Pony Island

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JaySevenZero
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Pony Island

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your memories and opinions of Pony Island for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

Friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: 366: Pony Island

Post by Mr Ixolite »

Note: Some spoilers ahead, I suggest anyone curious about the game goes in as blind as possible



By the time I played Undertale, I had been playing games for almost 25 years. It was a total revelation, and revealed a craving I didn't know I had: games about games. This is what made me seek out Pony Island, but even so I was gleefuly surprised by how many rugs it could pull from under me. I had never experienced anything like it, and though you could uncharitably call it a point and click puzzle adventure in fancy clothing, it succesfully crafted the illusion that I was not playing a game, as much as poking around its innards. Plus, the games theme struck a cord with me; I'm embarrased to say it, but I saw a bit of myself in Lucifers handling of the creative process. A refusal to accept constructive criticism of a work, combined with craving the approval of others for said work. The Devil wants you to make a good game people will love, but love it the way he intended, dammit...but the truth is that sometimes you do need someone else to come in and switch the Pony Lasers on.

I find that the Satanic premise, though making for a highly memorable visual identity, doesn't quite gel with the main narrative; If the game badgers you for your soul in exchange for an escape from Pony Islands tedium, isn't Lucifer acknowledging that his game is bad? And if its a digital torture device, wouldn't he want you playing the game in perpetuity? And apparently you died in the distant past, and are now playtesting an arcade machine? Ultimately it is not the "lore" which makes me return to the game, but a quest for the elusive hidden tickets, to see just how much trickery Dan Mullins has hidden away.


3 Word Review: Sympathy For Devil
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Alex79
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Re: 366: Pony Island

Post by Alex79 »

I had literally no interest in this game whatsoever until reading that. I'd assumed it was some game along the lines of Barbie, and couldn't really work out why it was being covered! I'm now interested in playing it!
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: 366: Pony Island

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Pony Island is something I wish we had more of in gaming - a conceptually simple, short-form game that does what it sets outs to do and doesn't overstay its welcome.

While it will inevitably be spoiled in discussion, I think a key to enjoying Pony Island relies on going in blind. Not because it has any particularly shocking plot revelations, but just the way it's structured, I feel like it deliberately goes out of its way to constantly set and subvert your expectations - let me elaborate. When you start the game, you're given no context, you have to figure out what kind of game this is. Okay - it's an endless runner. Then it crashes. So now it's an OS simulator? It never really lets you settle in and get your bearings; you're constantly disoriented. I think if you go into the game knowing exactly what happens and what to expect, it will fundamentally fail to catch you, which makes it a hard sell to anyone who's watched a Let's Play.

I'm definitely a sucker for "what lies beneath" type narratives -- knowing there's something deeper than what's immediately obvious. In a lot of ways, playing through Pony Island reminds me of when I was a kid - we had a sump pump and storage room hidden under the basement stairs, hidden behind the same wood panelling as the rest of the walls. I'd lived in that house for a year or two, had no idea it was there. My dad opened it up, something about checking for silverfish. So in my mind, hearing "fish", I imagined the hole in the floor was not a drainage system, but rather some kind of portal to the ocean, and I'd see whales down there.

Pony Island is exactly that - you start the game knowing nothing other than "I'm staring at an old arcade cabinet," but as the layers slowly reveal themselves and you come to understand not only the antagonist, but just how many layers of code and facade you have to dig through, each time thinking, maybe, "So this is the real game," it might as well be whales in a storage room. I think the developer here has tapped into a certain narrative thread that video games may be uniquely capable of - using your pre-formed expectations and subverting them. You open your front door expecting a foyer, it reveals a car dealership. While this particular game doesn't fully capitalize on the potential at hand, I think it's a brilliant "how to" guide for any enterprising developers who'd like to build upon it, and that's deeply exciting.

As a self-contained experience though, I think it's more proof of concept than a true classic. Certainly notable for the sake of history, but maybe not as interesting as it potentially could have been.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: 366: Pony Island

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Alex79uk wrote: April 5th, 2019, 9:42 pm I had literally no interest in this game whatsoever until reading that. I'd assumed it was some game along the lines of Barbie, and couldn't really work out why it was being covered! I'm now interested in playing it!
Hey man, even Crystal's Pony Tale - which is very much along the lines of Barbie - has its spooky moments.
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Simonsloth
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Re: Our next podcast recording (20.4.19) - 366: Pony Island

Post by Simonsloth »

(Think I’ve missed the window but I’ll post something short anyway)

Pony Island reminds me of my childhood. Not that my upbringing has another to do with ponies, jumping or beelzebub. The game hearkens back to a time where Hollywood loved to tell us if you read a book in a creepy attic or played a game in the middle of the night (past your bedtime tut) the your actions might have far reaching consequences. The never ending story, wargames, the last starfighter, tron etc. There are plenty of examples but these spring to mind. To me they were fascinating and I always dreamed of this happening to me.

So on a cold, blustery winters night I found myself snowed in, trapped in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. I stumbled across an old dusty desktop PC running windows 3.1 and decided unwisely perhaps to click on the single icon named pony Island. The lights were off with only the dim glow of the aging screen for company. As I played I i rekindled that 80s magic and had this odd sneaking suspicion that I was affecting the world as we knew it.

Ok so it in reality it was nippy, I was with my wife and son, there was a bit of frost, I had a sat nav, a laptop and I am an adult who is aware that video games are fiction. However it gave me that feeling of being one of those 80s characters I was jealous of. It’s a rare feeling.

Pony is the quintessential concept game pitching it’s tent in the same camp as frog fractions and undertale. Similar to those game it delights in toying with you, altering the mechanics and gameplay subtly then radically. Unlike say Frog fractions which does similar deceptive tricks that felt wacky this feels far more sinister.

Overall It’s an enjoyable, interesting one-off experience which I will not go back to. Once you know the tricks up it’s sleeve the magic is largely lost but, they are, very clever tricks indeed.
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