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

The Big Fat Kickstarter 2nd Anniversary Writeup! 🎊

 

Happy Anniversary (Again), guys!

This marks the end of Year TWO of development since it was funded by the 414 generous folks who backed the potential they saw behind Battle Gem Ponies. (Thanks for that, for real guys.)

The #1 thought on the YotesMark team's mind is making a game that lives up to the hype we've promised. To not be another Kickstarter disappearance story. So we've kept regular updates going every step of the way. A clear and detailed task list so we always know what feature is needed next, and what features need to be cut for time to ensure it's out by Early 2024.

Back From TrotCon 2023!

Our first TrotCon was magical! 🤩✨ 

Can't wait to come back with a finished game and do it all again, but bigger! 🌟

Tons of new people are now interested in the game, our Discord numbers have shot up 15%, over a hundred people downloaded the demo, and we gathered lots of feedback to further improve the game and booth setups! 🎮📱

Plus, we caught the eye of some pretty large streamers, finally met some BGP community members face-to-face, and we met several cool folks to collab with someday. 🤝📈

Backer Rewards (Wave 1): Complete! [New Merch Shop on RedBubble]

Everyone who ordered Add-Ons from the BGP Kickstarter should've gotten some special stuff  in the mail recently, or can at least expect it to show up before March 1st.

(If not, double check your address listed on Kickstarter and let ol' Tony Yotes know if there's been a mixup.)

It's been so nice to see the posts of people opening up their packages and we can't wait for the next wave with all the international ones and the PILE of T-Shirts to come!

More details on that and new stuff that's available now beyond the page break below!

BGP October Update: Now on GameJolt!

BGP just got a second home over on GameJolt! Give it a look, play the newest October build, and maybe even join our little community forming over there.

And if you wanna see what's new, just check out the patch notes on the latest build below!

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 DevLog #182 (Gotta Gain Marketing Chops)

     A key problem with Battle Gem Ponies right now is that nobody knows it exists. How do I let people who'd probably like it know it exists? Well, sitting here and talking about it on my website nobody's heard of isn't getting the job done. And an occasional mention here and there on high traffic blogs isn't working either. 

     How about I take it to the hypest place on the information highway? The place people specifically go to look to see interesting things they'll probably like...

     YouTube. I'm talking about YouTube. I need to take my channel seriously and start pumping out videos that show what the game is all about, what I'm all about as a dev, and for the love of all things holy get my Patreon numbers up before my debts swallow me whole (this game is officially years too late and things I've been putting off won't stay at bay forever). 

     See all the different ways I plan to save my butt financially by pushing Battle Gem Ponies under a much bigger spotlight in this week's development log!

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 #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 #175 (E3 2018)

     After such an amazing E3, I feel reinvigorated. Gotta admit to feeling pretty jaded/apathetic about AAA gaming lately, but leave it to the Sony & Nintendo press conferences to remind me of why I love gaming in the first place. The hype I felt over the past couple days is the same feeling I want people to have for the things I'm working on someday. Unprecedented levels of polish, earnest interviews and announcements by hardworking developers, shocking surprises, gameplay to analyze, and jaw-dropping tournament moments... 

     And at the heart of it all? Hours of fun promised by teams I know can deliver. I'm hype ya'll. Now I want to work hard to make sure starting next E3, I'll be there to show off something in person every year.

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!

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!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #137 (Sprite Week)

     Once again, drawing these sprites takes forever. But the first frame is always the hardest because I want it to look just right before I take apart all its pieces and animate them. These battle sprites are what the players will be staring at for the longest time and it's through these battle animations and flavor texts that I get folks to fall in love with my characters.

     I have to get this right. I have to convey personality out of each of these ponies. I want players to say "Wow!" or "Ooo..." or "Aww!" or "Holy CRAP!!" when they see these things for the first time.

Rolling with the Punches (BronyCon 2016)

     I had a great time at BronyCon, but there was a little hurdle I tripped over that weekend...

     I had a gamedev's worst nightmare on what I was building up as the most glorious day of my life. Technical issues... See how they destroyed me and/or made me stronger below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #50 (Halfway There!)

I just got Clover the Cloaked in plush form!
Yotes Team Mascot ftw!

     As of tomorrow night, I'm done with the semester and putting the first half of my senior year behind. So super close to finally being full-time dev! Also, I got my very own plush of Clover from Unicorn Training! Thought I'd never see this until Adventures in Equica became a modestly popular series. A super great surprise gift.

    Get an eyeful of this plush masterpiece and see what games I've tried to port to Windows Phones this week below the page break! This gamedev week has been a good one.

Battle Gem Ponies Pre-Alpha V2 Demo [Download]

      It's finally here. A version of Battle Gem Ponies.exe you can play! Have a blast with the 6 available ponies in simple randomized battles against the computer. This is the game at its earliest possible form so expect quality to skyrocket with each preview release over the next year.

Download the Battle Gem Ponies Demo

     In the next update you can expect improved mechanics, bug fixes, special move functionality, customizable attacks, an overworld to explore, local multiplayer, and gamepad support. This version is PC exclusive but future demos may come to mobile, Linux, and Mac platforms.

     If you're new to BGP and plan on attending BronyCon 2015, be sure to check out the Battle Gem Ponies panel in the Hall of the Moon Sunday, August 9th from 1:45pm to 2:45pm.

BGP: Story Outline & Multiplayer

     This will be my first game with a deep story. Actual events happen and it's my job to make players care about the characters involved. I abandoned the open world approach I started with in order to take the player on a journey where excitement and mystery is around every turn. The player will be so into what's happening that they won't notice the hours go by as they try to just get to the next city.

    Something even deeper than the story is the player-to-player interaction. I need to establish a thriving online community that keeps players entertained for years to come. I need to make multiplayer so fun and complex that new things can be discovered by an individual every single day. It'll be players talking excitedly about those hype moments during competitive play that really spreads word-of-mouth and keeps the game interesting in the long-term.

     Get a breakdown of the multiplayer modes and general game progression below.