hear that they've released an additional content disc with a bunch of new songs for you to sing along to. It includes "the Equestria Girls soundtrack, silly things such as PFUDOR, and the first S4 song (Hearts Strong As Horses)", along with some performance improvements and general bugfixes. There may or may not be some other things, but I wouldn't know since I haven't really looked into it that much.

Will I play this myself? Probably not, since I'd rather keep my terrible singing to my goofy Skype calls, but if you enjoy being humiliated by a computer program criticizing your voice, this is for you. One can download it at http://www.mylittlekaraoke.com/index.php?pages/Game-download

Starswirl Academy Goes Completely Non-Pony

Some artwork from the Starswirl Academy blog.
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).

My Little Game Dev Marathon Pt. 2


 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

Breach of Harmony


 Not too long ago somebody decided that what the My Little Pony fan community really needed the most was an online PvP arena game, and thus Breach of Harmony was born. It features everything you'd expect from this type of game: multiple player classes, gratuitous amounts of colourful horses and an unintentionally cheesy plot involving a secret society of rich ponies who apparently get a kick out of paying the lower classes to fight each other. I could dissect it further based on the preview video, but since it's still in the pre-alpha stage I shall refrain from doing so for the time being (given that most of the problems I have with it are related to the animations and will most likely be resolved in the near future).

You can find more detailed information about the game at breachofharmony.com.

20% Faster


 Some brave anon took it upon himself to delve into /collab/ once more to see if he could find anything worthwhile, and he stumbled across some Korean student's pet project: a 3D engine that he wants to use for a Rainbow Dash game someday. The preview video looks pretty neat for the most part, although until he can find a 3D modeller who is willing to help him this will remain nothing but a fairly nice tech demo. 'Tis a shame, I know, but they're kind of in short supply right now and the majority of the ones I know are already busy working their butts off on Legends of Equestria or their own personal projects.

There's more info about the game on the developer's blog, which can be found at http://bab2min.tistory.com/ (although you'll probably have to run the page through Google Translate, since it's in Korean).
- Tuxxy

Super Pony Wars Demo

A gameplay screenshot for Super Pony Wars
Super Pony Wars

 Browsing the graveyard that is Ponychan's /collab/ board can occasionally bring up interesting stuff if you have the patience to wade through the endless corpses of once-promising projects, and Super Pony Wars appears to be one of the few which isn't quite dead yet, as a demo for it was released a couple days ago without much ado. From what I've gathered it's supposed to be some sort of strategy/RPG game based off of Super Robot Wars (which I have neither heard of nor played), featuring a cast made up of original characters, an unintuitive interface that could really use some documentation, and a bunch of placeholder RPG Maker sprites. It could probably become a pretty decent game if it were given enough love, sure, but it's been kind of overlooked on Ponychan and the creator seems to be losing interest.

Dunno if this one will ever come to anything, unfortunately, so in the meantime all we can do is watch and wait.

My Little Game Dev Re-Opens

(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.
- Tuxxy

Another Legends of Equestria Open Server Weekend

Open Server Weekend January 24th - 26th
 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.
- Tuxxy

Zap Apple Buckin'


 When it comes to mobile games, Zap Apple Buckin' is as basic as you can get: apples appear on the screen, and you have to touch all of them before the time runs out. To be honest I barely even consider this to be pony related, so I'm not including this on the Arcade, but if you're really bored and have an Android phone then this might be okay for wasting several minutes of your time. There's also a Flash version, although I don't really see the point of it either.

...Meanwhile, I might have something more interesting to post today, if Wishdream manages to finish his trailer on time.
- Tuxxy

No Guns in Canterlot


 There's a distinct lack of first person shooters in the pony fandom, and for good reason: colourful horses just aren't as fun when you can't see the ones you're playing as. However, that hasn't stopped Jach (you might be familiar with some of his previous works, such as A World You Should Not Know), who decided to switch from the Blender Game Engine to Unity3D and make a game about shooting changelings with guns, because apparently magic missiles aren't good enough for some reason. Players also have the choice of playing as Princess Celestia, Luna, Cadance and Shining Armor, each with their own weapons and magical abilities, which offers some more variety I guess.

 No word on when the project will eventually be released, although Jach claims he'll set up a blog for it in the near future with development updates.

