Pony Joust By Nicky Case On The Arcade + Our Mod!

Pony Joust by nutcasenightmare, now known as Nicky Case is a small HTML5 game in the same vein as Pony Wings from the same creator. You play as Fluttershy scared out of her little wings jousting (the pegasus equivalent of jousting) against Rainbow Dash to knock each other into the mud (or lava)! The game was made in HTML5 to enable modding, so, for you more edgy gamers, we have our own graphical overhaul just for you. Check it out!

Review - Derpy’s Fun House

Cute little Point and Click derp-venture.
It sure has been a while since we last did a proper review, hasn’t it? And look what just struck our mailbox, and have been doing rounds around in the fandom. A cute looking adventure game with everypony’s favourite derped background pony. This ought to be a cozy little experience.
Derpy’s Fun House is the first endeavour by the Raztudio team, with the game available on Itch.io and somehow a release, albeit as a free download, on Steam somehow. I suppose, if you stay quiet enough, copyright isn’t a factor, even on the biggest game distribution platform.
First impressions are charming. Doesn’t look like a massive experience that is gonna devour hours, something like 20 minutes, but hey, looks can be deceiving. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30, it looks like a cute time regardless of the length, that would put a smile on most anyone who plays it. But enough hypothesizing about the game, from just screenshots and trailer footage, how about letting the game speak for itself.

PixelShy: Orchestra, Shake Your Tail, Vertigo Maze, Pegasus Express

The third and final batch of PixelShy games by DracoBlair are now on the arcade! The new games are:
  • Orchestra - Repeat the song after Fluttershy... Yea, I honestly can't make this game seem more interesting than it is.
  • Shake Your Tail - A rhythm game featuring classic brony music!
  • Vertigo Maze - Lead Fluttershy through crazy spinning mazes! (preferably without getting motion sick in the process)
  • Pegasus Express - Endless Runner with Fluttershy!

Battle Gem Ponies Released! ...No, Seriously, for Realz!

It's finally out, guys. You can download the long awaited Battle Gem Ponies on Windows, iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, and even Amazon Tablets! (His words, not mine)
You can check out the Launch Trailer on YouTube (which premiered during the 2024 Monster Taming Direct this morning) if you wanna hype yourself up even more!

PixelShy: Fours, Matrix Arcana (v2.0), Memory Tiles, Grooming

The second batch of PixelShy games by DracoBlair are now on the arcade! The new games are:
  • Fours - Play Connect Four against Fluttershy (Warning: She is merciless!)
  • Matrix Arcana V2.0 - A complex variation of the classic lights out puzzle where you need to clear the board while Twilight Sparkle compliments your (very clever) moves.
  • Memory Tiles - Simple memory matching puzzle game with pony icons.
  • Grooming - Fluttershy has been hurt! Clean her up of the scratches, dirt and twigs without causing hurting her in the process!

Battle Gem Ponies will be featured in the Monster Taming Direct Livestream

Little ponies with BIG powers are coming to the Monster Taming Direct!
...But what even is that tho?
It's an annual indie games showcase focusing on Pokémon inspired projects where countless devs apply but only about 30 make the cut! And with tens of thousands of fresh gamer eyes on it, we're about to witness a livechat reaction to "P0niEs!?" harkening back to the 2010s MLP vs the Internet first-impressions era.
The event will be hosted by GymLeaderEd on YouTube, premiering this coming Labor Day morning, and we couldn't be more excited to share the Mares Mares Mares Mares Mania with the gaming world! Tune into the show and you should see BGP about 25 to 30 minutes in. It'll be a trailer with some big reveals and lots of fun stuff for Pony RPG enjoyers to see!

PixelShy: Orchard Defender, Fashionista, Pop Quiz and Balloon Catcher out on the arcade!

The first batch of PixelShy games by DracoBlair are now on the arcade! The new games are:
  • Balloon Catcher - Control Fluttershy's little wings and catch as many balloons before the time runs out!
  • Fashionista - Perfectly fill the given patterns with the pieces given to you!
  • Pop Quiz - Test your knowledge of facts and MLP trivia with Cheerilee!
  • Orchard Defender - Prevent the birds from eating all your fruit by shooting them down with seeds!

PixelShy Series by DracoBlair!

The PixelShy Series by DracoBlair was a Flash series of minigames featuring Fluttershy which were meant to culminate in a full game playing with and taking care of Fluttershy. The Flash End of Life may have had different plans for that, but archivists and Ruffle developers begged to differ, which is why in the upcoming days and weeks all of the (currently ruffle compatible) games will be rolled out to the arcade starting from tomorrow!

