Twilight Sparkle has been shown since episode one to use levitation and in episode four teleportation.
Unfortunately her basic levitation ability never got featured much into games, which is sad because the floating magic glow has a lot of potential for creative things.
Instead they used her lazer attack in plenty of games. She was shown in Canterlot Wedding to use a lazer attack, which I hate. It was boring and shallow and kept being overused. At least if they used some glowing orbs or a star ability to represent her signature attack spell. From all the diversity of spells from an arcane unicorn which learned from Celestia, and the main character of the show and her 25 tricks from Boast Busters you'd think she'd get some better abilities.
Some game makers even used her love for books as a weapon in video games, like Fighting Is Magic.
She shown in rare cases to be able to copy spells just by looking at them even since the first pilot, with nightmare moon when she copied her teleport, and with celestia' green&purple magic in season 3's pilot.
Rainbow Dash often gets designed with Sonic the Hedgehog in mind, and often times she's the melee character rather than a long-ranged one. She has her kung-fu abilities(call of the cutie) which fits her melee character. She has a lot of small dodging games inspired (more like bluntly ripped-off) from Robot Unicorn Attack, often times she can barely fly at all, sometimes Fluttershy gets more flight capabilities than Dash. In Dungeons and Dragons she's portrayed as a thief and rogue.
Pinkie Pie is considered the acrobatics of the team, so she often gets the double jump or an extended jump, which in turn makes her the target of a lot of crappy jumping platformer flash games. In some games she gets all sorts of acrobatic tricks such as rolling in mid-air. In DnD she's a bard, like the pied piper, the bard uses musical attacks and his charm to defeat his enemies. Sadly Pinkie's singing was never incorporated into games.
Fluttershy has her animal friends and flight. People constantly take her ''stare'' ability as a cripple spell, taken from ''Stare Master'' which was more of a joke or a hint at her funny motherly nature. Rather than actual powerful bullshit ability, damn bronies have no sense of ridiculousness.
Often times her flight is just a small leap or a glide, rather than flight. Her animal friends come with her too, like throwing squirrels, bunnies, birds, bears, dinosaurs at her foes. Not much to say about her, she's barely in any game. Weirdly enough they didn't weaponize her singing and her singing birds. In D&D she's often portrayed as a druid, a nature mage, which is often times a healer.
Applejack's games are as equally boring as Fluttershy. She barely starrs in games and when she does she only gets to buck and that's pretty much it. Her DnD role is often barbarian, paladin, warrior, never mage or anything outside the fighter stereotype.
Rarity. Weirdly enough all they could think up about the element of Inspiration is gems. She's a white unicorn fashionista and they gave her such an unfitting ability all because of her cutie mark and the episode 'dog and a pony show'. Her ability is often just throwing gems like a projectile attack. At least if the gems were magical and they each did something else.
She never gets any kind of spells as a unicorn. Sometimes if you're lucky she'll also be a fighter character. Most of the time people consider her DnD role to be rogue and ranger.
Oddly enough nobody thought about putting her crafting skills to use, like producing armor, enchantments, magical items, etc. You have to improvise greatly when you're working on such a simple cartoon, you need to take alternate takes to the heart when designing for such things.
Now that I'm finished with detailing the main character's boring stereotypical abilities, it's time for the hard part: coming up with new ideas for them.
I will not make their powers *completely* out of nowhere like the Power Ponies, instead i'll make them inspired from their own character and their full potential. I love video game characters to have a big arsenal, so I believe that a fully realized character that has reached the end of his story is the one best suited for a video game. Just like I enjoy Megaman X over vanilla Megaman, just like I enjoy Zero having all his abilities from the start rather than having to build them up till the end level when I never get to use them enough.
Time to start.
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Twilight's theme attack: Uses magic that looks like glowing dust clouds(nightmare moon's cloud). It gives speed, shields, platforms and ramps, she spawns various spells from it and many other tricks.
That dust is dust space and they're star shaped. Twilight has a lot of invincibility abilities.
Spells:
Polymorph (transform into other creatures like a phoenix or dragon, and transform other objects).
Comet - blast across the screen through enemies, ricocheting off walls and dropping flames behind you.
Float sweep - invicibility and damage while you slowly float above the ground.
