Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #25 (E3 2015 Distractions)

     At this very moment I am in the process of moving a houseful of stuff from Pennsylvania to Florida so there isn't much time for gamedev. Even when all that gets settled, I have to catch up on E3. For those reasons I won't have download numbers ready this week. Hopefully things should be back up to speed by next Tuesday.

Get a very brief status report below.

Unicorn Training Coming to iOS (June 25th!)

The iOS Trailer is now on YouTube!

     Unicorn Training will be available on iOS in just 2 weeks! I requested it to go up June 25th, giving it 3 weeks to go through the review process. My past games took about 7-12 days in the fall so the 3 weeks leaves me extra time to re-upload if they reject the app for something. I submitted the game on the first and the game is currently under review. Expect the demo version of Unicorn Training to go up on the same day if all goes well.

     I like launching on Thursdays because I want the game to boom over a weekend (where people have the most time to play) but my games typically won't show up in searches or show user reviews on the first day they're out. By going up on Thursday, early adopters (mostly people visiting this site) will download the game and leave good reviews for the people coming into the app store to see on Friday and let the game explode from there.

     Fingers are crossed for better results than on Google Play. The game is much less buggy now, some people have heard of it, and iOS is supposed to be the platform where people buy games more often. My high hopes? 700 downloads before August. It'd be pretty cool to become an LLC before BronyCon even if I won't have time to print off business cards.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #24 (Animations Done, Unicorn Training Submitted)

     A busy week with a lot of sprite making and home distractions. I'll be spending next week moving over to Florida for the rest of the summer (before coming back to Pennsylvania in August) and I'll also be catching up on E3 2015 a few days behind (praying nothing gets spoiled since I love to watch the conferences).

     Don't expect much progress until all the dust settles. Once it does, I'll be sprinting to finish the public BGP demo before July rolls around.

Battle Gem Ponies Delayed (Releases Spring/Summer 2016)

     It takes 1 day to fully animate a single pony. There has to be at least 50 ponies for the game to feel interesting enough. I'd like for there to be 100 ponies for this first game to stay competitive with the others on the app store. Each pony has an ultra form that will require it's own animation set. That's about 7 months of just drawing all the characters.

    Bugs can (and will) pop up and often set me back 2 days. I'll need about a month before launch for a final beta test and marketing hype. I have yet to even start the process of combat balancing which could take weeks longer than I think it will since I've never done it at this scale before. I'm almost guaranteed to run into issues with the online features.

     At this rate, Battle Gem Ponies is almost certainly being pushed back to a May 2016 release. I'm kidding myself if I think it could live up to the vision by November. Since it won't, I refuse to force it to. I'm going to restructure plans to take all the extra time I'll need into account. Battle Gem Ponies should be truly ready for launch by the summer of next year. 

Check below the break for an updated demo release schedule.