MLP: Revenants of Chaos

[Kurai]

Heya all!

Thought it was about time I posted something on my latest project.

MLP: Revenants of Chaos

Revenants of Chaos is a My Little Pony fangame centered around speed and flight. There will of course be some slower and more restrictive stages, though a majority of the game will have large open levels where the player can fly around at high speeds and explore.

STORY:


The story begins with Applebloom borrowing a book from Twilight Sparkle about Princess Reverie, an Alicorn princess who had the power to draw out a pony's potential and reveal their cutie mark. Included in the book was a map to the princess's castle and, at Scootaloo's suggestion, they ask Rainbow Dash to investigate for them. Rainbow Dash reluctantly agrees and flies to the castle only to find it in ruin with a number of Canterlot guards defending the entrance.
The guards explain to Rainbow Dash that they do not know what lies within, only that it's certainly ominous. On realizing that Rainbow Dash is one of the hero's from Ponyville that fought in the Changeling invasion, they allow her to explore the inside of the castle.

The castle is filled with dark crystals that seem to be growing in the cracks like strange weeds. Eventually Rainbow Dash reaches the throne room where she finds a pony encased in the dark crystals, begging her to smash the crystal and release her. Noticing the pony's wings and horn, Rainbow Dash realises that this was the Princess the CutieMark Crusaders were talking about and she agrees to help her.
With a powerful buck, Rainbow Dash shatters the crystal but is sent flying into a pillar by a powerful burst of energy and falls to the ground unconcious.

The rest of the Mane6 and Princess Celestia herself arrive just after that moment only to encounter Nightmare Revenant, the dark and twisted form of the once peaceful ruler, driven insane by over a thousand years imprisoned in a realm of madness. They attempt to stop her but are all turned to stone, leaving the Madness Spirits, Nightmare Revenant and her army to escape and start an Equestria-wide attack.

When Rainbow Dash finally wakes, she finds her friends and her princess encased in stone... Now it's up to her to travel accross Equestria. regain the scattered Elements of Harmony and defeat Nightmare Revenant and her Madness Forces.

GAMEPLAY:
Gameplay video: http://youtu.be/6j-ClSI2mto



The game can be likened to a modern Sonic game, if Sonic were given wings, with speed being the key feature. You run and fly around collecting gems to boost your speed and allow you to fly for longer and collect apples to recover lost health and gain extra lives. Rainbow Dash's main means of attack is to dash into the enemy at high speed, to kick the enemy or to stomp on top of the enemy, early stages will have enemies that won't be much of a threat if you keep moving fast, but around the third level you'll start encountering enemies that will try to use your speed to their advantage and you'll have to consider other ways in which to defeat them.

At maximum speed Rainbow Dash will perform a Sonic Rainboom which acts as a screen clearing attack and grants the player a temporary acceleration boost as well as an unlimited amount of Dash Power (the energy gathered from the gems that allow you to dash and fly) for a short amount of time.

Within each level are six Reverie Emblems, rainbow coloured stars with white wings, and collecting all of them will send the player to a special stage on the level's completion, where they'll be able to collect one of the 30 Harmony Gems. For every 6 Harmony Gems, they will be fused into one of the Elements of Harmony and the collection of all of them is required to access the final "world" and to get the true ending.

POST WORD AND STUFF:

For the game, we are using the Desktop Ponies style for the characters and our own unique tilesets. Many new animations for Rainbow Dash have been designed specifically for the game and we're making lots more which we plan to release to the community shortly after our release.

We are always on the look out for more pixel artists, especially those who are skilled with tileset work. If you are willing to help, you can contact me via pm or on my Skype, my name is Okamikurainya there. We are also looking for testers and those that specialize in GUI design. We hope to get the game out soon, I'll keep posting updates when I can.

Our Deviantart: http://project-dash.deviantart.com/
Our composer's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/hjortan
Desktop Ponies Deviantart: http://desktop-pony-team.deviantart.com/

[Kelvin]

This looks promising! Please post a demo soon!

[Kurai]

Thanks!

This is Nightmare Revenant, the main antagonist of the game:


Designed by AdamRB: http://adamrbi.deviantart.com/
Sprited by Robokitty: http://robokitty.deviantart.com/
and animated by Botchan-mlp: http://botchan-mlp.deviantart.com/

A demo release will come shortly after development of "World 1" is complete.

[Kurai]

Released a demo today, download can be found here: http://fav.me/d7olfnh

Contains the Ponyville level.

[Kelvin]

OK, just played it, found some problems.

First off, your kick attack seems to be one of those feeble NES-era attacks that feels completely useless against enemies, especially since you have to wait until you come to a full stop before it's usable, and you can't use it while looking up. Also, the way some enemies move, and with the air attack forcing you to fall all the way to the ground before you can do anything else makes fighting some enemies very annoying. I found myself just passing them by because they seemed more like a nuisance to fight than anything else. The game doesn't really give me a sense of speed either, nor does the level design seem like it would accommodate speed very well.