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Friday, July 30, 2021

What IS Battle Gem Ponies About?

It's an old-school inspired RPG featuring a cast of awesome and adorable collectible pony characters jam-packed with personality!

A several-years-in-the-making love letter to the Monster Tamer genre.

Take a look at a nice summary (copypasta'd from the LONG draft of the Kickstarter Page) after the page break!

Story

Overworld Exploration
Embark on a journey to become the best pony tamer in the world and overcome every challenge along the way. It's a branching quest spanned across a colorful world full of quirks, vistas, and very aggressive wildlife.
Little super-powered ponies with gemstones on their chests like to fight each other for sport and one chose YOU to lead her to glory! 
Very few people get the opportunity to lead a pony in battle, and those people are regarded as sports athletes, local heroes, or even champions! Having a pony is a fantasy almost every kid has, but most never get to live the dream.

Not to mention the adults envious of the power that comes along with having a loyal living weapon by your side at all times. After all, these ponies have been known to terraform the very world itself! 
Some people feel like they live at the mercy of these incredible creatures and the lucky humans they choose to partner with for mysterious reasons. But there happens to be some powerful organizations wanting to change all that...
Battle Gameplay
It's a friendship tale about unbreakable bonds, privileges & consent, sentience vs sapience, mankind's role within nature, and healthy competition!
One of the things we are most passionate about is delivering a compelling story to go along with the deep, replayable gameplay to make Battle Gem Ponies something more than an amusing way to kill some time. 
We aim to create a narrative with an engaging plot that evolves in complexity over the course of your adventure. We want to provide thought-provoking themes, antagonists with motivations beyond evil for evil's sake, compelling character development, an immersive setting, and a genuine empathetic connection between you and your one-and-only shapeshifting pony companion!
Your pony has something new to say in every location!

Many of us who grew up with monster battle games in the 90's & 2000's have felt this void of missing potential in this space for a very long time, and Battle Gem Ponies aims to deliver that missing SOUL to the best of our collective ability here at Yotes Games.

The Pinto Region

Your adventure takes place in the peaceful region of Pinto. A land where ponies and humans coexist with advanced technology that doesn't threaten the natural habitats of the ponies.

The Ponies


Where most games in the Monster Tamer genre have you assembling a crew of monsters to fill up a team, rotating some out in favor of stronger members over time, Battle Gem Ponies seeks to do something different.

Switch Out & Attack on the same turn, but Swapping makes you go last.

You have ONE pony partner throughout the entire game, and you make use of the other ponies by having yours temporarily turn into the other ones in battle.
You can instantly transform your pony partner into any one of three party ponies brought into battle, and make use of a variety of synergies in these 3v3 scuffles.
Each pony is endearing in its own way with unique personalities, battle tactics, special overworld encounters, and expressive animations.

A Balanced Roster

This game is being designed under the idea of creating an accessible, competitive meta game that doesn't waste your time. That means no grinding, an informative interface, a campaign that teaches you different strategies, and a balanced roster.
The ponies of Pinto are all balanced in such a way that there is no clear-cut optimal team superior to everything else. Each pony serves a combat purpose that could have them be useful throughout your entire adventure, allowing you to always at least stand a chance against any challenge with a full team of your favorites!

Turn-Based Elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors Combat

Pick which 3 ponies you'll take into battle while predicting which 3 the opponent will.
Fights in Battle Gem Ponies revolve around predicting your opponents next move and adjusting your own strategies to whatever surprises the opponent throws back. At it's core, strategy in this battle system is all about the mind games.

Elemental Classes


Every pony and move in Battle Gem Ponies is associated with either one or two of the 18 elemental classes, and a few even have absolutely no matchup alignments at all by being Neutral.
Submenus provide detailed info on anything you'd like to know.
When a pony's class matches the move it's using, you'll have an Ace bonus on your hands. Whether it's your pony's primary or secondary class, the game itself can keep track of what combines with what else and reflect exactly what that combo is useful against in battle. (So you don't have to memorize everything to get started!)

Check on a Move's Effectiveness in the middle of Battle!

Classes generally come in Offensive, Defensive, and Balanced varieties.
Offensive - Direct Counters/Glass Cannons
Defensive - Walls/Immunities
Balanced - Flexible/Adaptive

Dual Class Moves
Dual class moves exist to deal maximum damage to specific classes of ponies and force opponents to switch forms or else face an inevitable checkmate.
TFW you're about to smack somepony into next week.