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.

>CLOP

>CLOP

 Before you ask why we have big green letters in the post's header, >CLOP is "the game of pony friendship and world domination", whipped up in a week and playable entirely in your web browser in all its wondrous, half-baked glory (the game lacks a front-end designer as of now). Players are given their very own nation to manage, and they can interact with other players via the online marketplace. It's still very unstable and, being under active development, still missing quite a few important features, but I get the impression that >CLOP might be worth looking into.

No, I haven't played it yet; I'm still snickering at the awful webpage.
- Tuxxy

Press Release: Equestrian Robotics

 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.

Horse Game Update 2

Horse Game

 Even if the Horse Game is pretty much a proof of concept demo, it's still rather fun, especially now that the developers have added bots and made some improvements to its innovative spell-crafting system, among other things. It may be nowhere near ready for a review yet, sure, but the project is rather promising and I'd advise that you folks keep an eye on it for the near future, and maybe even volunteer to help out if you have any coding or 3D modelling skills.

Interested in giving this fabulous update a spin? Then download the Horse Game at http://horsegame.ca/.

Elemental Reaction

A gameplay screenshot of 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.
- Tuxxy

Curse of the Lost Kingdom: Old Demo

 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.
- Tuxxy

Vine Slicer

Vine Slicer

 Oh, looks like futzi01 made another quickie game, this one being a clone of Fruit Ninja. You drag your mouse cursor around to chop up vines, all the while avoiding ponies and wishing Fighting is Magic wasn't cancelled so you could play it instead. Pretty basic, I know, but still fun for the most part.

As to why this isn't on the Arcade...let's just say that futzi01 has grown really fond of exporting his Flash games at rather high resolutions.

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.

Review: Megapony

A MegaPony gameplay screenshot
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.

Review: Adventure Ponies 2

A gameplay screenshot of Adventure Ponies 2.
Adventure Ponies 2

 Somehow this review ended up getting delayed for nearly three weeks, partially due to a nasty headache on the day it was supposed to be written that caused it to be pushed back further and further until now; so as I sat at my desk and waited for everyone else to wake up, it seemed prudent to finally get this out of the way so I can get on to reviewing other stuff (such as the final version of MegaPony). Fair enough?

Following standard procedure, the review can be found after the break.

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.
- Tuxxy

Spike's Quest: Progress Video #1


 A quick search reveals that we last posted Spike's Quest over a year ago, leading most to assume that the project was dead. However, several days ago MisterBull pulled back the curtain and revealed that the silence was due to his completely rewriting the game's engine in BlitzMax, which should theoretically give him much more freedom from a developmental perspective and possibly enable OS X/Linux support. To showcase the new engine, he has released the above video, and plans on releasing a new one every week. Perhaps a tad excessive, sure, but still a better idea than releasing a big update once a year like MisterBull had been doing before.

Also, many thanks to Bry Fury to sending this in to us.
- Tuxxy

Review: War of Harmony IV

War of Harmony IV title screen.
(Download)
The game does contain some grimdark content, in case that bothers you.
 On May 12th a demo for some RPG Maker game named War of Harmony IV was released, oddly enough without other WoH games I to III. Perhaps Marshall Ruffy thought the roman numeral 4 looked neat, and decided to quietly include it with the game in the hopes that nobody would ask about the missing first three instalments in the "series", or he could be planning on releasing the other entries later on and out of order (the latter of which seems the most likely, given some of his recent tweets). Either way, it's still kind of a weird decision in naming, one that the game itself will hopefully make up for.

As usual, you can find the rest of the review after the break.

Later Today: Gaming for Good

Gaming for Good
Edit: it's over.
 Just a reminder that the "Gaming for Good" thing we posted last week is coming up today at noon EST. They'll be playing games and stuff, which wouldn't be all that exciting if they weren't doing it for charity and interviewing the Legends of Equestria and Mane Six development teams. Still, in a way I'm honestly getting kind of sick of these podcasters interviewing the same fangame teams over and over again, and wish they would chat with some smaller developers (such as Bobby Schroeder or Donitz) for once, but since that's unlikely to happen anytime soon we might as well sit back and try not to get too upset over the lack of variety.

 Once the event is ready you can watch it at http://events.yoursiblings.org/.