Summon - Twilight uses a phoenix companion to enhance her spells. Just like Fidget from Elysian Tail.
Specialties: botany and chemistry - use plants to prepare magic potions on the go.
Fire burst - Deal damage to anything that touches you(can be combined with many melee attacks)
Starweb - Throws a bunch of strings and stars of differing sizes, the stars deal damage and the strings attach themselves to walls and grow all the way up, allowing you to climb up.
Mid-range melee attacks and close-ranged attacks.
- Pounce like a puma on the enemy. Kneel pounce, mid-air pounce, trotting pounce. (used with Fire Burst)
- Swoop your enchanted hair in the air, can also burn the enemy. (enchantment: turns the enemy dark and steals health and mana from him)
- Quickly bucking backwards.
-Trample both your front hooves on the enemy.
While cantering and galloping a lot, your jump will gain momentum and send you rocketing.
Same for your attacks, you won't stop, the attacks will gain much more range if you are running.
Offensive abilities:
Lightning comet. Fires a bunch of mini comets and a big one. Lava, Ice, Lightning type damage.
Two half-moon/crescent/boomerang shapes. A fast attack that returns to you if it doesn't hit a wall or foe. It can bounce off surfaces and disperses into two projectiles, and it slightly home-targets the enemy. Range: half and a quarter of the screen.
Big Bang splash - Swirl around and send a lot of stars and moons flying around the screen and off screen like a fireworks display.
Bouncing sphere. Bounce into walls with it. Make a shield and use it as both a weapon and to reach high places.
Unique abilities:
*Space time jump - Reduce the length of the level, it removes various parts of a linear level, effectively compressing it, allowing the player to finish it on time.
*The Twilight zone - Transforms a part of the level around you into a luminous enchanted forest. Twilight will feel right at home walking on this charming darkblue terrain with friendly crystal trees, healing songs, falling stars(gives health to you and damages foes), purple ticklish fungi and glowy energy crevices.
*Horses of the apocalypse - Clears all the enemies on screen and then deals 4 different environmental attacks in an order, alternatively you summon the four horses to stay with you as minions.
*Mimicry - Learn any ability from bosses or allies and use them for a long time.
*Prism clones - Summon 6 allies to help you, you're invincible while at least 1 ally is on the battlefield.
*All in one - Have every puzzle-solving ability of the mane6.
Passive ability: Twilight - deals both dark and light type damage to enemies in one package. Has high chances of combining them for her unique twilight type damage. Can sometimes turn the enemy into a crystal minion monster and sap them of energy for higher stats temporarily.
(Original idea: Has a slim chance of turning the enemy into a black color palette, the black enemy can touch the other enemies to infest the others. Twilight isn't affected and can kill them to get higher stats, temporary)
Enemies: health = mana steal. Mana = health steal.(yes it's inversed) Causes both burn and freeze conditions.
Character specific level stage - Whenever you open a book, you get transported to a tutorial level that spoon-feeds you on how to master that one ability. It's very useful for beating hard bosses.
Inside the book you also have a sort of sandbox level editor where you can script to fight 3 or more bosses at once. You can also modify their stats, AI script and your own stats while inside the training book.
Rarity can cast her magic on different objects such as bushes, trees, boulders, in order to turn them into potions, summons, throw-away weapons, respectively... etc.
Gem-encrusted armor, each gem gives her a buff and ability. At high levels she gets crystal shard armor, which is entirely made out of gems.
Smithing magic, create armours and robes with easy magic(no large amount of crafting items required)
She has ice-themed magic that can create anything, almost like a Green Lantern.
She has powerful agility which enables her to slide, jump high, crawl fast, dash and climb.
She can move much faster underwater, as opposed to being slowed down by water. She can also control the water to a degree. She can't slip on ice, and actually glues to it when wall climbing.
She can walk on spikes, water and glide. She uses enchanted glass slippers to levitate instead of galloping.
You can ride a windigo/spirit horse, start a blizzard and turn snowflakes into ice shards.
Rarity gets much better deals at merchants and can create valuable platinum in time.
Midas touch, it turns frozen enemies into gold, giving you much more money when breaking them into pieces.
Butterfly wings - Rarity sprouts butterfly wings and can fly with great maneuvrability.
