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!"

 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.

 As a promotion for ongoing BUCK convention, Darkera Studios has decided to release a special demo for Rise of the Clockwork Stallions, along with a trailer featuring art from the talented DragonGirl983. Thing is, given that this is a special demo you only have until Tuesday, August 27th to download it before the link is taken down, so you should probably pick it up as soon as possible. There's also a fancy wallpaper for those of us whose desktops lack six-eyed robots, which can be found here.

There's also a trailer for their Magic Shards remake, but it deserves its own dedicated post so I'll put it up later.

 Conveniently, a video of Filly Gamez's BronyCon panel was just released on Youtube, in which they finally admit the truth about their shutting down (which had to do with that unofficial Flash port we posted a while back) and showcase some footage from their new game, A Foal's Errand. Unlike their previous effort it actually appears to be pretty good, although unfortunately there's no indication as to when it will be released online.

There used to be some other stuff in this post, but I removed it for being flamewar bait.

 For those of us who either went to BronyCon or were following @NebularFusion on Twitter this is already old news, but the nature of Starlight Studios' Project Cygnus was revealed via playable demo at the convention to be a sidescrolling action game named Megamare X (cashing in on the name that MegaPony should have taken long ago). I haven't come across any clear pictures of the gameplay itself, but the overall reaction from those that have played the demo seems to be positive. And don't worry; according to the official post on the subject the game will available for download on their website, and will have builds for Mac OS X and Linux thanks to it using a souped up version of the MLP:Online engine.

The original post on the subject can be found here. Also, I'm having some trouble finding recordings of the various fangame panels (along with Stable Softworks' infamous "fnagame"), or details on A Foal's Errand. If any of you happen to have anything, post it in the comments and I'll throw it up on the site.

 BronyCon is off to a raring start, and thankfully there are quite a few fangame-related panels on today's schedule. First off, at 11:30 AM EDT in the Hall of Dusk there is the panel for Guild of Unicorns: A Game Project, which should be fairly interesting as it is for a fairly unknown fangame. I myself have never heard of before, but apparently the creator been interviewed on Derpy Hooves News a while back so his game is probably decent enough. Then at 4:30 PM one can see the Ponycraft: Tainted Skies panel (again in the Hall of Dusk), and at 6:00 PM one can play a build of the game in the Baltimare Arcade. Also at 6:00 PM one can find the Outside the Stable Softworks panel in the Hall of Dawn, where you can learn how to make your very own fnagame (whatever that is). Also, make sure to check out the Starlight Studios booth in the games room to check out their Project Cygnus demo.

 For those of us who are unable to attend BronyCon, there's always the official livestream. Hopefully I'll be able to attend the con someday...

 After a hiatus of decent length, Filly Gamez has proclaimed that they are "rising from the ashes" and are releasing a brand-new game at BronyCon, titled A Foal's Errand. Unsurprisingly, it is a visual novel, and from what little I've seen I must say that it doesn't look half-bad. Hopefully the team will have learned from the mistakes they made in Welcome to Ponyville, although I'm still a little worried that it'll still end up being an unnecessarily massive download like the original. They also mentioned that it'll feature "a little horror", which should be at least somewhat interesting (as long as they handle it better than they did in WtP).

Anyhow, below the break you can find a screenshot of the game, a vector of Sethisto throwing up, and a sneak peak for a very special surprise...