Postmortem: Ponies: the Befriended

This postmortem contains spoilers for Ponies: the Befriended. Please play the game before reading.

If you have played my other RPG Maker games, the formula may have seemed similar to what you have seen before. Meandering story where you may not always know what to do, friends fighting friends, dark themes ill-fitting the childish content, etc. I knew this game would be nothing like Minions; its extreme branching path right at the start was too much to try and replicate again. So, i opted for a more average bigbadoneechan game. Ponies also had less involvement from others, mostly to challenge myself. Once again, I discussed the thematic beats in the readme, and this is more of a look into the development process.

I started work on the art early... perhaps too early. Before Minions was even finished! Figuring out how to draw ponies was a lot harder than minions (no shit) so starting early seemed like the best idea. It was! I was able to get much of the art worked out way ahead of time, ensuring an easy development process. That said, there were some plot ideas and characters (like Maud's scams, for instance) that were so last minute that she had to have her own sprite sheet because it was too late to fit her in the others. There were a lot of moments where I decided to do something I should have earlier: music, for instance. I wanted to make my own music for the game but the placeholder music (predominantly Boiled in Lead at that time) felt... right? Anyway, sorry for the lack of original music. The OST was intended to be MIDI renditions of popular 2010s songs (the only one of these that survived was the final boss theme) but as it turns out I couldnt remember that many 2010s songs I liked 😅 

Figuring out what to do with Equestria was hard. I liked the idea of a world map with locations you could go to, but many of the places were not thought out very hard. Canterlot, for example, was initially just the castle until the game was almost finished. The inn wasnt even a thing for much of the dev time! In trying to make a big adventurous land, I fell short of trying to make some locations, like the Badlands, feel like proper places. Sorry about that. The joke about the Everfree Forest maze not being real was intentional, however.

Fitting MLP to Exalted was not as hard as you'd think. I was not the first person to think of this, as cited in the readme. Making various Pony Types into different types of "Exalted" was very fitting. Their dynamics, that being hierarchies and the conflicts, were mostly by me, though inspired by various ideas. Obviously, Celestials were a stand-in for Sidereal Exalted, Terrestrials for, well, Terrestrial Exalted, and Changelings... well, they were actually more inspired by their depiction in Equestria at War and the fascist frogs (Hydronauts) from Spaceship Zero by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. They were more meant to fill in the role of antagonist, though being a White Wolf parody you could still play as them as perceive them as being somewhat sympathetic (in the sense they are exploited as well, not that their destructive rhetoric made any sense). The TTRPG was also fun and easy, as I could easily come up with funny ways of fitting everything together. My only regret is not trying with the art or getting someone else to do it. sorry.

Something I think may be criticized in the game is the dark tone and themes; communism, the sadness of war, and a critique of being loyal to a corrupt hierarchy being the core ideas in a game based on the friendship is magic thing? Fallout: Equestria gets laughed at for being about ponies that shoot each other, so my game is sure to get flak for it. I hope that certain elements in my story show that I am aware this is a silly story to try and make; I tried to have my cupcake and eat it too, i suppose. In truth, the story being about war and chains of command was a critique of MLP rather than a White Wolf thing. Kids properties using concepts like princesses and epic battles are obviously fine and made for the fantasy of fun, but (and this is where you can crop the rest of what i have to say to make your argument against me seem stronger) a lot of fantasy stories, even for adults, tend to assume these are good things in the logic of the story. for example, ive been in many D&D games where overthrowing a corrupt king wouldve been seen as a bad idea simply because, well, the king is in charge and changing the status quo is what villains do (im guilty of this too). with Ponies, my hope was to make an interesting story specifically about changing the status quo. the video game and the TTRPG are about trying to end it as quick as possible to create a better future. this may have been inspired by watching Gundam Zeta and reading interviews by Tomino in which he constantly got depressed over new generations not being radical enough (Newtypes, as he would say) but having hope the next generation would be there to pick up the slack. in a bit of a Michael Moorcock way, i hoped the Mane Six exemplified individualist heroes who fought against those trying to make them cogs in a war machine. no gods no masters, become your own master, that kind of thing. 

And now for the question of Blood Wolf Games.

When I first made Blood Wolf, the joke was that it was like White Wolf but more edgy, making a game about Minions killing each other. In Ponies, the joke is still this edgier White Wolf, making a war game about ponies. I knew i wanted to make more games after Minions, but apart from Ponies I had no other ideas. still dont. im not sure if i will reuse the brand, seeing as the tumblr has a running joke that Blood Wolf Games is going out of business. but, also, im just very tired of making parody games. its most of what ive released on itchio so far and i just dont feel funny anymore. i have projects im working on right now that are more dramatic in tone and i hope they still of interest to anyone who likes my games that mix drama with comedy. i may return to Blood Wolf Games some time in the future, though im not sure when or why.

Thank you for playing my games and I hope you enjoyed!