Angel wings- Rarity summons angelic feathery wings which she can attack with.
She can sometimes ride the wind and enter filly's dreams to recover health.
Her special stages are exploring her own tower and crystal mine and custom-create spells and armor.
So I mixed a bit too much here. She's an acrobatic, soft-stepping, glass-cannon, crafter, fighter, aerial magical royal fairy snow queen.
That translates to a rogue mage.
Rainbow Dash is the adventurous treasure-hunting pony which after succeeding in the wonderbolts team she started joining other aerial teams such as Celestia and Luna's flying guard, the cometeer riders, the weather science program , the army, and many more. Along the way she learned all sorts of new abilities.
In the spirit of her ''gotta go fast gameplay'' I will suggest my own ideas related to it.
I call them Dash's sixth sense/instincts.
Her levels should have a lot of dodging courses to it and split-second timing actions and bosses.
She has both speed and maneuvrability in the act of giving you the cliche but great bullet time mode, which sometimes activates automatically when you're about to get damaged. You can even rewind time.
You'll be guided sometimes by an automatic AI( similar to tool-assisted speedruns) which helps you make it through narrow spiky paths, save you from pitfalls, and it pulls you up if you almost face-plant into a wall.
The TAS has perfect timing, effectively blocking your controls for a few milliseconds and taking over for you, sometimes even cheating the game entirely to make you look as awesome as Rainbow Dash.
Actually Rainbow's speed and magic is so amazing that it creates a forcefield, the gravity distorts all enemies in your path, making them deattract and magically disappear from you like the south pole of a magnet
Alright enough of that fan-pandering. If anything Dash should be a mage, considering her weather control.
Most of her levels should be set in the high skies, and you should have plenty of ranged attacks and magic abilities. Such as her lightning attack, a storm spell and a rainbow spell.
As well as a lightning attack that converts into a lazer.
Lightning bolts - Shoot blue lightning rays out of her rear legs and front hooves when stomping them together. May chain together and target adjancent enemies to your target.
White and black light. (Ghostly form) Dash can cloak in the light and the shadows, turning her invincible and invisible. She's invisible while running and untouchable while staying still. You can also teleport short distances doing this. The advantage is that you can move while cloaked.
Shadowbolt Dust - Just like Nightmare Moon's dust form, Dash can turn into a cloud of dust for a limited time to avoid melee damage. Any enemies it goes through get blinded. She can also use the sun to blind flying enemies.
Soul body - From the Megaman X series, it creates a copy of you to blast it into the enemy as a projectile.
Rainbow pendant - Creates a rainbow carpet which Dash can surf on and bring Spring.
Speed is vibration. She's fast enough to go through walls, almost like teleporting. Quickly warp out if you fail.
Cloud summon - use the cloud for shielding, extra speed, lightning.
Sixth sense armour - When an enemy issues an attack adjancent of you, then that foe is interrupted and dealt the damage.
Aerial comet shot - Create an icy dust trail behind you. Any enemies behind you are slowed down and damaged.
Shield - Dash uses a mobile magic shield to combat the attacks she can't dodge while under heavy fire.
Rainbow Dash can optionally heal from the sunlight rays. Her hair/mane turns grey when she's low on health.
Flash Prism - Turn into light and refract on objects. In a crystal level she can move instantenously.
Bi-rainbow colors - Customize your attack spells each with their own projectiles and type of damage. You can equip up to two attack patterns and assign extra conditions to it; fire type, dark type, water type, poison, cripple, health per hit, extra points, etc.
White vibrant color - For a limited time, you deal all types of damage packed either in a large lightning bolt or a large melee-ranged cone. Dash's hair turns white.
Cloud control - You can create and modify clouds to suit your needs. For example if the mission needs you to crack a mountain open then you can create thunderclouds and arrange them in a rhomb to cause a concentrated beam of lightning to strike. Similar to the prism towers and prism tanks from Red Alert 2.
Dash can also summon pink cloud minions which have a mind of their own, along with other clouds such as explosive lightning ones, green radioactive clouds and snowy ice clouds.
Weather control - Sometimes change the weather and even the seasons, such as melting an ice level or stopping the rain to make way for the sunrays.
Rainbow's special stage is to bring the weather back in time for the entire planet and then travel into space and visit exotic planets.
