Yotes

We're entering November with an all-new team setup, changed plans (for the better), a miles long checklist of finished tasks, a new potential source of funding, and cute little pony sprites you have to come see! Time to show off what a couple weeks of hardcore indie development will getcha in this spooky good October devlog!

Wild leaps in progress and productivity as we're settling into the flow of being a team. All just in time for the biggest game dev session yet. Next month is going to feel like half a year's worth of work done in just a couple weeks compared to rate we've been going so far. There's been all kinds of improvements in terms of art, menus, and code architecture. It's really shaping up beautifully and we're excited about what we'll be able to deliver in just a couple months. Get the details on this month's gamedev adventures on the Yotes Blog!

Battle Gem Ponies (August DevLog): Gettin' Stuff DONE!! Been quite the busy month over here at Yotes Games. A whole feast of features to show to you about this fine August of progress. Talkin' about overworld animations, palette swaps, engine setup fixes, team collaboration improvements, new menus, and new mechanics. So let's get right to it, over on the main blog!

Nice to have a crunchy month to work on this day after day. Things are really starting to shape up around here. Visions of running a full-fledged indie studio get clearer all the time now that I'm enjoying a taste. This month's major milestones include training a new programmer, adding a menu to the playable build, putting over a hundred working moves into the game, and creating a huge cast of human characters to meet in the overworld. If you're curious about this past month's comradery and happenings in #GameDev, take a peek on the Yotes Games Blog!

It's been a colorful month of new discoveries and a bunch of mouse-hand cramps. Gearing up the BGP cast for more efficient animating and coloring as well as crossing off some long-procrastinated tasks like "DESIGN THE LEGENDARY PONIES ON THE TITLE SCREEN". Which was fun! Along with a million other tiny things (gamedev or otherwise) that made this month... Interesting? Yeah, interesting. Get the full deets on the main blog if you're curious.

With the first release of a playable build (still Patreon Exclusive until a June update) comes the bold new start of BGP. Playable updates as we make them, growing this game up from sprout to giant tree. Documenting everything along the way. Take a gander below the break to see the development shenanigans we've gotten up to over the past month here at Yotes Games.

Available to the patrons out there keeping development going for so long. We're opening the curtains a bit and letting some of you inside to get a better look at what we're working on. this here is the very beginning of a very fun project. Download the Battle Gem Ponies Combat Demo on Itch.io using your Patreon login to get a download key for Windows and/or Android. The old demo will still be available on the same page as before until the public Combat Demo release. More details on this Patreon Exclusive preview release and future public releases here.

Anypony else looking forward to virtual conventions this year? (It's kinda all we've got these days)

We're mid-apocalypse as showtime approaches! I'm sure April 2020 has been rough for pretty much everyone. And the team here at Yotes Games is no exception. Spritework, cut budgets, major losses, and hard lessons finally learned. It's been pretty busy. Get a full update on the new decade's most destructive month yet as it relates to Battle Gem Ponies and see how we plan to rise from the ashes, developers reborn!

Some crazy new decade we're having, huh? Should come as no surprise now that delays and scrapped plans are happening left and right, even here at little ol' Yotes Games, thanks to ya homeboy COVID-19. Get some details on how we're handling the situation on the main blog.

Unfortunately, the Babscon Arcade Showcase won't be happening this year. But we're going to make the most of this and take some extra time to get an even more polished Battle Gem Ponies combat demo out to everyone over the convention season! Hope you can look forward to it with us! - Yotes Games Dev Team

Aaaand one month full of crunch later, we've got battles! Actual working in-game battles! You can swap forms, use moves, alter stats, drain meters, and everything! Some visual effects are still a bit rough but all that's coming in the polish stage. The most important bit right now is getting the logic behind everything working as intended. Now, some of the special side-effect calculations have yet to be implemented, but we've thought through all the dirty details and are confident about knocking them out over the next month. That way we'll be stepping into April with everything the demo will need plus an extra week of polish to spare! In terms of gameplay we've got fully functional turn-based combat. The math behind it all, the interface to make choices and display information, and the animations to go with it all. Just need to animate all 168 moves in the demo and add in a couple extra touches and we'll be set! Come see all the love and and long post-workday hours are going to. This past month was a straight up plentiful one in terms of results! For the full post, head on over to yotesgames.com!

Rapid progress continues. We've got menus up and running better than ever, some really polished placeholders, fleshed out design notes, charts and graphs for pony stats, hundreds of character animation files, and most of the math behind the revamped battle system! You'll need to get more info on the Yotes Games website this time, cuz this one's gonna be a doozy!