The BGP Alpha has ARRIVED at Last! (+ New Release Plans)

The Battle Gem Ponies Alpha Demo is finally here! Kickstarter & Patreon backers can grab an access key from the latest blog post and download it from Itch.io right now!

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Your BGP Adventure kicks off with meeting the young Professor Bucky of Equestrian Labs.

Which then leads into a hunt for the 6 Alpha Ponies roaming the regional outpost. Find them all, and trigger a showdown against the villainous Paragon Cartel who are out on a hunt of their own... 

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And in related big news, the release plan for the final game has changed!

BGP will now be releasing in 4 parts throughout the year (seasonal style) starting with the prologue "Arrival Story" coming by the end of this month [May 2024].

At launch you'll be able to play this smaller chapter and get in at a discount ($5 on mobile) before Act I of the "Mane Adventure" comes along by the end of Summer, raising the price to a full $10.

Act II and Act III will be released months later as free content updates. And there are plans, but not promises, to also release a PC version on Steam this year.

You can find all our social links and download portals on the YotesMark Linktree

We're happy to finally hand over hours and hours of fun new gameplay to the community and can't thank everyone enough, especially the backers, for the patience our team is graced with. The hurdles, setbacks, and long nights over the years will all be worthwhile when this love letter to the brony fandom hits the gaming world.

Hope you enjoy all the awesome stuff we jam-packed into this little ponymon game!

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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

A Major Change of Plans

After some heartbreak, debate, accounting, re-planning, and interviewing new potential team members, we have officially decided to delay Battle Gem Ponies one more time. 

Stretching our personal budgets to the absolute limit and holding off until September while we build up the game in a more reasonable timeframe. We wanted a public demo out weeks ago and finally got to a state where we have all the features we want in, but we haven't had time to clean up the bugs and make sure it can make a good first impression. 

We can't re-announce the game after a 3-4 year silence and have new players immediately run into game-breaking issues. After everything we've been through to get here, we're not gonna let things play out like that. We're here to blow minds.

We hope you can stay with us long enough to see this through. Some really exciting stuff is on the way for you guys.

Get some new deadlines/goals for the project below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #178 (Refocus on the Hook)

     Starting to build out all the actual tile maps to be used in the beginning segment of the game, up to the first badge and a little beyond, just to get players hooked and hungry for more.

     Now, while the completed Alpha won't be a thing until the entire game is playable start to finish, I do believe I can get the first part of the game out within the month of July. While everyone is enjoying the new story, learning the mechanics, interacting with the world, and getting that first badge, I'll be working on getting the demo in as many Let's Player's hands as possible by day and implementing the rest of the design notes by night.

     Time to put everything I've got into a super-polished build that'll make people go nuts when they try it. Time to make sure every 30 seconds of the game gives players a Ben & Jerry's sized chunk of fun to chew on. Time to get Battle Gem Ponies on the map!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #169 (May 2018...)

Believe it or not, this organized chaos is way easier for me to understand & navigate than the version from a month ago.

     Can't believe I'm still working on recreating the menus. Haven't even touched core gameplay code yet! I feel horrible for taking so much longer than I keep thinking and promising out loud, but I can feel in my bones that this is the right thing to do. Taking the time to make sure my game is the high quality super-polished RPG I see in my head is sure to be rewarded. I don't want to just make a passable game, I want to blow people away!

     Taking steps to make a serious contender for mobile game of the year. Get this week's development news below. 

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #166 (Demo Ready?)

Just powering through and coding my heart out. Nothing to show yet, but things are progressing behind the scenes.

     Working towards that Minimum Viable Product with a few days to go til showtime! Pretty much every feature from the last demo needs to be remade and bug free using the new development tools I have. The next demo has to be ready by Saturday morning, or I'm going to have to introduce countless strangers and fellow devs to my buggy pre-alpha from December! 

     Can't let that happen. It's crunch time.

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 #158 (Major Restructuring)

New Texture Packer tool is making my sprite file sizes 75% smaller!

     Time to clean things up. Look, I made a big mess of files and code while figuring out how to put this game together. But now with years of experience and new tools at my disposal, I know I can do better. So I'm basically recreating Battle Gem Ponies using everything I have, but this time it'll be much more organized, run smoother on all devices, and have some neat features I couldn't pull off before.

     This change up won't affect the release date that much since I planned to do all this for the alpha build anyway (but to a lesser extent before Patreon boosted the budget). So basically, just expect a prettier Battle Gem Ponies to come out this Summer.

Get an idea of what I mean in the devblog below!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #155 (Placeholders in Their Place)

   The pieces are all lined up. Just a week or two of coding and another week of polish, and I'll be set to start shaping the world of Battle Gem Ponies! A playable version of the story mode at long last! I'm super eager to share all the recent progress (and there was a lot) on this week's devlog, so check it out! 🎮💎🐴

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #139 (Make It Well Thought Out)

     Most of the week has been all about planning every small detail to come in the full game. Where each item is placed and why. A believable reason for every character's decision, interaction, and motive. Logical consistency throughout the game world. Something interesting to do in every room, an emotional roller coaster, a varied color palette, and a sense of discovery and fun that'll keep players invested even beyond the credits.

