MLP Visual Novel

Ever since I've gotten into Katawa Shoujo, I've been thinking about making my own visual novel. Because I'm also extremely obsessed with MLP, (particuarly the human versions) I have been seriously thinking about making one using them as the characters . While I have no definite plans right now, if I do begin working on it, it will have to be during the summer.

edited 13th Mar '12 2:31:57 PM by Katsu01

A word of advice. Read the Answer. It explains why visual novels are different from novels and touches on the individual elements a visual novel needs.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything positive to say to the person who wrote The Answer. I'll just leave it at that.

In any kind of fan-made media, it's easy to say "I want to create __." Ideas are cheap. Actually creating stuff is the difficult part. It takes huge amounts of passion and dedication in order to create a single Freeware Game, a Fan Fic of a reasonable length, a Webcomic that lasts more than a few weeks, and so on. Also, if you can't charge people money for your fan-made creative works, then it's difficult to justify investing much time and dedication. Because of these two factors, there are countless numbers of Dead Fic, unfinished series, games that never got past conceptual or demo status, etc.

Speaking specifically about MLP:FIM, if you search through the Collab board on Ponychan, you will find three or four seemingly promising threads where a person talked about making a visual novel based on Friendship is Magic. Each thread died quietly. It's probably safe to assume that the posters lost interest, or had too many other commitments.

The only MLP:FIM VN which currently seems active is Gentlecolts' planned game Love is Magic. Updates aren't very frequent. But they have a group assembled, and they might be looking for more help.

There is another in work But its more along the lines of Ace Attorney ish game then what people would actually think of as a Visual Novel.

Incidentally how do Professor Layton and Ace Attorney compare to Visual Novels? I hear the mentioned in the same company as Visual Novels, but people don't actually seem to want to group them together (although I notice the visual novel namespace has been used for Ace Attorney).

edited 16th Mar '12 6:08:06 PM by UltimatelySubjective

Thats because in the case of Ace Attorney the game really straddle the line between visual novels and outright video games.

Professor layton is a straight out puzzle solver however.

Found one already in development.

The only thing I find surprising here is the fact that it took so long.

Thanks to the person who mentioned Harmony, as it went under my radar... As far as I can tell, it's the only active work-in-progress FIM visual novel with humanized characters. The creators currently promise optional 18+ content and many choices, which are two more points of difference.

As of this writing, it looks like the people creating Love is Magic have decided to back down from any 18+ content.

Quest of Memories is another work in progress. Learned about it from an August 2012 post on Equestria Gaming. It's currently being made in Flash, but I'm not sure if the creators intend to implement any complex gameplay.

EDIT: I made the foolish, foolish decision to search Tumblr for "visual novel." Found a whole bunch of works-in-progress. The one that's relevant to this thread is Starswirl Academy, which will have more humanized ponies, a minimum of connections to the canon FIM universe, and apparently no NSFW content.

edited 8th Sep '12 7:06:58 AM by dorkatlarge

Starswirl will indeed have a version with NSFW content. I updated the About section to clear that up. Sorry for the confusion there. :D

New trailer for Starswirl Academy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z11ia8cXr24

Also, the introduction of a new, completely unexpected character: Tom. He's not just a rock anymore, he's actually his own character now!

Rock!Tom was a Badass.

Human!Tom is a turd.

I don't think that's a fair assumption given that you have only half a cutscene's worth (at most) of information on him.

No, really. A name, a character sprite, and that he's transferring in with Twilight. That's it.

I might play this if the MC was a female character, not Tom the turd.

edited 29th Sep '13 5:38:51 AM by kay4today

My guess is Tom was chosen because he lacks a characterization to be accidentally bastardized by shitty writing of storylines. Had they chosen a character with... actual character, they would have either been confined to that characters personality or they would have had to strip out that characters personality to free up options, and then anger... everyone.

I want to see Doctor Whooves/Time Turner. and what they did with Derpy.

edited 4th Oct '13 6:49:52 AM by ultimatepheer

That doesn't explain why they couldn't have a female MC.

Because Tom is a boy's name.

Naw, man. It's short for Tomantha.

Are you sure it's not Tomelina?

The demo for it is available for download now- apparently there's no choices, just predetermined dialogue.

Well, it is a demo.

That demo was good stuff. Pinkie's hair was unexpected, but I think it fits her well. Thomas Daniel Stone was genius.

Character sprites could be more lively, I think. Pinkie and Twilight were the only characters that didn't look perpetually bored.

Then again, considering this is still a demo, the artist on board might still be working on the other characters.