Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #109 (Valentines Day)

     Been drawing lots of pretty pixel people. Bigger versions of the NPCs used before. Regarding the overworld's art direction, I think of it as a mix between Gen 3 Pokémon & Wind Waker styles while the battle scenes are a sort of Final Fantasy 6 & My Little Pony art style with a Pokémon interface.

     Hoping to get some more tiles redone and fix all the bugs from the previous version by Friday so I can try to get a new update out before the 25th. I still have a bunch of moves that need to be animated and lord knows fixing the controller input bug is going to take a while.

Had to animate each sprite like this. Only need 1 side view since I can flip it in-game to save space.

   Completed:

• NPC Sprites
• Edited Tiles

     Lessons Learned:

• Have a backup plan to Steam Greenlight ready.

       Valve may be getting rid of Steam Greenlight for good this time with plans for a Direct-to-Store kind of system. Just hope this doesn't mean I wasted $100 to become Steam certified just to pay even more later since my game didn't pass Greenlight yet.

Kotaku talked about this earlier and I'm worried I may end up having to wait until after
BGP releases on mobile to focus on (save up for) a Steam launch.

       I don't mind the red tape paperwork or the risk of Steam employee bias as much as having yet another fee on top of everything and having it for each game release as well. This puts small fries like me on the other side of a formidable wall. If Steam becomes as hard to get onto as a console's digital storefront, there might be a lot fewer smalltime indie success stories.

     But then again, how many are there to begin with? Any maybe pre-launch/small goal crowdfunding can help supplement this. Just gotta wait for more details about this to emerge, or live to see this all turn out to be another vague promise to eventually get rid of Greenlight.
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   Downloads:

     Numbers, numbers, numbers. Unicorn Training is impressively popular, but it seems like most of my fans are Russian so reaching them with BGP may require some extra steps.

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Happy Valentines Day

     And to anyone out there that's been following my stuff over the years, attending my panels, or even just downloading my silly unicorn games... I love you!

     I wouldn't be nearly this motivated if you didn't exist.