     This week is all about taking a microscope to the game design document and shaping Battle Gem Ponies up to be one of the greatest games the app store has ever seen. Get some details on how below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #129 (FREEDOM!! And... Pressure!?)

     I WAS planning on celebrating Independence Day with the sweet, freeing release of BGP Pre-Alpha 7.0, but then I checked my emails and something came up... Turns out I'll be hosting the Battle Gem Ponies panel at BronyCon 2017 after all! Now pressure's on because I have exactly one month to build an impressive Alpha to showcase in front of the biggest crowd yet.

     Dive on down below the page break for a time-capsule of this past week's gamedev events and plans for what's to come.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #128 (One More Delay)

This situation bites.

     Instead of continuing to keep folks in the dark another week while I bang my head against the wall between 10pm and 5am every night, I figure I should just admit that this demo is taking way longer than I planned for. Turns out animating the battle sequences in order is a lot harder than coding the logic behind it all. A weekend-long polishing task has turned into a multi-week task and I'm too deep into this programming mess to just release a build with just the numbers.

     So in short, the demo I wanted out last Friday probably isn't coming until this Friday. But I can't even promise that. I'm just going to try and get it out ASAP.

BGP Update Delay (on April Fools, no less!)

     On what was supposed to be a demo launch day, life and bugs got in the way. As of this moment, on April Fools Day of 2017, I just finished getting the ridable pony code to work. But it's untested. I could rush the update out just to have it done, but that benefits no one if the pony riding causes game-breaking bugs in various scenarios.

     Also, the new levitation effect I added for the flying ponies is messing up animations in some funky ways making the whole thing feel super buggy. So instead of forcing out an unstable build, I'm gonna take some time to polish it up and test things out. 

     April will have 2 game updates now. One on the first Friday, and one on the last. I want the game to leave a good taste in people's mouths with each update, not showcase a mountain of bugs on top of tiny bits of progress. So come back next week to get your hands on a shiny new build of BGP!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #115 (Miss One Mark, Make Another)

     The Battle Gem Ponies Steam Greenlight Campaign is still ongoing, but the service is rumored to be shutting down some time next month. I can still update the game and hope for a miracle before Greenlight closes it's doors for good, but at this point I'm not expecting to make it. BGP will be pushed as a mobile game,  but will still have PC/Mac/Linux versions available through Itch.io.

     It doesn't spell DOOM for the project or anything, it's just a demonstration that people need something more polished than what I launched with to make it at this point in Steam Greenlight's troubled lifespan. I'll try again via Steam Direct once the game is actually complete and see if I can get a different reaction on that platform. Just hoping that it doesn't end up costing an arm and a leg.

Plans for Demo 6.5 & Beyond

     Instead of delaying the update I promised Steam Greenlight towards the end of February (with the risk of missing the month entirely), a midway update is coming.

     One with the graphics changes I need to make this game distinct from Pokemon fan games and the ponies distinct from the MLP canon and fanon characters. Also, with much needed bug fixes and a few new fully animated moves.

     This will allow me to keep my advertised monthly playable demo schedule and not stress so much about getting a build out that I skip a thorough playtesting session before release. Demo 7 will be a code complete version of the game released in March. All battle mechanics and overworld functions will be in working order, even if the graphics will be placeholders. The playable release will simply be one last Pinto Island demo but with complex battle moves, complete animations, proper leveling mechanics, and in-game cutscenes.

     The April demo, will then be the first story release. A playable version of what I have planned for the beginning segment of the game, featuring the first 3 towns and the routes between them. The builds that follow will be separate pieces of the final game's adventure mode that show demonstrate my vision for the game while getting people hyped to see more.

     Game development is a messy process that always, always, ALWAYS, takes more work than you were expecting, even for the simplest of things. Here's to hoping that by giving myself even more breathing room, I can get something solid out there people can enjoy.

Scrapped: Portrait Mode

Prying my eyes off the Greenlight campaign for a bit to look a couple years back at old plans for BGP.

     The decision isn't set in stone just yet, but I am considering saving one-handed vertical play for the next game. As a time saving measure, this could wipe a month of debugging clear. That's because implementing a portrait mode would mean having 2 versions of every single menu and HUD and giving the player the ability to swap between them at any moment which could break the game in all kinds of ways (I shiver at just the thought).

Take a peek into my head over the matter in the wordy blog post below.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #104 (Holiday Week)

     Christmas and Hanukkah passed over on the same weekend, Super Mario Run came out, and the app store exploded. So while some devs are rolling in dough at the moment, I'm still chipping away at my project for the next winter rush.