RoBorg's Pony Game Microsite

This is a wonderful gem of the past featuring 8 pony games and interactive experiences exuding raw 2012 energy. All of them are very short and sweet, but here is the rundown:

Pony-Escape by PonyDevs

Supreme horse-game mazing n' gaming! Finished in 9.02 seconds.
This is a very simple maze game made by the PonyDevs community featuring rarity trying to escape randomly generated mazes... which sometimes are invisible... or while being stalked by the Smooze... or both. Your goal is to guide rarity through the monochromatic labyrinth into the black void on the right. rarity is clapping her hooves because she is so happy to be engulfed by the dark, empty void!
That is pretty much it. Not much more to say. Though I always like myself a some mazes, so this is my best attempt so far at speed-mazing (I just made that term up right now!). Timing starts the frame the new maze loads in and ends on the frame the "You Escaped!" text appears. Try to beat my time!

Unicorn Training Returns for Its 10th Anniversary!

Always nice to see an older pony game get a little love after all of this time! Unicorn Training is back on the scene, freed from Digital Purgatory after having been removed from the app store a few years back. There's been plenty of little tweaks and quality of life improvements made for this re-release, which you can read more about in the press release below the break!

Arcade Spotlight: Zap Apple Buckin' by zztfox

In the spotlight this week we've got Zap Apple Buckin', a cute and simple little point and click by the talented pony pixel artist zztfox! Tap (or click!) on all of the ripe Zap Apples before they disappear to help Applejack harvest them, making sure to take great care to avoid the unripe ones. Harvest as many of them as you can within the time limit in order to get a high score and increase your rank, which give you greater and greater score multipliers the higher up you get!
Just a quick note! When a round ends, the screen will fade to black, then the results screen fades in, and then you go back to the title screen. Around level 20 or so, there's a bug wherein the screen will fade to black like normal, but won't fade back in again. The game is still going when this happens! Your progress is saved between rounds, so just listen for the title screen sounds and then refresh the page to continue playing. Happy harvesting!

Scoot Hard DX: Daytime Drama Zero by Waffle Iron Studios. DOOM with Scootaloo in the Rainbow Factory!


Yippie-ka-yay MotherB**cker

-Chicken, aka Scootaloo.

Scoot Hard DX: Daytime Drama Zero is a WIGZDOOM mod which released 3 years ago and which I am simply flabbergasted to see has not received any attention at all from any part of the fandom.

Loosely based on Rainbow Factory by AuroraDawn, you play as Scootaloo, who must escape the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation and get her friends back – by kicking flank! With tons of humor, an array of equine enemies, huge levels, powerful weapons, a look and feel like something off mid-2000s Newgrounds, and full voice acting.

This game is simply chock-full of love and passion. The game knows what it is and doesn't take itself too seriously. The voice acting complements it perfectly, being as cheesy as possible and reminding you that, yes, you are indeed playing a silly (but absolutely AWESOME) pony game.

The next part of the article will be me showing some of the awesome easter eggs and details I have found in the game. I highly recommend you check it yourself, as to not ruin the surprise. Mild spoilers ahead!

Battle Gem Ponies Alpha Demo for Backers and Future Development Plans!

We got an update on Yotes games' Monster Tamer game with ponies: Battle Gem Ponies! They have an alpha out for all of their backers and more information out for the future development of the game!
Your BGP Adventure kicks off with meeting the young Professor Bucky of Equestrian Labs. Which then leads into a hunt for the 6 Alpha Ponies roaming the regional outpost. Find them all, and trigger a showdown against the villainous Paragon Cartel who are out on a hunt of their own...
If you can't sit down on your seat and wanna support some epic pony projects and get to play them early, you can support the game's development on their patreon. If you're unsure about the game, you can always check the demo on their itch.io page to see if you like it!

Arcade Spotlight: Pinkie Pie's Water Balloon Toss

This is a deceptively simple game. You play as Pinkie Pie and your goal is to get as many ponies wet as possible with a limited supply of water balloons in less than a minute, for some reason... (It's Pinkie Pie, okay?)
The further the ponies are, the faster they move and the more points they give. There is a perfect theoretical score of 40000, which can only be achieved by using up all of your water balloons on the pegasi at the very back without getting blocked by passer-by equines.
NOTE: Ruffle has a small issue with this game of only displaying "100 points" when you hit any of the ponies. This doesnt effect gameplay and is just a visual bug, as your score gets updated with the correct ammount in the end.
Knowing all that, my high score is...
Yeah.
I know I could decompile the game and cheat to get it and see what happens if you get it, but that's BORING. Take a shot at it! Can you get the perfect score?

