Happy Thursday everyone!

Well, it’s been quite a month, hasn’t it? You’ve probably been wondering when we were going to come out of our secret bunker. Well, it’s time to step back out into the sunlight and share a little of what’s happened in the last four weeks.

The Launch

On February 17, 2017 at Noon Pacific, we flipped the switch on Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm’s Prologue, “The Watcher.” And the internet exploded. Just a bit. We launched with announcements on Equestria Daily, multiple locations on FimFiction, MLPForums, Twitter and the Reddits for MLP, MLPLounge, Fallout: Equestria as well as Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout Mods. In addition, we did announcement posts on the Discord channels for Manechat, Post-Apoc Emporium, Equestria Daily and several other places.

But wait, there’s more.

Thanks to the brilliant work of Blue Nova, our Art Director, we had a hand-crafted custom vector banner built for Equestria Daily. It came complete with parallax effects (meaning the billboard is on a separate layer than the background). We even used it for our banner on NexusMods.

“Power Plague,” on the announcement post for the launch, had this to say:

It may or may not be related to this post,

But the current banner for this site is the best it has ever had and it should stay as that way forever.

This comment may have been repeated in some way or another in a few other places.

(I also may or may not have just squeed nonstop while playing with scrolling to see just how freakin’ cool that parallax effect is).

We also came out with new custom titles and headers for both Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm and for Gardens of Equestria: Smuggler’s Run (also done by Blue Nova). I’d also like to stop and say how proud I am to have him on the team. His efforts are what gave GoE’s NexusMods site that incredibly professional look.

The Stats

But most importantly, we finally let you play the Prologue for Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm. The result?

Within the first twelve hours of going live, Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm was downloaded 335 times.

On Saturday, February 18 alone, Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm was downloaded 525 times.

As of March 15, these are the stats of Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm:

117 Endorsements | 1,183 Unique Downloads | 3,255 Total Downloads | 29,456 Total Views

Oh, but we’re not done. We’re not done by a long shot.

The Top

Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm dominated the Fallout: New Vegas Hot Files.

For several days, we were solidly at #2 on the Hot Files list. And then, we took #1 and we kept it until two weeks later.

Despite an attempt by some to intentionally upvote other mods for the express purpose of preventing us from getting the Top File of the Month, we ended February with a whopping 15-point lead.

The Comments

So, we’ve got the numbers. They’re pretty freaking sweet numbers, too. But what do people have to say about Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm? See for yourself.From NexusMods:

From NexusMods:

“As someone who really wasn’t into the whole Brony fandom or Fallout Equestria for that matter I have to admit this is a pretty impressive project. Hell this mod of all things made me read trough Fallout Equestria just to figure out what the mod is about and I have to admit I genuinely enjoyed most of it. Plus there really is no point in complaining about a DLC sized quest mod. Really hope you release chapter one soon, and I’ll be severely disappointed if Calamity doesn’t shoot at me the first time I meet him.” – ThatRandomCroat 3.8.17 “I had my eye on this for awhile…then a friend of mine announced that the Prologue released and I was like “Awwww s***! This gonna be gud!” and yes…it was good. It was like a blast of refreshing rainbow all over my face while wandering the Mojave…” – ryuentran 2.20.17 “I never thought I would download a MLP mod as MLP isn’t my cup o’ tea. I’ll probably dedicate a new character to trying this out though sometime. Looks like you(y’all) put a lot of effort into it and seems to be something worth to look at. Thank you for the content and effort.~” – FreedomFighter4 2.19.17 “So far the writing and voice acting is great. The intro…you pulled it off. It’s absolutely bonkers but it manages to be bonkers in just the right way. I hope the quality of this remains the same (and you keep the voices because so far I really love these characters and their associated va’s). It’s a bit surreal wandering around the wasteland with PON-3’s music… At any rate looking forward to playing it more. Appreciate all the effort.” – zidders 2.18.17 “Wow… for just a prologue this did everything it needs to do and hooked me HARD, just.. the cave, the oddness, the way it all looked, the little changes.. and then leading into the opening bit with Watcher… it definitely made me eager for the whole story and to see where this is going. In the words of best supersonic pegasi “SO AWESOME!”” – Seraphem7 2.17.17

– Drivil 2.17.17 Hey, this is Zodi from the FoE Discord. Just saying, while short, it is a really good proof of concept and I happily endorse this mod and look forward to “Episode 1” so to speak. Also I wish to give your VO Team a special shoutout because most player-made DLC have either terrible VO with quality all over the place or no VO work at all, so props to them.– Drivil 2.17.17

From Equestria Daily:

“This is Radio New Pegasus. Time to put on my newsman fedora. Today marks the official release of the first installment of the Gardens of Equestria mod. Fans of the Fallout: Equestria series are flocking in droves for the prologue of what’s planned to be a massive episodic adventure. Expect updates throughout the year. Well, that’s all the news I have for you today. This is Mr. New Pegasus, wishing you ladylike luck tonight.” – shadowsnake89 “This is truly a great day for this fandom.” – Chad W. “For this I will reload the game.” – Gallen Dugall “Gimme gimme gimme GIMME!” – NotARarityFan

The Future

Now, I’m not here to give you release dates for Chapter 1. We’ll tell you when we’re launching when we’re ready. I’m not even going to tell you the content for Chapter 1. You can explore hints of that for yourself on gardensofequestria.com.

What I’m here to do is tell you that this team has done an amazing job. We’ve done something that’s never been done before. We’ve started a story-driven DLC-style experience based on Fallout: Equestria.

And for the record, you haven’t even begun to see what we have in store for you.

Smuggler’s Run was the commercial.

The Watcher was the part before the opening credits.

Now… now we get to the mane attraction.

And it’s going to be epic.

So saddle up, your in for one hell of ride.

This has been Novel Idea, until next time, stay safe out there and have fun!