Pony Island (PC)
In Pony Island, you play as a small white pony out for a run. While the running is handled automatically, you need to be ready to jump whenever it reaches a hurdle, but if you do hit one, you’ll just be set back a bit to try again. Once you have cleared enough hurdles though, all you need to do is offer your soul to the literal devil to keep playing, because the programmer behind Pony Island is, in fact, Satan.
The PC game we know as Pony Island is actually a video game about getting trapped playing that deceptively named and overly simplistic arcade game made by the devil, the experience more about solving puzzles to alter the game’s code and get around Lucifer’s fairly weak attempts to force you to hand over you immortal soul. The idea that Pony Island is some colorful game about ponies is one that doesn’t even really last past the title screen, the black and white graphics already unnerving before the satanic imagery starts appearing and even the Steam store page outright tells you the premise about the devil being behind the game, the title Pony Island more an amusing moniker to make telling others about the game sound strange rather than it being some form of deceptive marketing. You will still find yourself playing the running game regularly over the course of the short experience, but the real focus is actually trying to overcome Lucifer’s poor game design ideas.
Rather quickly, it’s not hard to see that the devil himself here is a pretty clear critique of the kind of game designer who obstinately clings to their own ideas rather than consider the player experience. The devil does not take you circumventing the way he built Pony Island, getting frustrated when you find ways to avoid obnoxiously hard and practically unwinnable scenarios or skip an absurdly long period where you’d have to grind the same stage over and over to level up. The devil is a whiny egotist who seems to put barriers in your way partly to get you to give up your soul and partly because he’s a short-sighted and unimaginative creator, his manipulative tactics only really seeming extreme because he asks for your life rather than your cash. To overcome his deliberately annoying design decisions, you’ll need to dive into the code, Pony Island more of a puzzle game and one that doesn’t require any coding knowledge to actually engage with.
When you come to one of the roadblocks the devil put into Pony Island, you’ll need to click on a portal to pop open a coding screen where you can start interfering with the game’s design. Rather than needing to type anything or decipher the coding language, you instead are doing what amounts to a movement puzzle where a key will move downward automatically but you need to redirect it to get the desired results. The words on screen aren’t irrelevant, some are lightly veiled hints or instructions while others materially effect the state of the puzzle. For example, you may need to get the key to the end with a certain number value, so you need to make sure it crosses over parts of the code that increase that number. To do so requires you placing a set of arrows in the proper spot, moving the key across the correct parts while avoiding reset traps, but eventually the movement symbols can be placed in more interesting ways. Rather than just laying out a singular path to follow, you’ll later have to adapt the design on the fly, the player pulling out the arrows and causing the code execution to freeze up until you’ve rearranged them as you please. With the player eventually able to do things like split the key or cause it to loop over the same pieces of code, the programming provides the more involved form of action in Pony Island, but the running does evolve as a result since your code entry will materially reshape the experience as you try to outsmart the devil.
As you get deeper into Pony Island and adjust the code more and more, the running sections get more features. You’ll soon find enemies you’ll need to take out with a laser attack you hack in, and a glide becomes key to clearing gaps Lucifer never wanted you to easily overcome. These segments do always feel a bit basic however. Even when the game adds some tougher enemies or parts where you need to avoid glitched baddies, it never reaches the point it’s really thrilling. It can be interesting enough when you’re easily clearing the pony levels and trying out the latest feature you added in, but should you lose a level, it can feel a bit tedious to try it again even though they’re very short and not that difficult. The automatic running is at a leisurely pace and you’re never really pushed that hard to develop any skills so running back through a place you almost beat is uninteresting and more like a barrier to the more interesting ideas Pony Island puts forth, especially when you start delving into the secret side of the experience.
There are hidden details to be found across many screens in Pony Island, especially when you start exploring the computer system the game is made on beyond just altering the code from time to time. Some are small little interactions that earn you a ticket as a sign of your cleverness, others can be their own little games or hint at the identity of the person you’re playing as. It adds an intriguing underbelly to an experience that already plays with the idea of playing a game about playing a game on a computer where you alter a computer, and since the main experience probably only takes about 2 hours to see through, it’s really not that hard to dive back in for anything you missed should you want to explore this extra layer.
THE VERDICT: A short but intriguing experience, Pony Island is all about the excitement in seeing how you’ll circumvent the devil’s bad game design ideas next. The code puzzles offer the most engaging gameplay side of things once they start requiring some deeper consideration to overcome, but the pony running segments can let the game down at times since they’re rather plain and straightforward even when you start cheating in cool new powers. The secrets and the fun twists found in the narrative are what make this game memorable though, because while the pony parts are deliberately unimaginative as the devil embodies the worst type of game developer, the ways this game changes during your battle in the machine against him takes on many creative forms worth seeing.
And so, I give Pony Island for PC…
A GOOD rating. Pony Island, as the devil designed it, would be a rather awful game, and sadly you can still feel the sting of his unambitious or sometimes deliberately obstructive choices during the sections you’re required to play it. They are mostly short and can be swiftly pushed through with some satisfying moments where you break free of his choices for a bit, but even in this rather quick adventure it can feel like you spend a bit too much time as the pony doing similar things. If you can clear most levels in your first run it won’t be much of a bother though and it provides important narrative context, the devil being a whiny creator who can’t handle criticism or player agency making for an amusing antagonist. The arcade game Pony Island is the battleground for you two, and it extending out into the code and the operating system makes for a more engaging play experience as well as one that makes the fight more creative than if he was just some video game boss. Exploring the in-game computer, figuring out the puzzles, and seeing the imaginative new routes needed to overcome the devil’s new ideas on how to change his game keep your interest, especially since the devil does reconfigure Pony Island a great deal even if the running never really evolves enough to overcome his flawed conceptual starting point. More time spent exploring ways you can overcome his designs or more coding puzzles that add in new variables could make the game last longer and better balance out the plain running sections, but Pony Island was probably wise to make it a short experience so nothing outstays its welcome and you can better see Satan’s breakdown rather than dragging it out. The secrets feel like the right compromise, giving you reason to linger a little longer and sometimes a deeper reward than just a ticket for taking the time to figure out a special interaction.
Amusingly, while the name is the more obvious idea being subverted, the concept of a demonic video game is even being circumvented in Pony Island. The devil isn’t a terrifying force really, more a lousy programmer who takes critique harshly, and his game’s failings try to get by on the excuse that you just need to get better or play more rather than it having fundamental flaws. It’s not a scary game, it’s not a cute game, and while it has a dour presentation from a mix of its old-fashioned graphics and the fact there are literal demons involved, it remains more approachable for most than a cute kids game or dark demonic horror might be. The coding is just an aesthetic for its puzzle format, Pony Island’s deceptions almost always in the player’s favor to provide them a nice swift experience that brings laughs, good puzzle logic, and even a surprisingly solid soundtrack.