It’s a portmanteau that has been going around the internet for a while, and a term that the variety of fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic show want to be labeled as, and yes, variety of fans, from little girls to grown adults enjoy this show, and its appeal and fame is something to behold in this day and age, and now, an official game has been released for them to enjoy.
Gameloft was put in charge of creating a game that could appeal to the mass fan base, and surprisingly, they came up with one decent free product, it isn’t as much of a game, in fact it’s more of building city-sim with minigames, and it even has a story, go figure.
You begin with a purple unicorn pony called ‘Twilight Sparkle’ your mission consists of getting all of the ponies who fled because of another evil pony called ‘Nightmare Moon’ and in order to accomplish this, you need to gain all 6 ‘Elements of Harmony’, and as well as getting rid of the darkness covering most of the land.
From here, you have to basically build places for the ponies to work (by buying them from a menu), and in turn, gain coins, gems, and experience that allows you to expand the land by getting rid of some of the darkness covering it, purchase more things in-game, such as more jobs, as well as even more ponies, including the main characters that are needed to access quests that allow you to gain even more coins, gems, and experience.
Calling this a “game” doesn’t really cut it at this point, but there is some sort of gaming that can be done. 2 minigames are available from the start and are alternated with each pony, one involves catching apples as they fall, and the other involves keeping a ball bouncing in rhythm to get more points, the points gained give the pony itself experience that in turn allows them to gain a star that in order to be obtained, needs to play another bonus minigame, which involves flying while getting coins. Getting more stars allow them to do jobs that require certain levels..
The game’s music isn’t much, but it’s there for the sake of having some, it contains basic sound effects as well, but surprisingly, it has voice acting from the actual actresses from the main show, which came as a surprise when I booted up the game, it’s surprising when actors actually voice their characters on games like this instead of stand-ins, listening to Tara Strong’s voice was certainly nice.
The visuals are the thing that impressed me the most, all of the characters are 3D models, and some have specific animations for each that can be “d’aww” inducing at times, the production values visually are actually a treat, most them are simple, but it gives the game a calm atmosphere, although with so many things on-screen, the game can slow down to a crawl.
All in all, this is a simple city simulator game, a free one for that matter, you can easily get it for Android devices and Apple devices such as IPhones, it has its problems with some slowdown, and it can get annoying, but many can look past that. I was reluctant of this game but I enjoyed it enough in small bursts, and isn’t that what mobile games are supposed to do?
Surprisingly, I actually would recommend this to the bronies themselves, if only because small children might not enjoy waiting for the minigames or want to build the city at a snail’s pace in order to see everything that it offers, dedication is at hand here, and the big fans will be very dedicated for a while.