Ponykart Officially Dead

(GitHub mirror) (Another one)

 Much to the surprise of absolutely no-one, a post released yesterday by Hoppip states that the once incredibly-promising Ponykart project is now completely dead, as most of the team members went on to become professional programmers/game developers and no longer had any time for fangames. It's quite a shame, yes, but at least the source code is still freely available, so anybody with some C# experience can pick up and resume where the developers left off (as some anon on /mlp/ is currently attempting to do, although I kind of doubt he'll get very far).

The original post can be found at http://ponykart.net/we-ded/.
- Tuxxy

Another Equestria Adventure Demo

The Equestria Adventure title screen
(Ponychan thread)

 In an effort to show that his Equestria Adventure fangame (which we posted back in September) is not dead, mpa has released a brand-new demo featuring 4 levels and a boss. The controls still take a while to get used to and the boss is kind of boring, but once you get used to them the demo is quite fun while it lasts. As the game's creator put it on his project's /collab/ thread, "I honestly don't think I'll ever finish this thing, but hopefully this is fun enough to please anyone who has been eagerly waiting".

 Meanwhile, these headaches are getting rather annoying...it's been over a month since they started, and I don't know how long they're going to last for.

Defenders of Equestria Test Demo

The title screen for the Defenders of Equestria 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).
- Tuxxy

Gaming for Good: A Livestream Fundraiser Thing


 The kindly people in charge of Bronies for Good, along with Equestria Daily and our friends over at Derpy Hooves News (along with two of the nicer people on Everfree Network) came up with the idea to hold a "charity livestream" in which you watch people play games and throw your money at the screen to help poor African children. Yeah, I know that we don't usually post livestreams and whatnot, but it's for a good cause and they'll also be interviewing the Legends of Equestria and Mane 6 development teams about their progress so far, which is pretty neat.

If you happen to be interested, the event takes place on November 16th at noon EST, and you'll be able to watch it all at http://events.yoursibilings.org/.

Pony Amnesia Demo

A group picture of the game's main cast.
 For various reasons I don't like posting the release announcement and review of a game right next to each other, and what do you know? Some developer usually happens to conveniently release a demo or something right in between posts, so our readers don't get two articles about the same game in a row. I'm not sure as to why this always happens, but here's a thank-you to Gentlecolt Collaborations for accidentally upholding this odd tradition and treating you all to a brand-new pony visual novel at the same time.

 Since this is only a demo I'm not going to put a score on the project or anything, but I might as well put some feedback below the break. Fair enough?

Adventure Ponies 2

Adventure Ponies 2

 As an extremely pleasant surprise, The Hub has released a sequel to their Adventure Ponies Flash game from 2012. If all goes well I should have a full review for the game up at some point tomorrow (because starting a review at 7 PM would be pushing it a little), but in the meantime I hope you folks enjoy the game!

...Is it just me, or is this the first My Little Pony game ever to feature more male characters than female?
- Tuxxy

Nightfall Beta v3.89

A typical daytime gameplay screenshot of Nightfall.
(Download)
 It seems that Night Breeze of Silly Mares Games will be especially busy this November due to college, and since the real fourth beta for Nightfall isn't ready yet he's decided to make a relatively minor release in the meantime to pacify the masses. Enjoy, fellow pony fans, as I look into the possibility of eventually switching over to the Ghost blogging platform while listening to sludge metal and wondering why the fridge's water dispenser pours warm water instead of cold (which doesn't make any sense to me).

Release notes have been copypasted below the break.

Super Lesbian Horse RPG Update


 For those of you who don't follow Bobby Schroeder's tumblr, you may be wondering how SLHRPG is coming along, so he created this Youtube video to give you folks some incentive to visit it more often. Most of the progress updates are too short to be posted here (for example, a recent series detailed his work on a particular rock sitting in the forest), but at least Bobby is being fairly open about the development process when compared to most of the other fangames I've seen which get this far, since they tend to be relatively silent for the most part.

So...yeah. You can follow Super Lesbian Horse RPG's development here.

Awesome Pony Fighting Game


 Around 3 days after Fighting is Magic received its Cease & Desist order, some guy on Ponychan figured that he wanted to make his own open source pony fighting game, featuring a cast made up entirely of...original characters (ew). He got together some people together, and for most of this time they've been working on the engine and character creator. The project seems to still be active, despite the fact that they keep forgetting to upload stuff to their GitHub repo, so there's yet some hope that this project may yet live to see the light of day.

