I
don't know if better the devil you know since the devil you don't
will at least let you plead ignorance. Pony Island is a retro-styled
subversive/deconstructive game with platforming and puzzle elements.
The creator took great care in designing what I shall refer to
furthermore as traps - unexpected turns and diversions stylised to
appear as genuine glitches, system faults - in such a way that they
fully use the medium. Pony Island could've have been a book or a
movie, but it wouldn't have quite the same impact - it was always
destined to be game.
This
is another game whose narrative is the strong point and one fears
giving too much of it away. Here though, as opposed to Undertale, I
think the narrative is a collection of cool moments held up by spit
and blue tac, in the end it all falls apart. It's a cool little
3-hour story with a really underwhelming finish, much like the main
villain's inspiration.
With
a narrative like Pony Island's I often wonder whether the choice of
medium affected the narrative or the narrative affected the choice of
medium. Generally, that's probably a very easy question: they wanted
to make a game so they thought about cool things to do with game
narrative. Here we have a narrative that's made directly to mess with
you, the game is literally playing against you.
There
are a number of really bold moves here, the game pretends to crash
briefly with a genuine Windows window popping up claiming it has
stopped working; on the contrary, it is working extremely well. One
of the game endings includes a friendly NPC asking you to delete the
game and free his soul! The game literally tells you to delete it and
stop playing.
There
are two core mechanics, the puzzles and the pony jumping, both of
which are functional and just varied enough. Both show clear
progression from basic single-mechanic functions to more complex
challenges, the puzzles in particular with some more complicated
timing patterns later on. There is no game over screen and should you
fail a level, you instantly restart which works well with the
narrative of the player character being on hell but none of the
levels are difficult enough for the player to truly feel that way and
that lack of challenge comes from the simplicity.
Ultimately,
Pony Island is a really cool short indie game and a great start to
2016 but it's overall narrative falls flat. Now, I'm basing this on a
single play through, so maybe some months down the line I will be
writing about it again, proclaiming it to be the second coming of
Undertale. It's clever, it's funny, it's self aware – it's kind of
like a child.
Pony
Island is: A smart-ass seven year old that you wanna clock in the jaw
but can't because rules/10
