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.