Challenges

"Challenge Modes" is a menu to increase the gameplay's level of difficulty or change the storyline entirely. There is a maximum of 8 Modes that can be activated.

The menu can be opened by pressing the "**CHALLENGE MODES**" button from the title screen. You can tap/click a mode to turn it on, or if you're unsure, tap/click and hold a mode to view a brief description of its effects.

## Modes

### Villains United

The antagonists agree to work together. Pinkarella will never attack a Changeling in this mode.

### Nothing to Report

Pinkarella covers her tracks as she becomes more cunning than usual. The Reporter will not be able to identify Pinkarella when this mode is active.

### Femme Fatale

When this mode is on, the Consort will be deadlier than usual. After seducing, the victim will then be murdered.

* A townspony guarded by a Bodyguard will still die when visited by the Changeling Consort, but the Bodyguard and the Consort will kill each other.
* A townspony healed by a Nurse will not die from the Changeling Consort.

### Low Horsepower

In this mode, two random townsponies are dead from the start of the game.

### Bulletproof

The main antagonists, Pinkarella and the Changeling Queen, will be immune to the Veteran's alert.

* The Veteran will not die when visited by the two when activated.
* There is a **bug** in which Pinkarella and the Changeling Queen can still be killed by the Veteran in this mode.

### Culture of Fear

The town morale will be dropped to 30% when this mode is active from the start of the game.

### Short Orders

Only a maximum of two townsponies will be allowed to do their duty every night in this mode.

### Make It Personal

A 'Special Mode', this mode tells an alternative story where the player plays as one of the townsponies (selected at random) instead of Captain Silvermane, taking charge as the town leader. You will have your own particular role and your own action counts as an order. The catch is that you are as vulnerable as the other townsponies, and when the antagonists kill you, the game instantly ends.

## Strategy

### Villains United

* This challenge mode is not much different than normal play. Almost all strategies that work for a casual game should work for this mode too, as long as they don't rely too much on random events.

### Nothing To Report

* When this mode is active, the Reporter is as good as useless when looking for Pinkarella. A good substitute will be the Gumshoe. However, make no mistake, the Reporter can still be useful in searching for Changelings and the Town Drunk.
* Be careful when hanging a pony being suspected of being Pinkarella. If the real Nurse is still alive and the game is not too advanced yet, you might want to risk sacrificing another pony to identify their role.

### Femme Fatale

* A good tactic will be frequently activating the Nurse as the townspony is prevented from being murdered by the Consort.
* It might be worth it to activate the Veteran more often and/or earlier to protect them from harm, as they're more likely to die when not alerting.
* In this mode, if you ever use the Party Pony for anything, you can be sure that any and all roleblocked ponies were the ones you ordered them to visit. You could try using that quirk to discover roles.

### Low Horsepower

* This gamemode can be either not much harder than casual play or completely ruin your game plans depending on the ponies that die at the start. If you really want to, you can always restart the game if you lost the ponies you wanted the most.
* This removes a bit of the guessing and mystery from the start of the game as you'll already know two roles from the start. You can use that to your advantage when issuing orders to the Gumshoe and Reporter.
* You might benefit from alerting the Veteran earlier on as they're more likely to get targeted.

### Bulletproof

* Although the description lists that the Queen and Pinkarella are immune to the Veteran's alert, due to a **bug**, they can still die regardless, and for that reason you can use the Veteran as you normally would.

### Culture of Fear

* In a similar manner to Villains United, this doesn't affect the game by much, though you still need to pay more attention to what you're doing if you don't want to risk a pony commiting suicide.

### Short Orders

* This challenge mode forces you to use your available orders more wisely. During most of the time, the only ponies you should ever need working are the Gumshoe and the Reporter. That being said, you might have to juggle your ponies if you find yourself needing to protect a certain role. In that case, use the Gumshoe over the Reporter.

### Make It Personal

* It is best to send out the Bodyguard, Jailor or Nurse to protect you from being a victim.
* Since you have one of the townsponies' roles from the start, you can command your Gumshoe and Reporter more efficiently. Keep that in mind while playing.
* There is an easy and reliable way to beat Make It Personal (and all other challenge modes combined too) if you get lucky enough to roll Veteran as your role on the start of the game. Although quite ruthless, it's in your best interest to get as many ponies killed as quickly as you can, regardless of whether they're a townspony or a changeling/Pinkarella. Put the Nurse/Bodyguard/Jailor on yourself every night and tell the Spellcaster to kill somebody. If you get an evil character, that's good, and if you get a townspony, that's also good as you'll have two ponies die (This will all be explained later on). At day you can choose to randomly hang a pony, but be careful not to end up hitting The Mule. Once the game gets advanced enough and the Nurse, Bodyguard or Jailor die and you can't get protection otherwise, go on alert. By that point the Changelings won't have much of a choice but to visit you, being killed rather quickly, and after that you can hang any evil ponies that are left while having two more alerts in case you make a mistake, securing a win rather easily.