...For some reason I keep assuming that APFG stands for Another Pony Fighting Game, which, in my opinion, would make for a much better name.

Crazy Pony 1.2

A screenshot of a new Crazy Pony level starring Fluttershy
(Bitbucket repo)
 Yesterday verycrazypony, macho-sadist extraordinaire, released a brand-new version of Crazy Pony with fancy new features like an online leaderboard and player avatars (which, sadly enough, don't seem to be working for me right now on Linux Mint), along with some some new levels in case you've beaten the original. Mac OS X support is also available for those willing to compile the game in Xcode, although I expect that verycrazypony will provide official OS X binaries fairly soon like he did with the previous releases.

Want to give the updated Crazy Pony a spin? Then check out the download page at http://crazypony.net/site/index.php?id=download

Reminder: Legends of Equestria is Livestreaming

Event 24-hour livestream event! reminder
Legends of Equestria Livestream

 In case you've already forgotten (in which case you should be ashamed of yourself, as we only posted about it 3 days ago), the Legends of Equestria team is livestreaming right now, and will continue to do so until tomorrow at noon EDT. They'll be making stuff live in front of an audience, and cover up their extended breaks with panels on various things related to their upcoming game.
 
Also, for some reason they moved the event to a different channel, so head on over to http://www.livestream.com/nutsonclark to watch it.
- Tuxxy

Review: Muffins.exe (Creepypasta)

A gameplay screenshot of Muffins.exe
muffins.exe

Edit (3/21/15): Someone in the comments section said this has a virus in it? I don't care enough to fact-check, so I'm commenting out the link to the download. Feel free to correct if he's wrong. -Red

 Today I was sitting around, expecting a creepypasta to show up in our email inbox as they usually do during this time of year, and what do you know? Some "Anonymous" person submits this game titled muffins.exe, created in GameMaker Lite and featuring a gratuitous amount of screamers (thus rendering it very NSFW).

 If you intend on playing this, I'd advise that you do so before reading below the break, as the review contains spoilers.

Review: Moonstuck Part 2

The Moonstuck title screen
Moonstuck Part 2

 So...Moonstuck. Quite possibly the fandom's most beloved webcomic, Moonstuck managed to win the hearts of many with its adorable main character and unique art style while it lasted. After it ended on November 4th in 2012, SylrePony decided to adapt the comic into a isometric fangame, the first part of which he released in March. Our reviewer Arctic Lux gave it an 8/10, and all seemed well and good, but now that the second part has been released and he's not around it seems that it is time for my take on the second entry.

Does this unofficial Moonstuck adaption live up to the charm of its namesake? Find out after the break.

Ponyvania Intro


 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.

Guess Who's Livestreaming This Weekend?

 If you've been following Equestria Gaming over the past couple months/years, this banner should probably tell you all you need to know, but if you haven't figured it out yet Legends of Equestria is holding yet another 24 hour livestream, in which they will be extra productive in order to please the general public and hold several panels which may or may not interest you. The event will run from the 2nd of November at 12 noon EDT for a full 24 hours until the 3rd at 12 noon. And before you ask, the stream will be held at http://www.livestream.com/legends_of_equestria.

You can find a full schedule below the break.

Octavia in the Underworld's Cello

The Underworld's Cello (fixed)

 So I knew that I was going to be posting about at least one adventure game today, but to be quite honest with you I was rather surprised when I opened up my deviantART notifications and found a demo for a first-person point & click adventure game right before my eyes. It stars Octavia (duh) and Vinyl, as they venture into a dilapidated mansion after following some poorly-written directions to a Nightmare Night party, and yes, it does run splendidly in Wine once you install dsound. Thing is, it is quite a bit darker than your average pony adventure game, although the fact that it's being released so close to Halloween probably explains that.

Heh heh heh...

Moonstuck the Game Part 2

A gameplay screenshot of Moonstuck the Game Part 2


 Two days ago SylrePony finally released a sequel to his Moonstuck game project from March 2013. It probably look so long because he's been working on Drifter alongside several other folks, but now that it's been released he probably has more time to make games and whatnot, which is kind of nice because as we've mentioned before, there's been a severe lack of My Little Pony fangames this year. Ah well, at least things seem to be picking up a little bit again, right?

