Video Game / Daydreaming Derpy

Part-timer Mom by Day... Dreamwalker By Night

Day Dreaming Derpy is an RPG Maker game set in the world of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, starring the show's most prominent Ensemble Dark Horse, Derpy Doo.

Due to experiments with Doctor Whooves' TARDIS, Derpy finds herself able to enter the dream world and explore the dreams of other ponies. Utilizing skills she learns doing odd-jobs during the day, Derpy explores the nightmares of other ponies and helps them confront their personal demons.

The game can be downloaded from rpgmaker.net here.

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This game contains examples of:

• All Love Is Unrequited: Octavia knows Vinyl is in love with her, but Vinyl hasn't confessed because she knows Octavia doesn't feel the same way, straining their relationship. Addressing Octavia's conflicting feelings on this and how their friendship is being affected are the focus of her dream.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Mare-Do-Well comics have you briefly play as her.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Diamond Tiara's dream focuses on this perception of her parents and herself, and her self-loathing over how she used to be.
• Avengers Assemble: Invoked and then subverted. After working with the Cutie Mark Crusaders individually in the rest of the dream world, all three of them join with Derpy for the trip to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. However, once they get there they take off and you're given an 11th-Hour Ranger as your sole ally; the Crusaders don't even get a chance to all fight together. Played straight a bit later when they join with Derpy again inside Dinky's dream.
• Bait-and-Switch: When you enter a dream and find it a Film Noir homage populated by dark Rarities, you may think it's Rarity's nightmare, or perhaps Coco Pommel's, since she's the one to greet you. It's actually Sweetie Belle's.
• Battle Butler: Almost invoked by name with "Combat Butler Randolph" in Diamond Tiara's dream.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Derpy is subjected to this when the Tantabus possesses her. This happens again for the final boss, but it's Derpy vs the Tantabus inside Dinky's mind.
• Big Brother Worship:
  • Sweetie Belle's dream explores her desire to be just like Rarity and how she emulates her to try and do it.
  • Scootaloo's dream focuses on her idolization of Rainbow Dash. And how her desire to have Rainbow cater to her every whim doesn't gel with her desire to not have Rainbow coddle her.
• Boring Yet Practical: The Mailmare is the first uniforms you'll acquire. It comes with Junk Mail, which spreads three hits over the enemy party, and Greeting Cards, which heals the party. Combined with the Cadance Stamp to grant HP regen, this will offset the Cast from Hit Points effect of Junk Mail, letting you spam it every turn safely. This strategy can get you through much of the game.
• Broken Bridge: Dinky's balloon basket in the first stage of the dream world isn't strong enough to carry Derpy, you have to find another balloon for her so she can take you to other parts of the dream world.
• Cast from Hit Points: Many special abilities use HP instead of MP to cast.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The game is usually pretty light-hearted and fun, up until you get to the end of each pony's dream, which is usually when their underlying psychological torment that had caused the nightmare must be addressed, fought as a boss, and overcome.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Derpy's special abilities come from the various outfits she wears, and Stamps that give her stat boosts.
• Cool Shades: Notable aversion; Vinyl Scratch putting her shades on is symbolic of her immersing herself in her stage persona, so she can't hear Octavia reject her over her music.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Shadow Spade dream, as part of its homage to Film Noir.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Nightmare Star/Daybreaker has all the trappings of a Final Boss, but the story isn't quite done when it is defeated.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The light side of the moon, aka Celestia's dream.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Big Mac mourning the death of the apple tree he was taught to buck on is blatant symbolism for the death of his father.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Trixie's Fatal Flaw is that she's too proud to let ponies see her vulnerabilities and accept their help.
• Dream Walker: The central idea of the game.
• Fetch Quest: Daring Do's dream involves getting various items to give to other ponies in a Chain of Deals.
• Final Boss: The Tantabus.
