Pony Island

Pony Island

Steam - World - Title card.

Developer Daniel Mullins Games Publisher Daniel Mullins Games Published 2016-01-04 Platforms Linux, Macintosh, Windows Genres Action, Active puzzle, Comedy, Multi-genre, Platform shooter, Platformer, Programming, Puzzle, Shooter Themes Adventure, Blasphemy, Cartoon, Comedy, Cyberpunk, Religious fiction, Suspense, Surreal Distribution Commercial

Pony Island is a multi-genre action adventure puzzle video game developed and published by Daniel Mullins Games and released on Linux, Macintosh, and Windows on 2016-01-04. The game uses a multi-genre model. Action sequences require you to avoid obstacles and shoot enemies. Puzzle sequences require logical thinking similar to computer programming. And, over all, the game has a mysterious adventure backdrop.

In the game, you play as a person who has unwittingly tried an arcade game called "Pony Island" which was actually created by Lucifer. Your soul becomes trapped in the game, and you're tortured by being forced to play a terribly dull game for eternity. However, by working with another lost soul stuck in the game, you try to corrupt the game's memory so the game will become unplayable. However, Lucifer is also in the game and is trying to stop you.

Personal

Own?	Yes. On Steam.
Won?	Yes. With 11 tickets and 15/20 achievements.
Finished	2017‎-11-07.

I got Pony Island as part of a Humble Bundle, and decided to play it based on the title and screenshots. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Review

7	5	4	6	6

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The story is a lot of fun. I like communicating with in-game actors, trying to crack into secure systems on fake operating systems, and the like.
• The game has a nice challenge without ever becoming annoyingly difficult.
• The action elements, while dull at first, become more complex as you go. This keeps them interesting, but they also never become tedious.
• I love the corruption effects as the game becomes more broken. They are really well-made.
• There is a lot of creepy humor, especially in the Asmodeus battle.
• The programming puzzles are really cool.
• I enjoyed the music quite a bit.
• The hidden tickets adds more life to the game.
• It was really cool seeing the game as Pony Island the way an arcade player would see it. All the deadly monsters are now butterflies and the demon is represented as Jesus, whom you have to kill!

Bad

• The game is too short. I beat it in a single sitting.
• I don't think the programming puzzles were pushed to their full potential. It would have been nice if the designers incorporated other CPU primitives like a stack, flags, interactive branching, etc.
• I know it's purposely meant to have primitive graphics, but even still, they're not that great.
• I didn't like the lost soul's plea for you to delete the game at the end. It made me feel bad about wanting to keep playing.
• Not so much a bad thing, but I wonder how the game would be if you first started playing the cute version of Pony Island before becoming sucked in rather than starting out already in the evil version. Although, this may have been too formulaic.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Screenshots

• 

  The title is but a façade.

• 

  An action sequence.

• 

  A puzzle sequence.

Gallery

• 

  Fan art by the_moski.

• 

  Fan art by Jesse Orange.

• 

  Fan art; artist unknown.

Videos

Longplay - Windows.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no women.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	No character has a clear race.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no clear queer characters.

Links