Pony Island
- December 7, 2014
- Daniel Mullins
- 3h median play time
Sharp, multilayered satire that remembers to be a game even as it makes fun of us for playing.
Get on Steam
Get on itch.io Store"Pony Island" is a unique indie game that traps players in a corrupted arcade machine. They must navigate through malware, minigames, and puzzle-solving to uncover the dark truth behind the game. The narrative unfolds through text messages, hacking segments, and eerie encounters with a demonic force ratcheting up the tension. This game is a mind-bending trip through a digital hellscape that twists the concept of a simple pony game on its head.
Reviews
- story1,901 mentions
- 39 % positive mentions
- 57 % neutral mentions
- 4 % negative mentions
- gameplay1,660 mentions
- 30 % positive mentions
- 60 % neutral mentions
- 11 % negative mentions
- funny732 mentions
- 98 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 2 % negative mentions
- music564 mentions
- 63 % positive mentions
- 35 % neutral mentions
- 2 % negative mentions
- graphics475 mentions
- 33 % positive mentions
- 64 % neutral mentions
- 3 % negative mentions
- atmosphere194 mentions
- 54 % positive mentions
- 46 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
- grinding164 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 5 % neutral mentions
- 95 % negative mentions
- replayability164 mentions
- 16 % positive mentions
- 71 % neutral mentions
- 13 % negative mentions
- emotional64 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
- stability48 mentions
- 4 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 96 % negative mentions
- ads8 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
- character development6 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 67 % neutral mentions
- 33 % negative mentions
- optimization4 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Critic Reviews
Pony Island Review
Pony Island is clever, creative and veritably ludicrous. It's not heavy on mechanics, and puzzles can slow down the experience, but its satanic tendencies and cultural observations endures far beyond its prompt closure. Neither for, nor about ponies.
81%Pony Island Review (PC)
Pony Island is a small game that will never manage to get the audience of an AAA release, but in many ways this game is more engaging than plenty of the big launches of last fall because it features some truly innovative moments and can deliver a narrative that is disturbing and interesting to the end. I appreciate the fact that the various gameplay mechanics, from the platforming to the code tweaking, very rarely overstay their welcome and are used just enough to make progress challenging and to keep the player engaged mechanically as well as from a story standpoint. Pony Island never frustrates and is rarely mean to the player or to the games it parodies, despite the fact that it is being dominated by a sense that evil is driving the action behind the scenes, and I often stopped while playing to try and guess where the action was going (the end still came as a complete surprise). Every player who liked titles like The Stanley Parable or the recent crop of experiences that ask the player to hack code will derive pleasure from the mechanics, and the story is atmospheric and interesting enough for any video game fan. I like the feeling of surprise that creator Daniel Mullins has managed to make integral to his title, and I hope that, despite the easy-to-gloss-over title, it manages to generate enough sales to allow him to express his creativity in other video games.
85%Pony Island Review
Pony Island is a punk rock experiment in storytelling and game design that delights in toying with the player.
90%
