Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #111 (Aiming for Code Complete)

     Another milestone down, another 5 months to go. Showing the game to new people irl and emailing folks left n' right to get this game out there! With the graphical update in place conversation seems to be shifting towards worries about the gameplay being too similar Pokémon. But I have confidence that the final version will make it very clear that the gameplay of Battle Gem Ponies, at it's core, is Pokémon with more challenge and less filler.

   Completed:

• Planned Out Boss Battles in More Detail
• Changed Some Pony Abilities Around
• More Renaming of Unannounced Things
• Changed Tutorial Images
• Toggle D-Pad & Mobile Interface
• Controls Listed in Options Menu
• Fixed Countless Bugs (noted lesser ones I couldn't get rid of in time)
• New Key Item Jingles from Bluco
• Added a Delete All Button to Title Screen (in case of game-breaking, save-related bugs)
• New Trailer for Greenlight
• New Screenshots
• Released Demo 6.5
• Made a LONG Blog Post About C&D-Proofing the Game (up on Friday)

     Lessons Learned:

• I have no idea what's going on over here but I found it extremely amusing. A random horse game review website/facebook game advertisement put up a Battle Gem Ponies piece some time ago.

     More redesigns are already in the works with some unannounced ponies and Rainbryte will be getting some cool new cyber-wings in the next update. I'm aiming to have a handful of new playable ponies added as well as some new overworld obstacles to make exploring the tech demo island interesting for the 1,000+ people that played it already and the 30,000 who've seen it on YouTube already. Surely you're all as sick of only seeing Pinto Island as I am.
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   Downloads:

     I'm curious about how people keep discovering Unicorn Training even though it's not on any front pages anymore. Must be the "unicorn" and "pony" keywords. BGP's had nearly 150 downloads in the last 3 days. Let's see if I can get another 1,000 of those players back.

    Featured:

     I shared the Greenlight update with EQG/EQD and the response seems to be more positive than before. The characters are different enough from MLP ones for people to think the gameplay being similar to Pokemon is the main problem now. But thanks to the famous court case of Capcom vs Data East, I know that gameplay, mechanics, and game genres can't be copywritten and monopolized.  

     I really need to make the next release impressive feature-wise, because I'm sure people are getting sick of seeing the same stuff. New ponies, new tiles, some cutscenes, new attacks, and actual working battle mechanics are all on my list. Let's see how much I can get done before the end of March.

     There shouldn't be too many eyes on me anyway with the new Zelda coming out alongside other hype things like Horizon: Zero Dawn. Got a feeling that BGP won't make it through Greenlight unless a big YouTuber pushes voters to the Greenlight page. If I'm not in by the end of March, I have to consider a Steam release as a port to make further down the line.

     In other news, there's new Clover the Cloaked art out in the ether! Check out this one by DJ-celtica. It warms my heart seeing these things, I'm tellin' ya.
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     Next update has to be a doozy. One last chance to impress before Greenlight is gone for good. One last pre-alpha tech demo. One last chance to flesh out the engine before I start arranging the pieces into a coherent adventure. I've got about 30 days worth of work to do, so I better get back to it!