Fluttershy is a rather meek character, not meant to have exaggerated strength.
In my design she can plant cloud flowers and manipulate the clouds to her advantage. She can create clouds.
She can commune with insects and small critters for puzzles.
She can fly, but very slowly. It's more like gliding and floating.
Sometimes she'll have to set camp and rest, you do so on a cloud near a bushel of flowers.
Her range attack is throwing a dagger-shaped rose.
She can turn into any animal and insect, especially small ones.
Can transform into a flutterpony which has toxic and explosive butterfly dust.
Can enter a pond pool to turn into a flying spirit to navigate around the forest easier.
The flowers would each do something for the gameplay.
Fluttershy will often get assisted by small animals and small magical creatures such as faeries.
Flutters's singing affects plants which can open pathways, vine ladders and create makeshift homes.
Her singing in some cases can also calm some animals in order to quickly pass them, but it's not advised. Just turning into a swarm of butterflies and going past them is more efficient.
Sky flowers
Cosmos flowers, it summons a breezy wind to let you fly on it to travel large distances. (Flower petals)
Night gladioulus, it attracts moths, butterflies, bees to commune with and heals your status effects.
Night-blooming cereus. Keeps enemies and nightmares away, gives you a dps/toxic attack after you sleep.
Pansies, you'll need a bushel of these to sleep in. It attracts birds.
Crescent moon flowers. Makes the next day last longer.
Star-comet flowers. These ones attract small falling stars for Fluttershy to catch.
(Stars are useful for health, staying awake longer and keeping nightmares away)
Fluttershy has many ways to heal from the environment and her creature friends.
Honey, pollen flowers, resting, birds, insects, stars, apples, grass, etc.
You'll often times turn into insects such as ants, bees, butterflies. Sometimes you'll turn into wasps, spiders, etc. As the ants and bees you get to travel inside their nests.
As small animals you'll sometimes have to take care of the nest or build a dam if you're a beaver.
You'll switch between all sorts of insects, animals and small magical creatures such as feystags and faeries.
Fluttershy has dreams and nightmares while she sleeps. Every night she has to solve a puzzle through her dream which is short and free of enemies(some you can even skip), but sometimes you get a nightmare which is much longer, complicated and hard to finish.
In specific levels you can turn into a forest spirit and have control over some of the dangeorus creatures of the forest such as: manticores, cockatrices, displacer beasts, owlbears, feystags, small dragons.
Special stage; The small sequence as the ants, bees and birds can be turned into a sandbox game, as a bird you'll have to build nests and take care of your fledgelings. Basically a gather and protect game.
Secret mode: You're a dragon and you demolish villages while you take care of your young dragons.
Your goal is to gather treasure and grow up your dragon fledgelings.
Pinkie Pie can hang onto platforms and precise jump in the center of them, making it impossible for her to miss a landing. In a programmer's perspective it's recommended for the platforms to be objects, not terrain.
Pinkie can also accurately jump on enemies's heads forming combos. Making it easy to surf on them.
She can: do cartwheels, jump like a springer on her own(uses her tail or her body), climb on the screen, jump from the other side of the screen, use a disguise for temporary invincibility, get a sugar rush to run faster and fly.
Pink sense -
She can detect environmental hazards and projectiles, but not the enemies themselves. She can predict when a boss is about to attack and which pattern it'll use. But it is not automatic and often times your reflexes are not fast enough to dodge them properly like Rainbow Dash does.
Pinkie can also detect illusions, enemy's health and their AI pathway, represented by chalkboard lines.
When a projectile is coming or about to be launched then Pinkie's hair will start twitching, together with a a red vibrant aura. When there's a checkpoint or the level is near it's end or there's a boss then a blue aura will appear and her tail will start twitching.
She can use rollerskates and a gravity skateboard which often times can latch on the ceiling and walls.
Pinkie's attacks mostly causes stunned enemies and gives her health for her successful attacks.
She has a top hat from which she takes out most of her candy-flavored gadgets.
She can eat sweets which give her different abilities. consumables.
She can use balloons as platforms. Summon trampolines and cannons to jump from.
Cotton candy bait - Pinkie's hair is expendable cotton candy which enemies will prioritize to attack and eat.