Thank you for the submission(s)!

We asked you to show us how you live ponies and...
one submission is enough!
As you may remember, two weeks ago, we tried something new by asking you to show us your desktops and computers for a reader-submitted compilation post. The deadline was supposed to be last week, but we decided to extend it another week (now, I realize, without announcement!) to let more submissions build up.
Unfortunately, we remained with the sole submission from the first few days. But that is enough for me because I think it is AWESOME. Thanks, Erick!
Game development is hard, so we thought this would be a nice way to open the door up for everyone to be able to submit something with a bit of their soul and personal touch in it, without the time commitment of creating a game.
However, this doesn't mean the door has closed, if you get what I mean ^c^. I mean, I won't get upset if you... send your submission for this regardless.

Non-Arcade Spotlight: Hoofball by Donitz

This week's spotlight is focused on a game that isn't currently playable on the arcade due to emulator limitations. The best way to play these kinds of games is to download Flashpoint Infinity, where you can find almost all the games on the arcade and more!
Hoofball is a game made by the legendary Donitz, who has brought us classic titles like Derp till Dawn, Story of the Blanks, and Twilight vs. Walking. Hoofball is a demonstration of Donitz's engine designed to emulate the restrictions of the original SNES, a successor in many ways to Story of the Blanks (minus the horror), which emulated those of the NES.
The main content of this demonstration is the titular fictional game, Hoofball! A clone of football played in two dimensions where each team is only composed of a striker and goalkeeper. Start off facing off against Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo, and after defeating them you're on your own to see what other Surprises the game has to throw at you.
After getting your flank handed to you, be sure to right-click the game window to access the level editor to get an idea of the level of effort this engine had put into it!

Send us your ponified desktops!

Where else do we keep our precious pony games except on the desktop? If our games are ponified, then why not our desktops? Why not our computers or laptops? Why not our entire home? WHY NOT THE WHOLE WORLD?
We want the answer to that question! Send us your ponified desktops, laptops, setups, etc!
Show us how you live ponies! Are pixel ponies running amok on your desktop? Send it! Fifty pony widgets taking up half of your system resources? Send it! Have you made your own custom pony themes? Send them! Is your laptop covered to the brim with pony stickers? Send it!
We will compile all the awesome ponified setups and desktops we see next week! If you don't have a desktop full of ponies, you still have plenty of time to make it to your liking! There are plenty of online communities where you can find great skins (but please don't run any executable file willy-nilly) or get help to make your own.

Arcade Spotlight: Spike Toss by futzi01

Looks like we've got another futzi01 game for this week's spotlight! Spike Toss is a simple little physics game in the Angry Birds/Crush the Castle mold, though it's more about gem collection than destroying things. It's fun to see just how many gems you can get in one toss! I haven't managed to fully clear a single level yet, so if any of you out there manage to 100% all of them, enjoy being the Official Equestria Gaming Spike Toss Gamer God.
Y'know, a long, long time ago, some arcade games had little author comments or summaries to go with them. Spike Toss was given the description "Be Rarity for a day and treat Spike like dirt," and in all honesty I think about that every single time I see this game and it never fails to get a chuckle out of me.

Equestria Gaming at 13 - Looking Back and Moving Forward!


On January 12th, 2011, at the dawn of the pony fandom and juuuuust before it would paint the internet pastel pink, a fan named Strawberry Spice registered the blog that would eventually become Equestria Gaming. After a quiet first few months, the site officially opened on April 3rd — thirteen years ago today! Over the next decade-and-then-some, we've seen a whole heck of a lot: the first steps of the fandom, Pon-E3, the rollercoaster ride that was the life of Fighting is Magic and Them's Fightin' Herds, alllllll the way on down to the end of Friendship is Magic and the beginning of the next generation of My Little Pony. So many periods of high energy power posting sandwiched between lengthy radio silences, the coming and going of more than a dozen staff members, and no less than three changes of ownership in five years. It's been a wild ride!

2023 was a record-shattering year for Equestria Gaming... and not for any reasons worth celebrating. Except for the five month window in 2016 when the site was actually dead, it has become the low-water mark of the site's history, with a whopping three whole posts and an almost half-year-long outage of our inbox and the arcade. You could very well make the argument that, as of last year, there was barely any difference between uptime and outage to begin with — we rather infamously stopped checking the inbox, and over 90% of the games in the arcade hadn't worked in years. For all intents and purposes, it seemed like Equestria Gaming had finally, at least in spirit, joined most of the other G4 sites from the early days in the digital afterlife.

