We have some updates on things going on within the project:

PonyConHolland

We worked with the organizers of the brony convention PonyConHolland to provide a special spin-off theme, The Devious Dancehall, for their Project OutFox setup at the con! We would like to thank everyone involved for giving us this opportunity, and we hope you all had fun!

TrotMania VI update

We do not currently know if and when TrotMania VI will be released; most of the dev team (including me) have been working on other projects and endeavors, while we are also tracking the development of Project OutFox 0.5 to make sure that we can bring you a high quality experience, while also leveraging all the new functionality that the engine has received.

And speaking of high quality

We saw what you did there! :>

With 2020, the consensus was that big, elaborate April Fools jokes were in poor taste what with the current global situation. Said situation is still going on to this day, as you may have noticed. Thus, we’ve decided to forgo even a throwaway joke and instead do a little info-drop for the upcoming TrotMania VI: Loopback to help make it up to our followers! We can confirm that at launch, the game will come with at least 20 new songs, including the following:

• The Magic of Friendship Grows
• Addict / Silva Hound feat. Michael Kovach & Chi-Chi
• Stop the Bats (Remix) / The Living Tombstone
• Daybreaker / Vylet Pony
• Poison Joke / TAPS feat. Bob E-Quine

We’re also revealing the following little teases:

• Another one of the tunes made for the Japanese dub of the Friendship is Magic series will be making its debut in this mix, it’s rather alliterative!
• Two of the above listed artists have another song in the setlist, in different categories than their confirmed appearance.
• A showtune that previously only appeared in remixed form is debuting in its original form.
• The following brony artists are making their series debut in this mix:
  • Age of Vinyl
  • Brittany Church
  • Coconeru
  • Hay Tea
  • Steven, A.D.
• An original song made for the TrotMania series will be available at launch!

We hope you’ll be discerning of any big pranks this year and hope you look forward to further news on Loopback! Content development is still relatively early on, the current setlist is still mostly in the chart creation phase and the graphic phase is a ways off, so it might be a while before there’s more news on that front.

If you missed the stream earlier, the cat’s out of the bag: TrotMania VI: Loopback is our next installment. We’re still in the planning stages of certain aspects, so I’m not going to reveal everything right off the bat, but there are some things I can talk about.

First and foremost, our theme is basically cyberpunk, and that is definitely not the Sun Beamer you know and love (in fact, that’s not even his name! But more on that at a later date). Secondly, this will be the first TrotMania to be built around the latest StepMania release in development, 5.3; it is only appropriate, given that it really is that much of an improvement in terms of performance and functionality over existing versions.

In terms of content, we’re planning on doing some rather major changes. Some things will remain similar to how we’ve done things before, but we will be trying a few new things for VI:

New challenges

“So they’re taking other worlds, corrupting them, and using the results against us…”

Alongside our standard difficulties (which will remain as they are in terms of style), we are planning to include more themed, alternate charts that, hopefully, will be more more varied and technical than what you’re used to.

We are not just here to dance…

“Another thing apparent is that they have a wider variety of tactics than what your counterparts had to deal with.”

StepMania is primarily known as “the DDR simulator”, but it can do much more. Through community contributions, we will be accepting charts in other game modes are being added or refurbished on 5.3, including 5-panel, guitar, drum, etc. This will apply to both TM VI songs, as well as earlier songs too.

Solidarity

You might have noticed the reference to “community contributions” under the last heading. In comparison to past editions of TrotMania, we are going to be opening up the development process a bit more. We’re a community that’s part of much bigger communities, so it’s only appropriate that you should be able to join in on the fun as well.

There will still be parts that will remain a surprise until we specifically unveil them (including the theme itself, some of the songs, etc.), but we are planning to have a formal process for openly submitting/vetting content — music, charts, etc.

Expect more information on all of these aspects over the next little while as things are ironed out and set up.

I guess you can say this event is going to be Euphorius.

It all begins May 16 at 2:00 p.m. ET; check out Burning Mare on Twitter for more information!