Developer diary: http://mlidevdiary.blogspot.com/

My Little Investigations (working title) is a new project I've decided to undertake to create a MLP:FiM video game.  As is probably obvious to anyone who's played the game Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, the gameplay is heavily based on that appearing in that game, although I'm not copying it feature-for-feature.

The game's engine is completely custom-built in XNA, which means that it will need to be completed before any content can be put on top of it - which also means that, for the first while, videos featuring this game will be on the subject of game engine features, not on the subject of actual story content.

To date, I've more or less completed the "interrogation" section of the conversation engine in the game, which is featured in this video.  In it, Twilight asks the character in question something, and is then required to parse the response, press for more information, and eventually find a crack in the testimony when the character she's talking to is lying.

When the game is done, it'll have a robust conversation engine that enables interactions with characters similar to those found in the Ace Attorney series.  The idea behind the game will be similar, as well: at the start of each case, a crime will be committed, and it'll be up to Twilight Sparkle to investigate areas, talk to and interrogate other characters, and eventually crack the case by putting the pieces together.

I should note that the graphics and audio in the game right now are tentative.  Currently, they're just extracts from frames from the show, which afford only a limited range of content.  If this project garners enough community interest, I hope to enlist the help of more artistically-minded members of the MLP community to help with audio and visual aspects of the game.  However, that'll be a while off - right now, I want to work on the game engine and get it completed, and then finish a demo game, in order to establish both what exactly I'll need from those artists (I don't want to sign them on and then have nothing for them to do, after all), and that I'm serious about this project.

The situation in this demo video is also tentative.  It fits into my vision for the first case, which I intend to be a fairly simple demo case to just establish what the game can do and what its gameplay is like, but the final version of the first case may not include this scene exactly as it appears.  This is just to demo the game engine and the general idea behind this section of the gameplay.

If you're still reading, bless your heart.  I hope you enjoy(ed) the video, and I hope you look forward to seeing more!

My Little Pony is owned and copyrighted by Hasbro. This is just a fan-made game to honor a series I love.  I will never make any money from this game, and no copyright infringement is intended.