“The State of the Platforms” Address (10.7.12)

My fellow bronies, I’ve gathered you all here today to finally have a small discussion on the current state of Pinkie Pie’s Perilous Platforms, a game by Sylver’s Edge.

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Over the past few months, the game has had some incredibly remarkable highs - finding a wonderful artist to work with, bringing on vocal talent to bring life to the characters, having the game demoed at Summer BronyCon 2012, being featured as a part of Equestria Gaming’s Pon-E3 event, having numerous mentions in Equestria Daily, the amazing success of the first public demo and having its very own post on EQD to commemorate such a demo.

With all these things, you’d be wondering if development was going fluidly and if the game in its entirety was all fine. Well, that’s where some things were not going exactly in the direction I had hoped. In fact, many things began to change.

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I could see a few things from miles away - some others were completely in the spur of the moment.

Firstly, college tends to be taxing on some folks, and I’m not exactly the best exception. I still have my work cut out for me, and most times, free time is rarely free. As a result of that, the development process has significantly slowed down in order to accommodate these changes.

Second, I’d chalk up to time management - I’ve had little time to get to development, and as such, the game was just there - no changes made, no tests conducted, it was just laying there. It needed work, and lots of it. It was just that I couldn’t direct my attention to it with the other things taking up time.

Lastly, the general build of the game really showed its sore spots - the levels are rather uninspired, the mechanics haven’t been completely worked out, I still have yet to properly implement newer features, and Stencyl can be a huge pain when it can be. The current build is about 6 months old - from the very day I booted up Stencyl, it’s been there. The program been through major updates, and the interface has changed consistently. In some way, I’ve seen the changes that the updates effected on the game through tests of past and current builds.

(P.S. The original look of the game was unappealing to some folks, and I could see why. It reeked of cheapness in some places! Thanks to Honeydrill for injecting some life into the game with his designs.)

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Now where does that leave us today?

In the past, I just wanted to re-tool the old levels and release it as is, but I can’t do that - not with the people expecting something better. It just wouldn’t fly.

Pinkie Pie-centric platformers have come and gone without a peep - only a select few ever get to really stand out in some sort of way.

I could say that Perilous Platforms could be chalked up to being a standout with its different focus, but that was only it - it showed a certain charisma, a willingness to be better.

So I sat down, talked it over with some folks and wondered how I could make the game what it really should be - an inspired pony platformer that could excite and engage its target audience. What could I possibly do?

Today, I’ve decided that Pinkie Pie’s Perilous Platforms will start anew. I believe that I’ve clung on to the old days of Project Atarashii a little too closely, and that Perilous Platforms should be able to blossom without being tied down to its original purpose.

The times have changed, and with the amount of work I’ve seen in current pony game projects (Pony Chronicles, Fighting is Magic, Welcome to Ponyville), it was definitely time to think straight and come up with a better strategy.

I will be working on a lot of things in order to ensure that this vision for the game is realized, and I really do hope that the Perilous Platforms team will bring together a solid pony platforming experience. I can’t say outright that it will be the game to bury all other games, but just a game that will be fun for everyone to play.

Thank you all so much for being such wonderful people. You guys mean the world to me.

(p.s. I’m changing the Tumblr handle. It was very much needed, though I’ll have to get a new shirt made to reflect such changes!)