Take a look at this week in gamedev below!

Demo 8 for Steam Greenlight?

     With the game's delayed development in mind (from one hell of a Summer to a very distracting Fall) I'm currently thinking of ways to still keep my "Coming to Greenlight in January" promise. The one I made for myself as well as anyone who'd listen. I wanted January because I heard that the early Mondays of that month were the perfect time to get press attention.

     So the plan was to blitz a bunch of press sites and forums the Monday after Magfest and get as many people to check out the latest build of BGP as possible. By the looks of things though, that build may be Demo 8.0 (the Pinto Island demo) and not the beginning segment of the game with tons of polish like I had wanted.

     With that, I may still be Greenlit with the help of the brony community, and could even catch the eye of gaming sites looking for Pokemon fan game related scoops just as Sun/Moon hype is on the decline and Pokemon GO winter updates are either released or proven to be rumors.

     Should things go swimmingly, I'd still like to have that big story update come out piece-by-piece. I'd like to release 3 different segments (one month at a time) showing off how great the final game will be. From the beginning to the end of the first forest, then a batpony hunt in a cave further along in the story, then a level where you confront the game's villains in a way that leaves you wanting to see what the rest of the game could be like.

     I'm hoping this course of action succeeds in drawing attention to the project. A launch that gets tens of thousands of people onboard in that first month is ideal. That's why I want the Greenlight campaign to rally up as many folks as possible. When BGP comes out, I want everyone to know it! By giving people a good demo and showing the game's improvement over time, I'm hoping people recognize this as a project from a developer who really cares.

     I am promising to make a game that is worth the average Pokemon fan's time as well as anyone else patient enough to give this unknown game from an unknown developer a quick look.

Travel Moves Vs Ride Pokémon

     Since 10th grade I've wanted to make a Pokémon game where, instead of HMs, you simply needed to have a monster in your party with the physical capability to accomplish a task. Strong Pokémon can break and push boulders, winged ones can fly you around, and Water types can swim with you. Simple stuff that still compels you to diversify your team. The way things should be, right?

     But then Pokémon Sun & Moon does ya one better. Who says they need to be your Pokémon? Pokemon can be summoned and teleported right to you anyway, so why not just have ones like that appear at will and not affect your team composition at all? Much more fun and stress-free than worrying about party composition and sacrificing move slots. It's an elegant solution to a decades old problem that ended up being better than anything I've thought of or heard about before.

     Trouble is, I really should've thought of that sooner. Looking at my own game, the whole Travel Moves idea I've written pages about in my Game Design Document feels so needlessly complicated now. Like I should come up with some Key Items to handle overworld stuff instead. BGP can't just have players swap-in pony gems whenever they want, because that would break the balance of the game's adventure mode. So I'm currently considering the following:

Map of BGP's Pinto region (for reference).

     All ponies can do simple things like break/push boulders and cut trees. Only 10 of the 60 ponies are ridable and each will have different speeds and animations (useful for challenges I can design for Agility Road). A Sweet-Bot call service can act in place of Teleport/Fly/Dig and just be an overall simpler fast travel system to get to the nearest town or route checkpoint. And finally, a miniboat key item capsule someone gives you on Carmine Island can be used to explore the ocean at high speeds while the underwater segments can be limited to just the Sapphire Sanctum where Lumina alicorn's magic can be the excuse for undersea breathing.

     Going with these plans instead of the Travel Moves idea gives BGP the overworld convenience of the latest Pokémon games and will make for an overall more fun experience as player's won't have to worry so much about who's on their team just to progress through the game and find hidden items.

     How do you feel about this change of direction? What other aspects of Sun & Moon would you like to see BGP learn from? Let me know in the comments and I'll respond as soon as I read them.

Delaying Demo 6 (THIS KEEPS HAPPENING)

     Some quick news on how BGP is going. In short, it's not. This week has been full of setbacks and a string of bad luck going on outside of gamedev that's really been demotivating and distracting me. After some mental recoup, I'm ready to get back at it and get this game to Greenlight.

     One thing has to be scrapped though, and that's the hope of finishing Build 6 in time for Halloween. I'll be lucky to have it out the following weekend in November at this rate. I gotta step up my productivity soon though, because the one date I can't afford to miss is the January Greenlight launch. Preferably Monday, January 2nd. The perfect time to send my game out to press sites. Even more likely to get picked up now that quality Pokemon fan games are all the rage.

     In other scrapping news, Vinerva's Ultra form animations are not at all complete like I thought they were. I was mistaken and probably remembering my days working on this version of BGP where all the animations existed in my head. Drawing all the necessary sprites for that would delay the next demo even further, so they're being pushed off into Build 7.

     In order to keep things on time, I'll have to limit finished & functional Ultra forms to only Vinerva until after the Greenlight Demo. Then I can take as much time as needed animating the rest of them.