Progress Report January 2025: This is OUR Year! 🗣️🔥 (for real this time)

 

We're excited to say we've finally reached the year that BGP (and possibly it's DX Edition) will both finally be fully released! Complete with all 3 story Acts and everything!

And knowing that the newly announced Switch 2 is backwards compatible takes a lot of worries about porting difficulty away. We can't WAIT to get BGP DX running on that thing!

Take a look on Patreon (even as a Free Member) at how the game is coming along so far and how we intend on delivering the first Act by the end of Spring 2025. 🌸

First Patreon Progress Report of 2025

Progress Report: Final Crunchdown [Part 5/5]

The 5 month crunch rush is over, aaaannnd... the game's still not done. We were thrown too many curveballs during the home stretch and failed to meet our goal of a May 23rd launch, and it's time to get things back in order before wrapping up development.

In short, we're 1 more meetup away from having a Beta build ready. But that meetup won't be until June 15th because the entire team has personal life stuff to deal with.

And even after a Beta is out there in backer's hands, the bugs and gameplay flaws found in it need to be addressed. So at least another 10 days of work there, plus a marketing campaign for the countdown to launch day so people actually know it's finally coming out.

We're basically a month behind schedule. (A sentence I'm extremely sick of saying...)

Details about what's going on with development are on the BGP Patreon!

YotesMark Patreon's 5-Year Anniversary! (2017 - 2022)

It's our Patreon Anniversary! (From 2017 to 2022...)

It's amazing how far we've come and how long we've kept going despite the hurdles.📈

Big THANKS to EVERY backer keeping this #indiedev dream afloat! 🛳️🥳

[ Join the Stampede!🐎➡️: patreon.com/YotesMark ] 

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 Kickstarter: COMPLETE!! 🎊🥳 (138% Funded!)

The Battle Gem Ponies Kickstarter has ended with 414 Backers that pledged $34,695.50!!

Battle Gem Ponies (January DevLog): Headfirst Into a the New Year!

We're on our way to Kickstarter Glory and nothin' (short of unfortunate circumstance) is gonna get in our waaayy...

Battle Gem Ponies is gearing up for making a HUGE commotion all year long starting in March. We have some cleanup behind the scenes to take care of for another month, but afterwards we're off to the races polishing up things way easier to implement than this complex battle system.

Get some new info on our progress, setbacks, Kickstarter plans, and Patreon makeover below.

Battle Gem Ponies (April DevLog): The World is on FIRE!!

We're mid-apocalypse as showtime approaches! I'm sure April 2020 has been rough for pretty much everyone. And the team here at Yotes Games is no exception. 

Spritework, cut budgets, major losses, and hard lessons finally learned. It's been pretty busy.

Get a full update on the new decade's most destructive month yet as it relates to Battle Gem Ponies and see how we plan to rise from the ashes, developers reborn!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog (March: Warmed Up & Eager)

     The Unity project has been cracked open and filled with placeholders and tools for actually developing a playable build now. One screen at a time, one placeholder at a time, one feature at a time.

     There's a long road ahead and I can already see myself going mad trying to animate all these ponies and debug every feature, but that's what makes this work. It's the tedious price paid to get to where I wanna be. And where I wanna be is online sharing links to my finished game for folks to check out.

    A lot of gamedev went on this past month. Hope to be dishing out some videos on the matter soon enough. See what's cooking so far below the break!

Battle Gem Ponies @MAGFest 2019! (The 1st 4-Day Con Booth)

     This past Magfest certainly was an adventure! Supplies were gathered, 2 friends volunteered to help, and we ran the biggest Battle Gem Ponies booth yet. And for 4 days straight! I thought some folks out there would like to see what that adventure was like so catch a write-up on this indie dev experience below... 

Brainstorming New Patreon Plans, Rewards, & Goals

I'm brainstorming some new plans for making the Yotes Games Patreon a much bigger deal. My general idea is that I need to put more effort into my YouTube channel due to the level of engagement that gets out of people.

But I'd like to hear some feedback from you! It'd be super great to hear someone else's take on where I should take this crazy train next. Or hear exactly why you personally wouldn't donate to my Patreon but would to another. What rewards would you like to see? Should the project be more polished? I wanna know how to get strangers completely HYPED about this game!

Trying to emulate the success of ALBDifferent, Exiled, & YandereDev here, and a solid YouTube effort is the key ingredient I'm neglecting. Even just read an article today about how Fighting is Magic might not've exploded if that demonstration trailer didn't get shared left and right earning 900,000 views. Nerds like me read development blogs, but everybody watches videos. I outta make some videos.
Check out the huge list of ideas about how I'ma to do just that below the break! (regular gamedev posts coming back tomorrow)

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #161 (Wednesday Milestones)

     Release feels so close. It's like the pieces are all in my lap and I just have to follow the instructions to put them together. The final version of Battle Gem Ponies is so clear in my head now that I'm fanboying over it sometimes.

     In the last 7 days I charted out exactly how all 360 battle moves will look, I recreated every menu, rebalanced the battle system, came up with catchier names for things, sorted out details for a DLC & multiplatform launch plan, and closely studied just about everything that makes the games that inspired this one so great.

     To keep track of things I made a week-by-week breakdown of the rest of BGP's development. Counting down what's left to do to get the game to a launchable state. If you wanna find out what the Yotes Games Wednesday Milestones are, look at the list below!

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!

BGP's Patreon Budget (Choosing a Bank & Shopping for Unity Assets)

First month on Patreon! Not too shabby.
Now I gotta buy gamedev stuff with it.

     Let's talk money. So Patreon charges patrons on the 1st of each month, then transfers the money to the creators on the 5th. That all went down this week, so now that it's in my hands, I can show how all this crowdfunding stuff works and explain exactly where the money's going.

Yotes Games Has a Patreon!

Support Battle Gem Ponies on Patreon!

     After tons of internal debating on whether I should do it or not, on a whim, I decided to create a Patreon today. To celebrate being over 150 weeks into development and on the verge of an Alpha build, I wanted to have some sort of morale boosting driving force to push me and the music team through the rest of development. I gotta imagine this is similar to how other devs feel when they launch a crowdfunding campaign. Only this one is entirely optional.

     It took all day to make and I think it turned out pretty nice. Colorful, detailed, yet concise, and with language conveying both lightheartedness and sincerity. Yes... I'm actually pretty proud of this. I just hope it's successful.

     If you could be so inclined, feel free to take a look around and consider becoming a patron to Yotes Games.


     Or just keep an eye out for one of these...

Become a Patron!