Well, we say that it doesn't have to be that way, and it won't! Over the past few months, the winds of change have been blowing behind the scenes here at Equestria Gaming, and today we're proud to announce we're re-launching the site! Read on below the break to find out what we've been up to, where Equestria Gaming is headed, and how you (yes, you!) can be a part of it.

The War Thunder Mobile "Flying is Magic" Update

Seems like they're feeling the April Fools spirit over at Gaijin! Earlier today they released the "Flying is Magic" update for War Thunder Mobile, which adds (among other things!) a variety of pegasus units into the game. Apparently this isn't the first time ponies have found their way into War Thunder, so it's nice to see them make a comeback.
If you're curious, check out the announcement video and read through the update post on the War Thunder Mobile website for more details!

Introducing My Little Longplays!


Over the past 14 years, there's been a whole heck of a lot of pony games that have come and gone. While there are plenty we remember fondly, and some that are still going strong to this day, the vast majority have been forgotten. Flash and HTML5 games, being browser based, are easy enough to preserve and keep in the public eye... but what of the countless ancient PC pony games that have long since faded from memory?
Welcome to My Little Longplays, a new site feature dedicated to full playthroughs of all of the fantastic pony games that time forgot! To start things off, we're heading back to the magnificent, far-off year of 2013 and having an intense battle against Fluttershy for the title of "Shhh!" World Champion in this game developed by Vanni. Who will win? You'll just have to watch and find out!

Cloud_Citadel

Cloud_Citadel, made by a Russian developer of the same name, is a tiny little pony platforming game where you dash to the finish as quickly as possible. There’s only one screen, so it’s incredibly short, but it’s fun to see how low of a time you can get!
If you’ve got a minute or two to kill, give it a whirl. My lowest time is 3.991 seconds, I’m sure one of y’all out there can beat that!

Arcade Spotlight: Explore Ponyville by drud14

This week's Spotlight is coming to you live from scenic Ponyville, courtesy of drud14! Explore Ponyville is an adorable compilation of minigames and small scenes wherein the player hangs out all over town with the Mane Six. Released in the far-flung year of 2013, it comes surprisingly close at times to passing for an official game, though one or two parts have a some quirks to them that break that immersion! Sure, I could elaborate, but maybe you should just play it for yourself to find out what I mean!

Lyra's List 3.0!

In Olden Pony Times™, Equestria Gaming featured a recurring series of posts titled Lyra's List. The idea behind it all was simple: help the development of pony fan games along at every stage of development, from concept to completion. Originally, it was a list of game design documents for projects in their earliest phases, but would later include signal boosts from developers in need of a helping hand, and a list of folks of all creative stripes that projects in need could get in touch with.
A wonderful idea, right? Absolutely! Unfortunately though, it suffered from a pretty major design flaw: it was a monthly feature with zero hold-overs between posts. It made sense to do it that way at the height of the pony craze in 2012, when the absolute torrent of new projects and volunteers ready to join them coming in every month would've eventually made Lyra's Lists hilariously long without things rolling over. In the years since, though? Well, things are just the tiniest bit slower, to say the least! When we tried bringing Lyra's List back in 2017, we failed to take that into account and make the necessary changes, and ultimately things didn't get very far due to low submissions.
Seven years later but hey, who's counting, right? certainly not me!, we're giving Lyra's List another go! This time, we've decided to tweak the format a little bit to (finally!) compensate for the times. Starting now, Lyra's List will now take the form of a dedicated page (use the link above or the much cuter link in the navbar!), and all submissions will remain on the list for a period of one year, unless a shorter duration or removal are requested. We're hoping that these changes will (again, finally) make Lyra's List the resource it was always intended to be, even if it's better late than never.
If you're reading this, submissions are officially open, and we hope to hear from y'all soon!

Arcade Spotlight: Sweet Apple Cider by kevinsano

For this week's Spotlight, which just so happens to fall on St. Patrick's Day, there's no game in our library that meets the moment better than kevinsano's Sweet Apple Cider. Released on February 3rd, 2013, this ponified version of the arcade classic Tapper quickly made a real game out of what was originally a simple title screen animation posted to kevinsano's channel just one week prior!
It wasn't long after the release of Sweet Apple Cider that kevinsano made five additional mockup title screens based off of different Season 2 episodes... though unfortunately none of them became actual games, and were just used as t-shirt designs. I don't know about you, but man I sure wish we could've gotten to play Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness! Honestly, if any of y'all out there have any ideas for what the other games would've been like had they been made, I'd love to hear them!