Move Slots

In Battle Gem Ponies each of the 4 move slots can only hold certain kinds of moves. This is done to encourage more strategic ways to play than "mash buttons for the 4 strongest attacks in the game until you win".

Moves can be customized at rest points in cities across the game so you can mix things up whenever you like. Not like your pony's just going to forget all those awesome moves it learned. You just need to think about which sets work best together.

Gem Power

A pony uses energy stored in its gem to unleash attacks and swap forms in battle. It's a slow-replenishing shared pool of energy all 3 of your pony’s forms will rely on in a fight, so you'll want to manage it well.


If a pony were to run low on GP or run out of usable moves, they will have to resort to recklessly tackling the foe at the risk of some recoil damage. Manage your pony’s Gem Power wisely, and you'll keep your attack options open.

Bonus Values


You can select one of the three stat categories to improve for any individual pony. Enabling BVs could help make up for a pony's shortcomings or boost their natural talents even further.
Physical Stats - Boosts a pony's Attack (ATK) & Defense (DEF) stats.
Energy Stats - Boosts a pony's Energy Attack (EATK) & Energy Defense (EDEF) stats.
Speed Stat - Boosts just your pony's Speed (SPD) Stat, so it can hit first more often.
If no preference is chosen, BVs default to Speed. But an option also exists to disable BVs across the board, in case you're the type of player who likes a bit of self-imposed challenge to make the game that much harder.

Ponatina

This will be your starter pony and new best friend, Ponatina!

At the start of the game you’ll bump into this very unusual and rare pony that has the unique ability to transform into an elemental variant of herself when you come into contact with various strange meteorites.

You'll have to find out exactly why suspicious men in black suits are chasing after her...

Leveling Up

Beating up a bunch of horses for fun works up a sweat, and that sweat is represented metaphorically by the EXP bar! Each time it reaches a new level, your pony beefs up its stats and could learn a new move.
And with each new level you'll also get to choose an aspect of your pony to give an extra boost to.


Health Points - Choosing to boost HP is nice because all your ponies will share this max number for their individual health bars.
Gem Power - Going ham on the GP-ups can lead to you being able to fire off tons of heavy attacks in a row, making you a soft-shelled pony's worst nightmare.
Bonus Values - Investing your Level Points into BVs is a slow start, high payoff type of system. Once you get into the higher levels you'll find your BVs can turn a pony into a real powerhouse.
PLUS, you'll never have to worry about leveling up each new addition to your team since they all grow together! So you can feel free to experiment with a bunch of different ponies as you go.

Capturing Ponies

As you travel the Pinto region, you'll surely come across a variety of ponies you'd love to have in your roster. In order to do that, you'll need to make use of items called Capture Gems that you can use on wild ponies to copy & contain their unique energy signals.

Once the pony's signal is captured, all you have to do is knock out the wild pony and it's all yours! Your pony will be able to transform into a version of that wild pony at your pony's current level.
You can carry up to 6 of these captured ponies with you in the overworld, but only have access to a rotation of 3 of them in the heat of combat. So if your pony gets KO'd 3 times in a row within a battle, it's back to the last checkpoint for you. But feel free to shuffle around and heal up any survivors after tough battles to make it all they way to the next rest area. (A task which won't always be easy.)

Chroma Ponies

Super rare and valuable items called Chroma Scales can be traded to a lovable hippie in the game to turn any pony you want into a shiny new alternate colored variant of itself!
It'll be hard to get a hand on one of these, but one way is to get into as many wild battles as you can. If you defeat a uniquely colored wild pony in battle, it'll drop a chroma scale for ya.
(Each chroma pony comes with a special internal nickname too. "Flamin' Hot", "Dinkle Sprinkle", and "Cyberave" happen to be favorites among the team.)

Ultra Forms

Ponies can tap into their innermost power to achieve incredibly potent Ultra Forms in the middle of a fight! 
These transformations tend to mix up battle by switching around a pony's primary and secondary class or even gaining new elemental classes entirely!
By finding colorful meteorites scattered across the region, you'll be able to tap into unlock this power for any ponies with Ultra forms that have Primary classes matching that meteorite's element. 
Going Ultra takes a lot of GP though, and your pony will revert to normal when that runs out, so make those hits count!

Travel Moves

Instead of filling up valuable move slots on your party members, Travel moves are simply a passive ability that some ponies naturally possess.
Got a pony big enough to ride? You can ride it. Got a pony that can swim fast? Let it tug you across the ocean. Have sharp claws? Consider those trees sliced. Strong ponies can smash rocks, psychic ones can teleport, pegasi can fly, and so on. 
Exploration being tied to your pony's abilities as you progress is all part of the immersive experience here.

