Pony Island

Pony Island, man... It's weird, but I think I really like it. It's very meta, and if you don't want me spoiling surprises, just go play it. TLDR, it's short and worth it.

Aaaannnyyway, you boot up this game, and there's problems with the menu straight away. You have to solve a puzzle to fix the menu and get to what you think is the game. A game that's very simple. You're a pony. You're jumping over gates. It's terrible. Then the game creator gets pissed that you don't like their game, and starts throwing more stuff at you, making it more difficult. You start getting messages from someone that's trapped in this game, and SURPRISE BITCH, you're trapped too. They want to help you escape, and to do so, you have to erase three core files of the game.

These are blocked off by puzzles, more pony levels, and a pile of riddle me this. I enjoyed the fact that this game made me scribble down notes over the course of trying to find passwords, clues, and figure things out. I quit at one point when I couldn't figure something out, but I stopped playing maybe 30 seconds before I was like, nah, lemme try one more thing. It's intriguing, and you should definitely resist the urge to look anything up while playing. It's like 2.5 to 3 hours long. Don't cheat yourself.

As you progress, you find special powers hidden away in the code that the creator didn't want you to find. This allows you to get further in the game than they intend, so they have to code up new levels fast, which introduces more "bugs" which you can take advantage of. At one point, they tell you that they're not ready and you should take a break. I actually wanted to take a break about that time, but of course I won't now.

One of my favorite things in this game was how they tricked me at times. The game looks like it crashes at one point, and if you just X out of the modal, the little daemon you were fighting gives you a little wink. If you don't press the right thing, you're sent out to the desktop, and I did think it legit crashed. Probably the best bit of trickery was when one of these daemons asks you a bunch of questions. One of the things you're asked is to say something disgusting. I typed some smack about a jerk I know. At that point, a Steam chat notification pops up from a person I talk to regularly, repeating what I said and loling, asking if I'd been hacked. It definitely had me for a second. I was like, is there some spectate mode on this?! The hell! Good one, Pony Island.

You continue fighting the good fight and get your chance to escape and free all the other trapped souls in one final pony dashing, jumping, and shooting pony lasers level. You lose souls along the way as you get hit, and once you escape, you're told that unless you uninstall the game, the soul that has been helping you will remain trapped.

I had a good time. I deleted my saves without hesitation. What a weird and most excellent game.