Needs Download?: No
Time Commitment: Steady. You’ll need to check in daily (or pay approximately $10 a month) to keep your ponies maintained.
Need to buy in: Ponystar maintenance is almost a must. Also if you are interested in the costumes, most of them cost Acclaim Coins.
Overview: Ponystars got some attention when it came out because the noted web comic Penny Arcade mentioned it, albeit not entirely in a positive light. However, they were spot-on. It is a purely browser-based game that revolves around breeding and dressing up ponies that look suspiciously like a favorite 1980’s line of toys. The background is eye-searingly salmon (baby blue is an alternate option) and the somewhat thin backstory emphasizes the inherent sweetness and light of the Ponystars.
If you can get past all that, the actual Ponystar breeding game is moderately interesting. If you have a stallion, you can list him as available to breed. If you have a mare, you can peruse the list and request stud services from the listed stallions, for a fee (some of which does go to the player who owns the stallion.) You’re basically breeding for two things: pony type and color. The foal will be the same type (unicorn, pegasus, etc) as one of the parents, and the mane and coat color will be a somewhat randomized combination of the RGB values of both parents. Getting a really sharp-looking combination takes some planning and effort, and you have to be careful to balance pony types, because you’re limited in how many you can have of each kind.
There is an “adventure” game, of a sort. Every day you get a certain number of “moves” to explore an adventure map. There are quests to do and occasional random goodies to find, but the moves are so limited that it feels like playing chess by mail – with an overseas opponent. You also need a very specific distribution of pony types and attributes to complete the quests, so the best way to do it is to read the forums and plan ahead.
The other half of the game is dressing up the Ponystars you’ve acquired. You can get colors and patterns for manes, tails, coats and hooves, you can get brand marks, backgrounds, and accessories. (Ever seen a pegasus with a tiara? I have.) Of course, the vast majority of these items require Acclaim Coins and not just the free Fairy Gold to purchase, so blinging out your ride can cost a fair bit of scratch.
If all this sounds good, then you need to know about the downside. Every day you’ll have to log in and feed, brush, and muck out each Ponystar that you won. This is at least six clicks per Ponystar, and you can have up to 75 Ponystars. This is completely separate from training, breeding, or costuming them – this is just basic maintenance. Or, of course, you can drop around $10 a month (depending on the Acclaim Coin exchange rate) to have a helpful fairy do this for you. If you’re interested in building up a herd of Ponystars, it’s going to cost you either time or money.
If you were just curious what Penny Arcade was on about, a quick glance at the website will tell you all you need to know. There is not a ton of depth here, and what interesting concepts Ponystars has are sunk in a sea of mindless clicking.
September 30th, 2011 at 5:41 am
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/14/business/la-fi-ct-playdom-disney-20110514
On this basis alone I’ve had to leave as low feedback as possible. Aside from the fact that there is blatant copy-write violation in the form of intellectual property theft from IdzTech’s premier game PonyIsland now they have been named as a company who willingly sold the information of MINORS to companies? This is, perhaps, one of the most alarming things I have heard of. Parents BEWARE!
September 30th, 2011 at 6:28 am
Kid friendly? No way! Parents beware, this game was found to be selling and displaying the information of even the minors playing the game, as can be seen in this article:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/14/business/la-fi-ct-playdom-disney-20110514
Essentially, they violated all COPPA. Please be aware that the Ponyvallee game is simply a rebirth of this Ponystars and has continued it’s thievery of the IdzTech intellectual property. I would avoid both these games at all costs, not only due to the blatant copyright infringement, but also the danger they exposed (and may continue to expose) young players to.
September 30th, 2011 at 6:32 am
Huh, thanks for the update. I’ll take a look and do an edit/rereview as necessary.
September 30th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
The game is a pathetic knock off. It’s stolen art, it’s stolen ideas, and it’s stolen blocks of text from the rules of Pony Island. It’s by lazy people who require you to pay real money for anything neat or useful. It’d rather pay a flat fee of 23$ for a full year of everything-included service on PI than _$10 a month_ just to make sure my ponies are “looked after”.
The whole game is a disgrace to pony sims. I hope no one is fooled into playing and paying for this ridiculous copy-paste of downgraded quality and functionality.
September 30th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Lags horribly for having so few online at a time and has continued it’s poorly concealed art piracy on a sister site called PonyVallee.
Investigating their poorly-accessible english forums not only revealed that they continue to fastidiously delete any hint of their art theft being discussed, but they tell their members that Ponystars was shut down because of the “company” that owned it that was selling information– and that they are completely innocent! They are referring all past Ponystars players to PonyVallee to continue playing their farce as a ‘trustworthy’ place to play.
Kids/players said themselves they didn’t feel comfortable about the personal information they were being asked for– how does anyone running a site completely ignore this and then claim complete innocence? And even when they knew they had players leaving because of it?
I found over eight pieces of art work stolen and poorly modified from other sites on the first page alone– primarily directly from Hasbro and PonyIsland. They even took two different pieces of pony art from Pony Island and grafted them together, not even bothering to modify that piece any further.
To put the topper on the cake, further searching on the site revealed that as a “Special Prize!” a fairy will give you a shoddily modified baby winged unicorn stolen from PI, but call it a “Pegasus”– and you get to win it if you collect more ponies based off of stolen art! Gee, how swell! It’s like a real Pirate’s treasure chest in there!
Also caught using the Rules from Pony Island word-for-word with very minor edits, they clearly can’t even be bothered to write their own rules.
The game itself is poorly constructed and they ask ridiculous amounts of real money to support their stealing. You’d think they could have hired someone decent to do original art for them, but why pay someone on to do art if you can profit off of other artists’ work for free without their permission?
Acclaim should be ashamed. I will never, ever do any business with Acclaim or this Fezzik.