Dun worry, I'll review this tomorrow after I've had some sleep. Goodnight!

Released: Never Heard From Ever Again

Never Heard From Ever Again

 Back in August we posted about Never Heard From Ever Again, a weird little first person horror game with the nastiest lolipop-related jumpscare you'll ever see. The full thing was released today on Desura, marking the first time a pony game made it onto the service, but it's $1.99, also giving it the unprestigious "honour" of being the first My Little Pony fangame for the PC platform that is neither free in freedom nor free beer. Mind you, that's not a lot of money, but there are still plenty of people who will probably find this choice in distribution objectionable.

Meanwhile, guess who's too cheap to buy a copy?
- Tuxxy

Canterlot Siege 2

A screenshot of Canterlot Siege 2
Canterlot Siege 2
 Last year's Canterlot Siege was extremely popular amongst the My Little Pony fan community in general, although I wasn't all that fond of it myself due to my not being a real tower defence person. Since I am really not suited to reviewing this sort of thing I'll just wait for Arctic Lux or Enigma Sage to do it later, but needless to say most of you who liked the first entry will probably end up enjoying this one. Also, playing strategy games in general with a pounding headache is a terrible idea, and will probably make anything but the biggest pushover feel like a horrible nightmare.


Updated: MFA II Pre-Preview

The black dragon, post-bossfight.
Pre-Preview

 It seems that Mark, after stealthily releasing his last pre-preview on MLPchan back in September, took the feedback he received and whipped up another one for his followers to enjoy. It features an expanded world, more visually impressive bossfights (yay!), and the miraculous ability to summon money from thin air. Good thing the latter won't be present in the final game though; imagine what could happen if you could "bribe" particular bosses to leave you alone. You'd probably end up with some kind of weird joke ending where all the big bads go on an expensive holiday in their private yacht, only to have their fortunes taken away by the Equestrian Revenue Service.

 Kind of a shame that Mark probably probably won't be able to release the game in time for Halloween, but ah well. At least the final game should be well worth the wait, if these previews and his previous projects are anything to go by.

Megamare X Seeking Level Designers

Lyra preparing herself to take down the monster that is Ponychan.
 SaltyJustice, a prominent developer from Starlight Studios, decided that Megamare X could really use a new level designer and submitted a post on Ponychan's /collab/ board asking for help. Problem is, he apparently hasn't realized that /collab/ is (among other things) dead and very unproductive. Since I can safely assume that all of us want to see the project reach completion in the near future, I decided to take the liberty of reposting his thread in hopes that he would have more luck finding someone here.

A copypasta of the full post, along with details on how to apply, can be found below the break.

Story of the Blanks Level Editor


 While we wait around for that Story of the Blanks reimagining (which is apparently still under development, if we take their word for it), some anon on /mlp/ suggested that we post about the game's built-in level editor, which has been around since its release during the Creepypasta contest. To access it, the player has to open the game's SFW file, make the browser window much larger vertically than horizontally, click Play and then press Home+End. If you read the guide and figure out the editor, more power to you I guess. Still, it's not like this is really an appropriate tool for creating an entirely new game unless you're really crazy.

 Also, the comments for our Creepypasta contest reveal that apparently there were two entries, but Story of the Blanks was the only one that was posted. I wonder what happened to that other one...

Ponyvania Demo

Ponyvania gameplay screenshot
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.

Project Magic

Project Magic screenshot
 Contrary to the expectations of some people, /mlp/'s series of Game Dev threads have been pretty productive, although its output so far has mainly been limited to Flash puppets and animation tests. Project Magic is the second playable game to come out of those threads, a clone of Project Diva that is best played with an Xbox 360 controller for some reason. I actually haven't played it yet myself due to the relatively large filesize (mainly due to its including 1080p music videos), but I'm sure that at least some of you will enjoy this for the time being.

Also, if you don't install the hotfix the game will crash if you press any button on the keyboard. Pretty sweet, eh?
- Tuxxy

Starswirl Academy Demo

Nobody reads this
Starswirl Academy

 By some strange coincidence fangame news and releases tend to come in short bursts, with everybody releasing something at around the same time. Chances are, most of them are probably not involved in a conspiracy (especially these guys, since Starswirl Academy technically isn't a fangame at all), but I still find it amusing, yet at the same time rather annoying. At least it's not like they mean any harm, right?