• Final Dungeon Preview: You can head to the entrance of the apparent final dungeon as soon as you become able to move between parts of the dream world, but Derpy won't head inside alone. Completing the other three areas of the dream world will have the Crusaders meet up with her here and you can progress.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Invoked as part of Scootaloo's dream. Her dream is a Rainbow Dash museum crewed by Rainbow Dashes, made for her by Princess Luna. But she's never given much thought to how Luna created this place, and what lurks beneath the surface to keep it running.
  • This is also invoked with The Reveal of the Big Bad. The Tantabus was spawned from Luna's nightmares, but she defeated it and it went away. How could it be back now? Derpy suggests that it may have been spawned from Celestia instead of Luna, but Luna says that's impossible... unless Celestia has been in the dream realm before... Oh, Crap!
• Genre Savvy: Upon confronting Rarity, Sweetie Belle immediately lampshades this isn't really Rarity, just a representation of Sweetie Belle's negative feelings towards her. She's dealt with this sort of thing before.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: While it isn't too hard to predict that the boss of Moondancer's nightmare will be Twilight Sparkle, it's a bit sudden that she turns into a ponified Midnight Sparkle.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Daring Do's dream has the group relive a convention three times in a row from the start, though each day details are different.
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • Everyone in their own nightmares, as they can't move through the dream world with you if you leave.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders each follow you in the second, third, and fourth stages of the dream world, and can move between dreams, but only within those stages.
• Knight of Cerebus: The game stops being funny once the Tantabus shows up.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Realizing Derpy can't wake up because the Tantabus is controlling her dream, Dinky lets it take her instead.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Defeating the final bonus boss gives you Derpy's ultimate uniform, Discord, granting her the same abilities as the Purposefully Overpowered character described further down.
• Living Toys: Smarty Pants is the party member for a late-game dungeon. While this may be justified as All Just a Dream, Derpy is able to see some of its memories from the show that she otherwise didn't know about.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The nature of Daring Do's dream. She doesn't want the "Groundhog Day" Loop to end, because she wants to keep going to the conventions and enjoying herself.
• Lovely Angels: Pinkie's sisters take this pose when they appear, and they collectively count as one enemy.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • Scootaloo's dream is a custom-built one made by Princess Luna for her, and is a museum dedicated to Rainbow Dash and crewed by Rainbow in various costumes and forms she's appeared in over the series. The dream is ambiguous if they're robots, clones, or some combination of the two.
  • The opponents in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon are Derpies in various uniforms, including some the player can't access.
• Medium Awareness:
  • Scootaloo identifies the various Rainbow Dashes in her museum by season and episode number.
  • At the end of the game, Derpy admits to Dinky she once felt like giving up, because it seemed nothing she did was right. But she kept going because she could feel that someone out there believed in her, and she wanted to make them happy, and eventually everything turned out okay. The screencaps from the show accompanying the dialogue make it clear she's referring to the brony fanbase, the infamous "Derpygate" controversy over her name and voice, and how it nearly got her Exiled From Canon before she was able to return.
• No Social Skills: Moondancer's nightmare manifests her social insecurities and her still-conflicted feelings about what happened with Twilight.
• Once More, with Clarity: It turns out the boss of Daring Do's dream was there the whole time — they were the cosplayer dressed as Ahuizotl, Crackles' cousin, and Holder's Boulder.
• Optional Boss: Three of them, in the corners of the dream world: Photo Finish, Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich, and Mare-Do-Well. Beating them, along with completing Goldie Delicious' memory retrieval, gets you the four books needed to move a bookshelf in the TARDIS, letting you reach the final bonus boss: five of the Mane Six in the forms they've taken in the game.
• Planimal: The timberwolves are the enemy of Big Mac's nightmare.
• Pride: The enemies in Trixie's nightmare are "Trixie's Pride" and "Trixie's Vanity" with "Trixie's Ego" as the boss.
