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Description

Hey everyone!
 
I’m pleased to announce the public teaser for an upcoming pony game made by bitassembly, sugarmorning, and me!
 
The game’s a retro sidescroller action game, made in a pixelart style, where you become anonfilly, wake up in the sewers, and search a way back home.
 
You can check us out here.
 
Twitter:
 
BitAssembly (Programming and animations)  
BizarreSong (Sound and design)  
SugarMorning (Concept and Promotional Art)
 

 
Patreon if you wanna support the game and get your OC in as a cameo! More perks to come soon.
 
Click here.  

 
Official BitAssembly discord, come join to see some more juicy teasers.
 
Click here.
 

safe2174368 artist:bitassembly448 artist:bizarre2 artist:sugar morning1859 oc947535 oc only687793 oc:filly anon4086 earth pony446335 pony1602505 game:filly astray19 brick wall944 female1802713 filly97363 game4837 game advertisement1 game:anonfilly10 graffiti1510 high res407847 ladder1055 light from the heavens2 looking down14704 platform120 sewer85 sitting92371 slime2691 staircase178 stairs2196 stare1855 teaser511 text89609 video game6074 wall1038 water25476

Comments

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TheWhitetails

played it. loved it. it was so cute. the gameplay was a pixel sidescroller version of darksouls and it had its ups and downs. beating the last boss was so tricky i gave up and had to look up how to beat him. this is why i think unicorns are OP while earth’s are the weakest types of ponies solely because they have no range while pegasi can simply camp in the sky.
Background Pony #26C9
Tried the old demo and this new one. Sorry to say, but this looks like something Angry Video Game Nerd would tear apart; I’m not very impressed with the game, the tentacle mares are annoying, and to attack, you have to use the left mouse button, because, unlike the old demo, it’s deciding, hey, we’re not gonna let you use the C/X buttons or any other keys on the keyboard, using the along with the keyboard makes it even more difficult to play, I prefer the keyboard, not the keyboard and the mouse, I don’t know, for some reason, the Harry Potter games where you used the mouse to cast spells just worked better.
 
The attacks aren’t all too good either, the punch has little range, the jump kick is practially worthless, the backflipping kick is too slow, the only way I could beat most of the enemies in level 1 was spamming the sweepkick over and over. And considering how it took me a few times to beat the old boss, four hearts of health isn’t enough, life bar should be longer.
 
The forest level is terrible, and shows other problems: you have no recovery time so enemies can beat your ass over and over, and that stupid rock dog you can’t do much damage to will cheese you, force you into a corner where you can’t fight back as well, and the lack of recovery time forces you to stay in that corner, unable to move or fight back, it’s unplayable!
 
Not a fan of the sounds for the dialogue either, I liked it better in silence.
Background Pony #9BB9
I just tried the newest demo version. And I have to say:
 
This game is awful.
 
There are benches in the game. Benches you CAN’T SIT ON. What kind of game is this?! UGH! AWFUL! 0/10. Would not recommend.
ydvoku

I assume there will be a version where she swears like a sailor? It’s just not the same character for me if she doesn’t have a potty mouth.
BitAssembly
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
A Really Classy Artist - 250+ images under their artist tag
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
The Magic of Friendship Grows - For helping others attend the 2020 Community Collab
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

if (hors) then lood;
@I Was Never Here  
Thank you so much for the in depth thoughts and analysis. Reading your post makes me feel that you also really got to the core of what the game is about, and that makes me really happy.
 
We will put some serious consideration into each of your point. Even if we use a different solution in the end, I think the issue they adress are very valid.
I Was Never Here
Non-Fungible Trixie -

Bizzare Song Sugar Morning @BitAssembly  
So a quick review of all the stuff in the game and how I feel about it
 
  1. Platforming  
    Right now the platforming feels surprisingly tight for a project like this. I really like the general responsiveness of the controls and I also really like the whole climbing and hanging mechanic. It’s really nice to just be able to walk at one unit tall blocks to get over them as opposed to being forced to jump over them like a lot of games like this would have you do, and it opens up a lot of options like small “wall jump” sections and stuff like that.
     
    What I think this game could do with quite badly though is a variable height for the jump based on the length of the input being held down. That would help add an extra feeling of control to the player that would make the game more satisfying, while also making the challenge more consistent and allowing you to add more depth to the platforming as a result. Another feature that you should probably consider is a duck mechanic, since people are going to want to feel for something like that anyway it would be nice to have if only to use it to climb down onto the side of ledges and drop down from them as opposed to not having any sort of downward interactivity anyway.
     
    Besides that maybe consider air strafing controls? I don’t know if that’s something that you don’t want to preserve the challenge of the game, but they would feel really nice. Doesn’t seem super necessary tough in the current state of the game. Though I would stress that if you ever want the player to be moving down in a level instead of up that it would be almost necessary to add them just because reasons that I won’t get into unless you want my pleb opinion.
     