 Anyhow, hope you all enjoy the demo. I'm not really going to mess around with it until the final thing is released, due to my not being particularly interested in the genre (which I accidentally typed as "drama", for some reason).
- Tuxxy

Minty Fresh Adventure II Pre-Preview

A screenshot.
Pre-Preview

 On September 29th Mark Sprague decided to release a brief "pre-preview" of Minty Fresh Adventure II on MLPchan, which remained unknown to outsiders until today, when some anon posted it in /mlp/'s Game Dev thread. It's fairly brief, but contains a WIP bossfight, several relatively minor easter eggs and some of the nicest voice acting I've ever seen in a My Little Pony fangame.

I would link the original thread, but I'm not sure if MLPchan would appreciate the influx in newbies. In the meantime, enjoy the preview-thing!


Twilight Sparkle vs Trixie

Twilight vs Trixie
Twilight Sparkle vs Trixie

 As most people probably figured out by reading the game's title, Twilight Sparkle vs Trixie is about Twilight and her would-be arch-nemesis casting spells at each other. For some stupid reason they decided to position themselves on opposite sides of a hill, which means that they'll be blindly tossing spikeballs and whatnot over it in an attempt to damage their foe. Thing is, the multiplayer feature doesn't appear to be working at the moment and the singleplayer AI has incredibly bad aiming skills. In the course of a long match against it I was never hit once, unless you count the time I had a shield equipped. I can understand wanting to make a game that's easy to get into, sure, but there isn't much of a point in coming back if there's no real challenge.

Lyra's List #16



That's right - Lyra's List is back! After a short break, Lyra's List will now be returning to the first day of every month. If you're wondering what Lyra's List is all about, I'd suggest reading up on this post - it'll tell you all you need to know. The deadline for Lyra's List #17 submissions will be October 31, 2013 (Nightmare Night, anyone)? Anyways, the months of August and September have some pretty great submissions, and you can find them all after the break...

Blue Cookie Touch Caves RPG

Blue Cookie Touch Caves RPG

 One happy summer day Blue Cookie Touch the pony creator OC and his best-ish friend Flamerunner were mucking about on the small Island of Desertedness when they stumbled across Spike the samurai and Eric the soldier. Applejack the thief was there too but nobody could find him for some reason.

"Happy birthday, Eric!"

"Cookie, it is nowhere near my-"

"Want to go on a magical birthday adventure for Big Apple Ponycon?"

Eric, sighed, and shrugged. Blue Cookie, being the positive thinker that he is, took this as a yes.

"Yay!"

Fallout: Equestria RPG Level Editor


 So far progress on the Fallout: Equestria RPG is mainly restricted to engine work. It's not the most exciting stuff for the average gamer, true, but at least it is better than the horror of absolute silence, resulting in fears that yet another one bites the dust. This update shows the level editor in action, which should be at least somewhat interesting for the modding community and especially the Fallout:Equestria subfandom, who shall finally be given the tools to adapt their favorite Fo:E fanfics into playable epics. That is, unless all their 3D modelers suddenly die on them or something.

 Now, the main thing holding back this project is that, in a surprising reversal of what most would expect, the developer has the project working on Linux alright but is having trouble compiling it on Windows.
- Tuxxy

Crazy Pony is Back from the Dead

(Bitbucket repo)
  As Crazy Pony went for months without an update, people began to think that the project had died; this theory was all but confirmed when the website went offline. However, what nobody noticed was that the website came back online in April, and without further ado its Bitbucket repo began to show signs of life. Since then a brand-new release of the game has came out in July, and by compiling the source code one can find wonderful new features like Linux support. Multiplayer support is probably still a ways off, unfortunately, but in the meantime one can easily help by making new levels in Inkscape. Maybe I should contribute to this project a little myself, eh?

 Speaking of level design, we have another post related to that subject coming up later on today. Stay tuned!
- Tuxxy

Starswirl Academy Debut Trailer


 About time they released a trailer for Starswirl Academy, and it has everything you might expect. Humanized ponies in schoolgirl outfits, pretty backgrounds, synthesized music, etc. Now about that protagonist...it's probably for the better if I don't say that much about him, although I'm honestly not all that surprised. At least this is almost guaranteed to turn out better than, ahem, that other pony visual novel did.