Party - Confetti, streamers and candy drop the from sky as Pinkie sings and has damage reduction. The level design stays the same, but it adds layers on top of the level where the confetti falls. Confetti acts as direct damage and streamers snare the foes.
Sometimes Pinkie might get tired from too much sugar and stop running.
Bubblegum drops - Use it as a bubble balloon for floating or use it as a sticky bomb against enemies.
Jelly drops - Become hyper elastic to become a pony trampoline and jump on walls or bump into enemies.
Pop rocks - Main attack: Mini-bombs. In addition it makes your attacks splash/explosive type.
Chocolate fountain attack - Just summon a horizontal cone-shaped fountain to attack, which leaves a trail of chocolate if there is a downward slope, you can slide on it too.
Rock/Crystal candy - Raises defense against enemy touch, but not projectiles.
Candy corn - Summons candy corn golems, animated pumpkins and candy ponies to fight for you.
Black berries - Touch the enemy and they turn black for a limited time(petrifying)
Pink cloud summon - Summons a pink cloud to ride on and provides more sugar ammo.
Licorice - Improved stats and healthy sugar rush, in case pinkie gets tired from eating too much candy.
Green gelatin - Used as a shield and a weapon. It can be thrown and used as a springer.
Candy whip - A whip made out of rubber candy, you can use it to grapple onto enemies and the environment. It snares enemies.
Gelatin essence - turns the water into gelatin so you can walk on it.
Heart - One of her range attacks is simply a heart, which makes the enemy drop health and candy buffs.
(Original version; The heart uses up your own health, if it lands onto an enemy then it steals it's health, but if it doesn't then you lose health for nothing. Be very careful how you aim and precision this projectile.)
Candykiss. Kisses an enemy for extra health and candy ammunition. Stuns the enemy (Close-range)
Sugar Rush - Pinkie magically transforms into a sugar frenzy pegasus. (often times used in her special stage) she's still pink though, she preferabily shouldn't use Surprise's white and yellow color palette.
Pinkie's special stage is a typical ''grab all you can before the timer runs out'' bonus level. But it happens in different settings; A flying water ship, a trick-or-treat halloween stage, a dream in the milky way.
Applejack, the farm pony... gonna take a lot of liberties with this one.
She often times gets unwillingly transformed into a dragon, a skeleton, a changeling, all sorts of monsters and undead.
Drunken fist fighter - She gains more agility and attack patterns while she's drunk. Most of her attacks will be formed out of combos, you can barely cancel her chain attacks so be careful when you strike.
Lasso - She can set her lasso on fire. She can grope it around an enemy and use that foe as a wrecking ball to blast it into other enemies.
Applejack can buck projectiles back as a form of defense, while you also don't get damage while in the bucking stance so the projectiles can move right through you.
Spark flame - Against fast, flying, tiny enemies AJ can use a spread attack(medium cone-shape) which is is useful for charging flying enemies. Jack uses a device to blast fire from her rear legs.
Jack-O-Lantern - One of AJ's transformations is to turn into the pumpkin king, together with giant pumpkin minions.
AJ uses a sortment of apples to heal her. Sometimes she bucks entire trees into enemies and rides the trees down slopes.
She can sometimes walk on plain air.
Black bomb - Throws a bomb that spreads a bunch of high flames in the air. The flames fly in the air. Often times the explosion deformes like a Bomberman bomb.
Applejack's inherent ability is to add knockdown to her attacks. 2 attacks on a medium enemy can cause knockdown while on a boss it's 3. She has a temporary buff that can make her knockdown/stun enemies with just 1 buck.
She can also throw enemies into each other to produce a satisfying combo to kill most enemies in a straight line.
Applejack will often times use explosive barrels. Throw flaming apples at enemies. Might set trees on fire.
Ride a bunch of wagons. Chase after rabbits.
Special stages: Applejack has to watch over her farm either solo or by putting undead in charge of protecting her harvest, they don't eat. She'll often chase after that rabbits that steal your health power-ups. It'll be a farming game in itself; take care of your garden, sell your wares, set up traps, etc.
Mini stages include fighting on trains and wagons. Sometimes it's flying space trains on Saturn's rings.
There's a secret rare stage about Jack and the Beanstalk.
