⭐️Summer 2025 Progress Report⭐️ (New Animations Galore!)

Most of the Summer has been spent animating the expanded roster and dealing with distracting sidequests. 

Take a look to see how the new ponies move!

On Our Patreon Report!

Progress Report: Start of Q2 2025 🕰️(Lookin' Pretty! ✨)

Artwork is nearly complete, overworld is populated and explorable, things are looking good, but not "release by End of June" good.

Take a look at this month's #BattleGemPonies DevLog!

Progress Report: Final Crunchdown [Part 2/5]

As of the 15th of January, it's officially the end of Map Month! 

It's officially the end of Map Month! That means ALL the maps are IN the game! 🌟

Foundations are set for all 600+ maps you'll be exploring once the game comes out. 🗺️

Final total map count being 209 areas split into 616 loadable rooms...

Check out a few exclusive preview examples and take a peek at what's going into each of them on the latest Patreon Devlog Update

Progress Report: Final Crunchdown [Part 1/5]

Have ALL Ponies Fully Animated. That was the goal for November.

Progress has been made in the animation & spritework department, but only half of what we wanted was finished. Lessons learned, and feedback noted.

We've got priorities written down and it basically boils down to fulfilling promises and implementing what people expect in an RPG like this...

Overall goal being get this game done in a timely manner, and cut off the fluff we just don't have time for.

Read more and check out tons of pony animations on our Patreon Post

Artwork Update: Sprite Rigs Complete!

It took about a month and a half, but ALL the pony sprite pieces have finally been drawn and as of right now I can begin the frame-by-frame animation process!

Should be done and in-game by April's end (but given how that estimate's measured in gamedev time, we'll see how that goes 👀).

The Finished, Fully Animated 3D Ponatina Model by DJTHED!!

The Ponatina model by DJTHED is coming along great! With the core setup complete we're free to animate her however we please.  And what could be a better start than a smooth idle, smiling at the camera, and showing off a mighty KICK all-in-one!

So we got crackin' on just that.

Continued Work on the 3D Ponatina Model by DJTHED

The Ponatina model by DJTHED is coming along great! With the core setup complete we're free to pose and animate her however we like. Just keeping aware that each render is costly and takes time to "print" out so we can't do it forever without an infinite budget.

This 4K Battle Gem Pony was made based on DJ's existing pony template he's already spent years perfecting, so basically the unique mane was the newest/hardest part. But even this streamlined commission experience has foreshadowed just how tough it'd be to get all the BGP characters done up this way. So it's a good thing we're not planning on jumping to 3D til we're a comfortable couple sequels deep into things and could stretch a budget for it.

Beginning Work on a 3D Ponatina Model Commission by DJTHED!

If you've been a backer of the BGP project, you've known for a while now exactly what we've been up to with guy in the thumbnail here. But to everyone else, we've got some big news on a fun little commissioned side project we'd like to share!

Find out more beyond the break below!

Battle Gem Ponies (June DevLog): Spare No Spritework Setup!

It's been a colorful month of new discoveries and a bunch of mouse-hand cramps. Gearing up the BGP cast for more efficient animating and coloring as well as crossing off some long-procrastinated tasks like "DESIGN THE LEGENDARY PONIES ON THE TITLE SCREEN". Which was fun!

     Along with a million other tiny things (gamedev or otherwise) that made this month... Interesting? Yeah, interesting.

Get the full deets below if you're curious.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #177 (Sculpting a World)

     It's finally happening! Converting the maps from graph paper notes and doodles into working sandboxes that I can actually roam around in the Unity engine! Every single map in Battle Gem Ponies is coming to life AS. 👏 WE.👏 SPEAK.👏

     Getting all the different tiles, placeholders, and animations setup took days longer than I expected, but I finally have the process down and can get to work! I'll be using mostly borrowed and temporary tile sprites to have a basic but functional version of the entire game world up and running. This is one of the Top 5 remaining extremely tedious tasks of the game's development I'll be glad to have off my back. (Read to the end to see the other 4.) 

      So I hope to emerge next week with another monumental task behind me. To see what hills have already been climbed in the last 7 days, why don't cha take a look below?

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #176 (Summer Makeover)

     Notice a bit of a facelift? I worked on some of the Ultra Pony designs this week, just filling in those gaps in design I was drawing a blank on for the longest while. Now I can say I'm satisfied with how everypony looks and can clearly see them animated in my head.

     Actually animating the sprites is a step to come much later in development, but I can roll with these for now. 

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #172 (Map Mastery)

Turning every single one of those blocks into it's own button somehow took up a whole day.