The Paragon Plot


An organization known as Paragon is spreading its influence across the Pinto region. According to their leader, their mission is to take control of the legendary alicorns that pose a hypothetical apocalyptic threat to mankind.
They believe nature is meant to be tamed and controlled by people. And they believe the pony partner selection process is arbitrary and unfair, with only about 20% of the population ever being chosen to bond with.
To combat this (and also fund their ventures) Paragon has developed the world's first Artificial Battle Gem Pony...

The Poni-Bot! Best Friend & Body Guard to All!
Needless to say, it's flying off the shelves and lining Paragon's pockets. With that fueling their ambitions, Paragon sets sights on accomplishing their once thought impossible goal. But with the aid of some new mind-controlling capsule technology, they might be able to pull it off...

The Battle Gem Ponies League


The BGPL (sponsored by EquiCorp) is responsible for regulating Pinto's favorite pastime, Pony Battling! You can compete in various arenas under different rules.
One common rule you'll see is a level cap in the form of an energy dome over the battlefield called a Parity Field which forces all ponies within it to be a certain level. That means there's no way to just brute force your way through the 4 Mavens you need to beat in order to collect badges and qualify for the Pinto Championship. You'll need to overcome their specific competitive strategies by coming up with a counter of your own.
In the region's main bustling hub, Ivory City, you'll find an enormous stadium that constantly runs different competitions attracting tamers  from across the globe.
Including:
The Filly Cup - Unlocked from the start. 5 random fights. Level Parity to Lv15. No Ultras.
The Pinto Cup - Unlocked after 1st Badge. Level Parity to Lv35. No Ultras.
The Alpha Cup - 2 Badges required. Level Parity to Lv50. Ultras Allowed from here on.
The Challenge Cup - 3 Badges required. Fight under random specific themed conditions like “Dragons Only”, “No Tutor Slots”, or “Blue Ponies”. Just 3 matches in a row instead of 5. Level Parity set to Lv50. 
The Elite Cup - 4 Badges required. Final Trainer is a random Maven. Level Parity to Lv80. 
The Legendary Cup - Post-game content. Face any of the elite Champions and even the Prime Champion at the end as many times as you like. Level Parity set to Lv100. 
Competing in these events nets you rewards (including some of those coveted elemental Meteorites and Chroma Scales).
Defeating the highly regarded Mavens across the region will test your skills and reward you with a token that adds up to a pass that gives you access to the annual championship tournament on Victory Island!
On that island you'll partake in a battle royale against other contestants seeking to become the region's next Prime Champion. Defeat them and you'll face off against 4 ex-Mavens who will serve as one final back-to-back survival challenge before you face off against the previous year's champ.
Lots of prize money will be on the line. And you can multiply those winnings by taking on the survival challenge without accepting the option to heal up between rounds.

The Legendary Alicorns

This is a region that respects the natural balance and the power of the legendary Alicorns that wield complete control over natural disasters and are said to have terraformed the very world itself long ago... 
Solira, avatar of the sun, once punished an invasive kingdom by blinding it's people and reducing their fertile land to a dried desert landscape. Legend has it those people spent their final days transcribing their history into braille in hopes that none ever anger the mighty alicorn again.  
Lumani, goddess of the moon, once sank an entire civilization to the bottom of the Sapphire Sea. Legend has it that Lumani was created as a cosmic opposite to Solira, and therefore had more sinister or chaotic reasons for attacking an entire nation. Perhaps she was lured into in a temple beneath the sea in hopes that in peaceful slumber, sealed away from mankind, she could find peace.

VS Match Mode


You can setup custom teams to battle with and test your skills!
In VS Mode you'll be able to edit movesets, choose different abilities, adjust stats, assign goofy nicknames, and even save all your configurations as presets to use again whenever you want.
It's basically a Free Play mode that just lets you battle using the ponies, items, and skills you've unlocked through the adventure mode! 
And if you really wanna just jump right in, there's randomizer options as well as a "Randomized Battle Now" button that'll take you right into a fight full of surprises you'll need to think on your feet to overcome!

Now, See it in Action!

Play the Newest Demos on Itch.io!

All this gaming goodness is coming together in a nicely wrapped package made deliverable by the collaborative effort of the BGP fans. And the doors are always open on this wild Hype Train.

Our Kickstarter Launches August 3rd, so be there and be HYPED to take this Pony RPG all the way to the MOOON!! 🚀

We're really looking forward to finally getting the final vision of this game into everyone's hands.

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