  2. Health  
    Health system seems fine, maybe try to make the damage enemies deal a bit more regular and make the health bar a bit more discrete to help people have a better idea of what exactly instances of damage are doing. The only other thing that I would point out specifically is that maybe you should have some damage buffering/immunity frames for reasons I’ll mention later
     
  3. Enemies  
    Gonna go over these one by one  
    A) Wandering/Hanging Slimes  
    Super cool, I love the concept, the look and the implementation for the most part. The only specific thing I would say is that I don’t think they should be able to hit you when you’re hanging from a ledge and they’re just pathing back and forth along the ledge mindlessly, it would open up more timing options for the player and thus give you more options for depth as a developer
     
    B) Tentacle Mares  
    Honestly these are awful, I would rework them completely if you intend to use them seriously. As it is they are just not interesting or fun to interact with. The only consistent way to avoid damage from them is to jump over them and ignore them entirely, which isn’t even an option in one instance. The second to last tentacle mare in this level is just a pure garbage fire of game design. She attacks so fast and knocks you back so hard that you can’t really kill her easily without taking significant amounts of damage. Her attacks are fast enough and her hitboxes are large enough where you can’t just move past her consistently because of the knockback, and you can’t avoid her. So really your only option is to either try to brute force kill her before she kills you, which I found frankly impossible, or just try to jump into her and run past her and _hope_that she doesn’t hit you in a way that stuns you into multiple constitutive attacks that knock you back in front of her and force you to try again. It felt like a health/time tax and it took a non insignificant amount of time to even get to her int he first place after the checkpoint.
     
    I would recommend slowing down their attack rate and speed and making their actual hitbox for damaging you with their standard attack significantly smaller, at which point I would recommend giving them a secondary attack that fires off only when you’re on top of them after a delay to force you to move again when you’re on top of them. This would allow the player to bait out ranged attack, move in to take a swipe or two directly, then move back and repeat the process. Also, I think these might be BETTER as wandering mobs exclusivity because it would make it EASIER for players to get past them with timing while also making the player feel more rewarded for playing around a dangerous threat intelligently, instead of just forcing them to fight into or run through an enemy that feels completely random.
     
    C) Little Bird/Bat/Maggot Things  
    These seemed fine, maybe sometimes on hard mode they would spawn a bit too quickly in succession and maybe sometimes just in general it feels a bit frustrating when they have certain up-down patterns that randomly fuck you up with almost no recourse. Introducing some of the platforming mechanics that I mentioned above would make them perfectly A-OK though.
     
    D) Boss  
    I actually liked the boss. The only issue I had is that sometime it seemed a bit hard to play the actual character around it properly. I liked everything about the boss except a couple points of combat that I’ll get into.
     
  4. Combat/Striking  
    Your ability to do damage seems underwhelming, which I assume is intentional and as such I’m super fine with it. That said, I feel like the animations/lock in’s on a couple of the strikes are a bit too long, specifically on the roundhouse kick/sweeping buck thing. Literally just shorten that by a couple of frames and combat will feel so much smoother. You don’t even have to make the actual animation shorter/quicker if you don’t want, just let people cancel it with a jump slightly sooner.
     
    Frankly it also took me way too long to figure out that you could even hit/block. I played all the way up to the boss without seeing that you could hit, and I only saw that you could block after reading the comments through here, which was only after I completed the boss on both easy and hard really wish I knew I could dab on enemies as Filly-Anon sooner tbh. I did do some double checking and I will say that my criticism of the Tentacle Mares, especially of the second to last one, is the same. They’re just not fun. In any case, maybe do some super basic idiot proofing for a future product, just put some instructions and have some simple requirements that people use all the game mechanics before they move onto places where they should be using them in the game. Something like Cuphead’s tutorial, which even a child could figure out and beat without much effort, would be nice here and I don’t think many people would mind it.
     
  5. General polish  
    The game LOOKS great and I really like most of it. Health bar could use some design work on it to make it look nicer and be a bit more intuitive. Besides that I’ll say that the current “You Died” screen lingers for far too long and is a bit frustrating that you can’t skip at all. The taking damage sound could be slightly quieter too, though it’s a very minor issue.
     
    I look forward to seeing if this game ever gets some story, dialogue, or even music to it. It will do a lot to elevate the experience and it will make the game a lot more fun. Though small steps, right?
     
    Overall amazing for a demo. I enjoyed it except for one really annoying part that I already mentioned and I look forward to seeing this project go forward.
     
    10/10, might play through again
BitAssembly
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
A Really Classy Artist - 250+ images under their artist tag
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2020) - Took part in the 2020 Community Collab
The Magic of Friendship Grows - For helping others attend the 2020 Community Collab
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

if (hors) then lood;
@BigBuggyBastage  
Fair point. It’s mostly based on how I play games. I just want to know the buttons and then I keep mashing them till I figure how they work.
 
But we have got some more precise help with inputs in the current dev build. Out very soon.
BigBuggyBastage
Pixel Perfection - I still call her Lightning Bolt
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!

Go fsck yourself
Wow, this game is really coming along nicely! The demo is fun, but you might wanna add what the left and right mouse buttons actually DO, to the instructions. For everyone who’s not as slow as me, they attack and defend, respectively. Spacebar jumps.
 
@Blissey1  
@Appledasher2104  
Whew! Glad it wasn’t just an earlier high blood sugar messing with my eyes. LoL