• Purposefully Overpowered: Your 11th-Hour Ranger, Princess Luna. She joins with a healing spell, a spell to grant double turns, a spell that grants the party MP regen, and she will later gain a second uniform that drops the MP regen spell for a revival spell and powerful offensive spells. As she's the only ally you have when facing the Disc-One Final Boss, she's this strong so that she can pull her weight properly. The party member that replaces her for the next segment has the same skillset as her initial one.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Trixie's evil doppelganger in her nightmare looks identical to her, but with a flipped portrait and red eyes.
• Ship Sinking: Octavia's dream torpedoes her and Vinyl as a couple, as the main point is that Octavia knows Vinyl is in love with her but she just doesn't feel the same way.
• Ship Tease: Derpy's interactions with Princess Luna include the options to give flirtacious responses to her questions, and the security guards in the castle comment on how they're in what would be a romantic place if they were a couple.
• Shout-Out:
  • Moondancer's dream uses the Inspector Gadget theme as its music. One of the books Moondancer has is "Ultimate Power: A Sith's Guide to Necromancy".
  • The enemies in Sweetie Belle's stage are called "Smooth Criminals".
  • The boss of Scootaloo's nightmare wears a black pair of Cool Shades with a red eye glowing behind one side, ala The Terminator.
  • Little Pip, Harley Quinn, and Link, are among the crowds in Daring Do's dream.
  • The "Groundhog Day" Loop in Daring Do's dream notes its transitions with "DAWN OF THE SECOND/THIRD/FINAL DAY".
  • Princess Luna's class is given as "Moonwalker" and she wears the famous Smooth Criminal outfit.
  • The Disc-One Final Boss quips "this isn't even my final form!" before it transforms to its second form.
  • When you defeat the final bonus boss, you gain "phenomenal cosmic powers"
• Smash the Symbol: The boss of Diamond Tiara's nightmare is a giant statue of herself that cracks apart as it takes damage, and Diamond tries to finish it off after the fight in her rage.
• Squishy Wizard: Moondancer has a ton of useful support magic, but not much in offensive power.
• Take That!: invoked Button Mash appears in the crowd in Daring Do's dream. Speaking to him has him complaining about how it sucks when you have a great idea and someone won't let you do it.
• The Television Talks Back: Trixie's dream world is a cinema where the previews talk to her to feed her ego.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Dinky's dream.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The Disc-One Final Dungeon includes a sequence where you must retrieve poison joke or lavender and use it on two ponies to pass. Two of your potentional victims are Fancy Pants and Fleur dis Lee, and you can use the poison joke on them just to be mean.
  • Played for Laughs in the same dungeon, which includes several balloons you can pop. When the guards check to see if you behaved yourself later, they lampshade that you popped them for no reason but to be disruptive.
• Wham Episode: The Disc-One Final Dungeon. The Foreshadowing was obvious enough that you figured out the Big Bad was The Tantabus. What you probably haven't figured out is that it's a Tantabus spawned from Celestia's mind, not from Luna's.
• Wham Line:
  • Confronted with the manifestation of her self-loathing at the end of her dream, Diamond Tiara blurts out that she ran away from home, which is explained in full after the boss battle.
  • After the boss battle of his dream, Big Mac states outright that (in the dream) it's only been a week since he buried his parents.
  • Confronted with The R-5001, supposedly the ultimate embodiment of the Rainbow Dash Scootaloo envisions, Scootaloo eventually asks it if it believes in her. It replies bluntly "no".
  • When speaking to the young AK Yearling, Daring Do tells her she doesn't cosplay. She insists she does, and then shows off the cosplays she had prepared.
  • After defeating the Tantabus possessing Celestia, it seems like the game is ready to end. Then it speaks again...
  • Played for Laughs when Derpy meets Princess Luna and introduces herself as Ditzy Doo, establishing that "Derpy" is a nickname. This is just a Mythology Gag and something a player will understand immediately, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders treat it like a shocking revelation that changes the way they think of the character.
• Where It All Began: The first level is Derpy's own dream; the penultimate segment of the game also takes place in her dream as she's possessed by the Tantabus.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: When Derpy is possessed by the Tantabus, the segment takes about five minutes to play through. When she wakes up, she's told she's been asleep for a month.