It features a cast of ungulate characters fighting each other to find a champion worthy of gaining a magical key that will protect their world from predators.

After Hasbro sent Mane6 a cease and desist letter, Mane6 discarded the assets tied to the show, while keeping some of the fundamental gameplay factors to create the new title Them's Fightin' Herds.

A separate effort created by fans not associated with the Mane6 team released their Fighting Is Magic: Tribute Edition of the original Mane6 My Little Pony-inspired game in early 2014.

[6] Players who own BlazBlue: Central Fiction, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 or Skullgirls on Steam will unlock special cosmetics for their in-game lobby avatars inspired by characters from those games.

Them's Fightin' Herds is a fighting game based on sapient four-legged hoofed creatures from the world of Fœnum, which is being threatened by the return of carnivorous beasts known as the Predators.

There are six playable characters—Arizona the cow (voiced by Tara Strong),[9] Velvet the reindeer (Tia Ballard),[9] Paprika the alpaca (Marieve Herington),[9] Oleander the unicorn (Alexa Kahn)[9] who can summon a demonic being known as "Fred" (Keith Ferguson), Pom the sheep (Allie Moreno)[9] and Tianhuo the longma (Kay Bess)[9]—each with different fighting move sets and unique movement options such as flight, short hops, double jumps, or air dashes.

[9] A seventh playable character, pirate goat Shanty (Afi Ekulona),[11] was also released as downloadable content due to the crowdfunding campaign reaching its stretch goals; she was later included in the base roster for all versions.

If the player loses during the third phase of Oleander's fight, the same thing happens, but Fred does not knock Arizona out and talk about how she is ruining his plans.

The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic series, while aimed at young girls and their parents, has drawn a large number of adult fans from 15 to 35, typically male, who are often referred to as "bronies".

The show's characters, Flash animations, adventure-themed stories, and occasional pop cultural references are considered other draws for the older audience.

[18] Anukan didn't expect anything to come from these images, but found that at discussion boards, fans were postulating how the various pony characters would translate into fighting games; such as what sorts of moves they would use.

One of these users, Nappy, recognized the potential in realizing a complete game, and began the formation of Mane6, including Anukan, Jay Wright, Lucas Ellinghaus, James Workman, and Prominence.

[18] However, the development team also wanted to include an EX system like the one in Street Fighter IV where pressing two attack buttons at the same time executes a special move.

[18] In another case, Pinkie Pie, a hyperactive pony who is shown to have some fourth wall reality-warping powers in the show, allowed the team to experiment with a wide range of haphazard moves.

They realized they were thinking along the same lines as the professional developers and continue to work more of Pinkie's moves based on Teddie's moveset.

With most fighting games, players can easily identify heads, arms, and legs, and know where to watch for attacks, but the same was not true for the ponies.

[21] Though the game is an unlicensed work of Hasbro's My Little Pony franchise, the Mane6 team did not receive any cease and desist notices from the company until February 8, 2013.

This helped to create a participatory culture that has drawn a broader audience to the show, even going as far as to say they have no intentions of ever filing takedown notices as they see this as "Free Advertising and spreading".

[24] In February 2013, shortly after the 2013 EVO voting selection, Hasbro's lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to the Mane6 team; this was only a few weeks before they had expected to be completed with the initial version of their game.

[25] They obeyed the cease and desist letter, halting all production and removing all assets from their website, while Mane6 attempted to enter legal negotiations with Hasbro.

Using a combination of the Mane6 team's unfinished build and fan-made contributions, this version features all main six characters of the television show as playable, as well as new stages and multiplayer capability.

With no legal option to continue to use the My Little Pony characters, the Mane6 team opted to keep most of their work to date and reworked the game with new art assets, retaining the theme of four-legged creatures.

[25][10] On hearing of the cease and desist, Faust contacted the team, offering to provide some of her time to create new characters for their game,[25][28] and her official involvement with the project was announced at the end of February.

[27] The team accepted her offer; developer Jay Wright noted that "you can't copyright Lauren's distinctive style", and that while the game will still be unique, it will likely still carry the spirit of My Little Pony.

[25] According to Faust, she was happy to provide "my little part to help Mane6 finish up this game in a way that stays true to the spirit of the original—but in a way that can freely be shared".

[30] Lab Zero used an Indiegogo crowd-sourcing effort to gain development funds, and having readily cleared their initial target of $150,000 and with additional stretch goals of new characters and content for their game, included a $725,000 target that would allow Mane6 to use and distribute the Z-Engine for free as part of their new game, and challenged the brony community to help towards that via online donation.

GGPO uses a system called "rollback" that delays the game's response to the user's input slightly, masked by character animations, coupled with predictive behavior to appear to give zero-latency gameplay for players against online opponents.

[47] On November 22, 2023, Mane6 and Modus announced that, following the release of the last season pass character in 2024, the game would be ending active development, with the remaining story chapters being canceled.

The final DLC characters, Baihe and Nidra, were released in February 2024 but the update contained numerous bugs, which also prompted a backlash from players and fans.