     The Map System I've been subconsciously dreading has finally been implemented and the rest of the menus are coming together bit-by-bit as I program all the pieces separately and connect them together (instead of cramming everything I could into one giant, unreadable script like before). The results?

     Still not done, and being behind schedule is really bugging me. The game should really have been in alpha by now and I gotta admit that's depressing me. But every night I go to bed knowing my game has 24 more hours worth of love pumped into it, you know? It's coming along, but too slowly.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #160 (Big Changes Worth the Wait)

     Improvements to Battle Gem Ponies workflow are showing some promising results and I'm looking forward to showing off a very impressive demo in March. For now I'm slowly getting used to the new tools I'm using and figuring out the most efficient ways to bring all these ponies (and everything they can do) to life.

     Each passing day I want to see the alpha build exist more and MORE but new things just keep slowing progress down. Game development really does take forever and the small things are always big things in disguise.

Take a look at the full devlog and see for yourself!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #156 (End of January...)

     Tiles, tiles, tiles galore! Wanna see some tiles? I'll show you some tiles anyway. Because that's what I spent most of this week staring at, touching up, reorganizing, and reconstructing. Right now this is the step I'm tackling to make sure I have all the pieces I need to build the BGP world that currently exists on 100 sheets of graph paper. The gamedev grind never seems to end, but my confidence in the project increases by the day!

Here is where we stand with Battle Gem Ponies at the end of the first month of 2018!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #151 (Gotta Catch 'em All!)

     And by "catch 'em all", I mean all the players who would definitely love this game! I really need to figure out a way to get more eyeballs onto this project. The only way I can think of is to finish the pre-alpha, iron out the kinks, hand that to Let's Players who've played BGP before, then construct the alpha build, polish the beginning areas, and hand that to as many Let's Players as possible.

Check this week's devlog for more details on how that effort is coming along.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #150 (Roster Complete)

     Finally finished everypony and their ultra forms! They're in need of cleanup, but sometimes you just gotta move onto the next step or the bigger picture will never be framed. Can't believe I've been on this for over 150 weeks now... Time to kick things into even higher gear to get this game out on time for a Spring 2018 release!

     This week is filled with tons of exciting news, updates on Yotes Games as a business, retrospection on previous games, plans for the future, and tons of inspiration for getting through the rest of the development of Battle Gem Ponies.

Get a MAJOR gamedev update to make up for the weeks of silence below, on this week's devlog!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #148 (Paper Maps)

     Been taking on the task of translating rough map sketches into detailed exact maps on graph paper.  It's a matter of putting every detail from the design document down and marking out exactly how many steps it takes to get anywhere, roughly how many screens a zone will be, where items will be hidden, which buildings and NPCs I'll have to draw, and all the minor visual details.

     All this fuss so I only have to lay down tiles in the editor like I'm following a blueprint. And these definitely help make the game feel more real. Actually seeing the game world has me super pumped to make it happen in full colorful pixelated glory!

     It's a tedious process though and will probably take another day or two, especially when I double check to make sure the cutscenes can play out how I want them to. Also, still working on the last few Ultra form sprites to show off next week.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #147 (What? The Project is Evolving!)

Ultra transformations are possible with the same meteorites that transform Ponatina.

     Things are picking up! With the game's design all settled and the sprites finally wrapping up, there's interesting pictures to go around and hype people up with. I'm also able to give a much more solid pitch now that the entire vision is clear.

     All that's left is to get to that Alpha state... Time to continue the #gamedev march! Look below for the interesting events of the past week.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #146 (Impressionable Ponies)

Some of the bigger battle sprites.
(the Ultra forms are a lot less pony-like)

     The Ponatina post last week made a lot of impressions and it's refreshing to see so many pony fans excited for this game. It's lit a fire under the Yotes Games balloon and now we're soaring straight to our destination!

     Every pony has a second draft design and is now in the final nebulous zone of "what color combination looks best" or "maybe this should be the Ultra form and the base form should be toned down a little". It annoys me as a developer because it's taking so long, but this is arguably the most important part.

     These ponies are what players will attach themselves to. If they look awesome enough, and have enough personality, it'll spawn fan art, discussion, attention, and thus sales. All very important if I want Yotes Games to be a viable career choice.

Get the rest of this week in gamedev below.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #145 (A Full & Colorful Roster)

Ponatina's Elemental Forms

     Here it is! This game's Eevee equivalent and starter pony Ponatina and all 18 of her various specialized forms. Which is your favorite? Which looks the worst? I'd love to read your thoughts on them in the comments.

Get the rest of this week in gamedev below!