PonyTown Tenth Anniversary

 

A jump for joy!

    As of June 28th, 2026, PonyTown has just celebrated its tenth anniversary and what an anniversary it is! This is one of the biggest milestones in the game's history, as it has come a long way from what it was only a decade ago in 2016. The game began with not much more than a nearly blank grassy map that people could "draw" on by clicking the squares to switch them between dirt and grass and almost all we could do was stand around, chat, visit our private islands, build a little with just a few items and customize our ponies a bit. I joined in August 2016, just a few months after the game was released, and I can still remember how frustrating it was when coming across a pond or dense trees and rocks unexpectedly because we could not just swim through or fly over them. I also recall that someone always had to stand around nearby with a lantern in their mouth whenever someone was doing rating lines for people's cosplay skins once the day/night cycle was introduced because we did not yet have glowing horns! Since then, over the years, the development team has answered all of those prayers and then some. Customization has become much more detailed with not just more accessories but also a better color picker system. Flying and swimming were introduced, along with the ability to sit and to lay down. The build tool was also a bit of a mess for a while, when none of the items were sorted into categories, and you could not just type them into a search either. Now though, that's a non-issue. The build interface is much more organized and streamlined.

 

    If you are like me, however, the thing that you remember the most is the snacks. In 2016, all PonyTown had to offer was a fruit crate or a fruit basket, each of which generated only apples, bananas, oranges, carrots, pears, lemons, limes, grapes and mangoes in your character's mouth with a click or several. You could only hold them, there was no chewing animation, and you could not plate or place them. All you could do was type "/drop" in chat and pretend you ate the item. 

 

 

The old method of snacking in game.

 

     Pardon the mess that is my current in-game kitchen. Well, I say "mess", but actually, the kitchen has been updated a ton since the game started as well. It went from a sink, a stove, a few cupboards, a few tables and the fruit crate to... Something massive. As you can see. In the above video, you are only seeing about 1/4th of my kitchen there. Anyway, since around 2018, we have been able to pick up edible items, chew on them and actually eat them with the "/nom" and "/eat" commands that were introduced alongside the café update. At that same time, kitchens and dining rooms got a bigger selection of snacks, tools, tables and chairs to work with in build mode. More were also added with the introduction of the marketplace and the library on the main map. Each addition to the main game has brought with it more objects for further customization and more playability on the player-owned maps. There has also been at least one or two major updates per year since the game's release but nothing quite so huge as... This.

 

PonyTown's 10th anniversary has most of the player base partying it up.

   

    A snack is a snack and that's absolutely dandy, but dancing is the main event this year! For a very long time, we were told by the development team time and time again that dancing would never be introduced to the main game. They said it would crash the servers too much because they could not foresee a way to fix the coding or the animations in a way that would be well-supported. Still, most of the players, myself included, hoped and wished for dancing to come to the main game so that our music-themed ponies would finally be able to do what they were created to do someday. After at least eight or nine years of begging for it, our wish has finally come true and the cherry on top for me personally? 

 

We also finally have pizza!

 

    Pizza has been added along with the dances that we waited so long for! I personally do not know if anyone suggested pizza before 2018, but since then, every so often, I have logged onto the team's Patreon and Discord to ask for pizza to be added to the game and every year, it seemed less and less likely to happen. I even remember getting told on Patreon by a team member that they were focusing solely on only adding snacks to the game that ponies could actually eat circa 2020, which essentially dashed much of my hope for pizza. After this update though, it truly seems like the sky's the limit! I am absolutely thrilled to see what might come next. About a week before this update, spawnable items were added to the player-owned maps as well and we also got the basic system for cooking in place, so perhaps, later this year or early next year, we will see a farming system added? I have heard that the game was originally meant to be a farming game, so we will see but I am hoping for that every bit as much as I had hoped for dancing and pizza... and we have all just seen what happened there. Until next time, stay safe, stay hydrated and if you are a fellow PonyTown player, enjoy the party until July 31st!