Arcade Spotlight: Canterlot Defender by futzi01

This week, we're spotlighting Canterlot Defender by the insanely prolific futzi01! Perhaps not the most popular game of theirs with the word "Canterlot" in the title, but this is a fun little game nonetheless. Another title based on the events of A Canterlot Wedding, the player, as Twilight Sparkle, must try to survive as long as possible while defending Canterlot from an endless swarm of invading Changelings. It's about as simple as it sounds, really. Go give it a shot! get it?? because you're shooting down changelings?? anyone??? please laugh

Arcade Spotlight: Mine Escape by CertaintyPrinciple

Welcome to the very first Arcade Spotlight, a series of weekly posts dedicated to giving a random arcade game a little time in the sun! I've noticed over the years that, with the sheer amount of titles we have, there are more than a few with... less-than-stellar view counts. Let's see if we can't fix that!
Mine Escape, the penultimate pony project of developer CertaintyPrinciple, was originally posted to DeviantArt on July 5th, 2012, making its way to our arcade that same day. A point-and-click puzzle game based on the events of A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2, it features Twilight Sparkle solving a series of puzzles in order to free herself and the real Princess Cadance from the depths of the Canterlot gem mines so they can put a stop to the impending Changeling invasion.
This is quite possibly my favorite game out of all of the ones we have, so I'm super stoked that it came up first. Give it a go and let us know what your final time is! I remember it taking me a... uh, little while to get through, my first time. Won't be hard for y'all to do better than me! i'm dumb and bad at puzzles lmao

Ergosphere

Ergosphere, developed by SingularMJ, is an neat 3D third-person hack n' slash/platformer, in which you are following the unicorn Horizon, a self-proclaimed researcher as she explores the ruins of an ancient civilization in search of powerful ancient artifacts.

Or at least that's what she planned to do. As she moves deeper into the ruins, she meets her eventual companion Ashes, a phoenix who serves as something of a guardian of the place. Ashes explains the history of her society -- including the existence of Trials, important events meant to test the mettle of any who rose to the challenge, and what led their civilization to ruin... having fallen at the hooves of the Trial's most celebrated and capable champion.
Tempted by greed and the promise of power by a force referred to as the Shadows, under the champion's rule the land, and most of those in it, were overrun by the evil creatures created by this force. Ashes manages to seal herself, the most powerful of the artefacts, and the spreading corruption away... until the seal unexpectedly breaks just in time for Horizon to come along. As a new Trial begins, Horizon will have to hack, slash, explore and dash her way through the ruins, collect the artifacts and (hopefully once she's done getting a good look at them!) stop the spread of the corruption once and for all.

One of the more interesting aspects of this game, next to the magically-infused combo-heavy combat system, is that large parts of the ruins are procedurally generated! A good example of it in action is actually right at the beginning of the game, which has a somewhat long platforming sequence that is completely different every time. Certainly keeps things interesting after losing all your lives!

If this sounds like it'd be up your alley, check out the game's itch.io page linked above!

Dream Studio's "Fallout Equestria: The Rise of Heroes" Animation


The seemingly endless Fallout: Equestria content train is still running strong! Dream Studios, a group from the Chinese-speaking side of the fandom, recently dropped this awesome looking trailer for an ongoing series of FO:E videos. If post-apocalyptic ponies are your thing, check it out above!
Also worth mentioning: this upload of the trailer comes courtesy of the channel Cosmia’s Stash, which is dedicated to republishing content from the Chinese fandom on YouTube. Y’all should definitely give some of the stuff there a look too!

The Adventure into Resurrecting Adventure Ponies

A journey into fiddling with old flash files
Greetings! The resident code Kirin and web master of the site here to report on a little adventure, anecdotal as it might be.
Some of you might have noticed our recent attempts to give the site a little kick, as hard to see as it might be, and s far that has mainly included going through the good old Arcade. Games added, and revised, as well as the main addition of getting Ruffle properly integrated into the site with scripts, so none of you need to install any browser plugins! As well as Ruffle works, the games should work right out of the box for you!
With the overview out of the way, one of the major issues are the ways some of the games were put together a decade ago, when flash was still alive and no one thought of the day the Adobe would drop it. Adventure Ponies, for one, the official cute little pair of games, officially made and hosted by Hasbro and The Hub, back in 2012 and 2013. It's a classic... and it doesn't work. We wanted to fix that.