I would write more, but things are kinda hectic around here; the boiler room flooded while the cat was taking a dump in it. Needless to say, she got more of a shock than you will when you discover the main character's identity.
- Tuxxy

Revenants of Chaos Needs Level Designers


 If this trailer is anything to go by, I'd say that Revenants of Chaos captures Rainbow Dash's speed quite well its gameplay, which is uncommon for most platformers with her as a playable character. Ideally, Rainbow Dash shouldn't be content with simply trotting everywhere, but feel free to break out into a run or take to the skies. This isn't always possible, of course, but this project seems to pull it off quite splendidly, partially helped by an original soundtrack by DasDeer. Thing is, right now they could use some level designers, preferably ones who have tried their hands at Mario or Sonic-style levels in the past. If you'd be interested in helping them out, you could send their leader an email at okamikurainya@gmail.com or message them at their #Project-Dash deviantART page.

Of course, this comes a day after I lament the lack of Rainbow Dash platformers which actually let her fly. Figures.

Demo: Equestria Adventure

 For various reasons, pegasi in most fangames seem entirely unable to fly. Why is this? It would entirely ruin a platforming game if they could do so, obviously, but no satisfactory in-universe explanation has been produced yet. Equestria Adventure's Ponychan thread makes efforts to solve this conundrum by saying that it takes place in an alternate universe where pegasi cannot fly, but if that were the case then why would they even bother growing wings in the first place? Maybe pegasi are the new penguins or something, I dunno. At least she can still, you know, go fast and all of that stuff, which makes this demo somewhat worthwhile while it lasts.

Speaking of penguins...

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.
- Tuxxy

Ponu News for iOS


 Unfortunately our mobile site still sucks, which is bad news for those 4% of our readers who visit Equestria Gaming with their iOS devices. Android users already had a better way of viewing the site in the form of Ponu News, a little news app that has just recently found its way onto the iPhone (yes, it should also work on your iPads and iPod Touches). Eventually we would like to rewrite our site's interface to be more mobile-friendly, of course, but in the meantime Ponu News should serve all of you mobile users just fine.

 In the meantime, Windows Phone users continue to be left out, but they're quite the minority here. As in, there are more people visiting from their PlayStation 3s and BSD machines than folks with Windows Phones.
- Tuxxy

Starswirl Academy at the Crystal Fair

A teaser for Starswirl Academy
Starswirl Academy

 Strangely enough for a visual novel, the identity of Starswirl Academy's protagonist has remained unknown ever since its unveiling, with the promise that they'd reveal him "soon enough". Now that they're holding a panel at the Crystal Fair in Saint Louis, we might finally get some answers. They're showing off a demo of the project at 11:00 am CST on Saturday, and afterwards the demo shall be released for the general public to play. Now, hopefully they remember to release OS X and Linux builds of the demo...

 Come to think of it, I'd be rather amused if the demo never actually revealed anything about the main character, or featured an entirely different protagonist from the real thing.
- Tuxxy

Nightfall Beta 3

Nightfall gameplay screenshot
 Yep, Silly Mare Games has released yet another beta for their upcoming Nightfall project, and it comes with plenty of improvements such as an inventory system, along with a compass to prevent the player from getting lost while exploring the world. Of course, there are also a decent amount of balance upgrades to further polish the experience before release, along with some new night stages and whatnot for those who breezed through the original beta.

I would write more, but I'm rather tired so I'll just copy & paste the changelog below the break. Goodnight, and enjoy the game!

Zapple Hill


 Every once in a while /mlp/ manages to surprise us all with something unexpected, such as a fangame. No, it's not a dirty mess of overused memes and shock pics: Zapple Hill is probably the most entertaining fangame that I've played in quite a while (which isn't saying all that much, given that there hasn't been much over the past few months), and with a few tweaks it could become a great time waster. Hopefully the creator will give us permission to include it on the Arcade... Edit: he did.

 So much for Ponychan's /collab/ board being the next big thing for fangame developers. The place practically feels like a graveyard these days.
- Tuxxy