Game of the Month #108 (January 2024) - Pony Island

Pony Island is a suspense puzzle game in disguise. You are in limbo, trapped in a malevolent and malfunctioning arcade machine devised by the devil himself. The devil detests having his puzzles solved and poor programming exposed; you will need to think outside the box to proceed and you will be insulted when you do.
How long is Pony Island?
When focusing on the main objectives, Pony Island is about 2½ Hours in length. If you're a gamer that strives to see all aspects of the game, you are likely to spend around 5 Hours to obtain 100% completion.

Interesting game that I need to try out.

I just picked it up and it's so short that I'll probably just beat it later today

Okay first session. Don't expect this to take long:

Beat the 2nd boss and deleted the 2nd core. From what i've seen my character looks like he was a crusader and is now in hell

So yeah i'm like the way the puzzles are set up this is a rather interesting way of getting the puzzles through. They do need a bit too much iterations at time then they should do but yeah decent game. I suspect 1-2 more sessions and i'm done so shouldn't be too long before I finish this game

Alright I just beat Pony Island, I liked it and I can definitely see how the guy who made this would eventually make Inscryption. The gameplay was pretty alright and I thought the puzzles were decent except for one of them near the end. The Daemons were fun, particularly Asmodeus, I fell for the part where one of your friends (Abatage in my case) messages you. Overall it's a short and sweet adventure that was worth all 74 of my cents.

Alright I just beat Pony Island, I liked it and I can definitely see how the guy who made this would eventually make Inscryption. The gameplay was pretty alright and I thought the puzzles were decent except for one of them near the end. The Daemons were fun, particularly Asmodeus, I fell for the part where one of your friends (Abatage in my case) messages you. Overall it's a short and sweet adventure that was worth all 74 of my cents.

I played this game a couple years ago and the moment you spoiler-tagged there blew my mind at the time. lol
It's ingenious.

Very happy that this game won GOTM and people seem to be enjoying it so far.

- Matt

copied from discord

well, I finished the game - and checked a guide to get all the tickets i missed - and I have to say that I definitely liked it overall, but I'm only just teetering across the fence into positive territory... such is my dislike for the "Pony Island" segments and how frustrating they were

I didn't mind the challenge and i really enjoyed the concept of it all getting more and more corrupted, and doing the hacking puzzles to change features/etc, but especially in the later 'pony' levels, the RNG of where and when enemies appeared really got annoying - I haven't told a game to fuck off quite as much as i did with this short little deal

however, yes, thankfully the overall meta worked for me and as much I already knew what was going on and had seen a lot about the game in the past, I still enjoyed working through the 'story' and seeing how it all played out, it's just a shame the 'gameplay' (per se) was pretty meh

the puzzle levels were far too easy, but if the challenege would have been RNG based like the pony levels, then I'm glad they stuck to keeping things simple and as I already stated... the pony levels out-stayed their welcome for me and I could have done with significantly less of them - they didn't feel like they added anything past the first few variations, so having to get through those later levels felt unnecessary and like bad padding to give some length... I dunno... maybe I just need to get good or something...

ultimately though - good little experience and I think an interesting short one to check out... glad I played it

Interesting game that I need to try out.

I'm confused - looks like you already retired it and have about 3 and a half hours in it??

Alright I just beat Pony Island, I liked it and I can definitely see how the guy who made this would eventually make Inscryption. The gameplay was pretty alright and I thought the puzzles were decent except for one of them near the end. The Daemons were fun, particularly Asmodeus, I fell for the part where one of your friends (Abatage in my case) messages you. Overall it's a short and sweet adventure that was worth all 74 of my cents.

That part with Asmodeus was absolutely nuts. I've never seen a game try something like that out with pretending to be a steam friend.

And thats also me done with Pony Island. Yeah that a nifty little game and I liked all the thing sit threw at you. Bit gimmick though if you think about it but the puzzle was decent part and it did a good job throwing things you didn't expect. I don't think you could make the game longer as it but for what it was it was an enjoyable romp. Don't think i'll return to it even though I only got 6 of the 24 tickets

I love games that do weird things like this. Very enjoyable game that I played through in one sitting. Will definitely recommend it to friends.

I'm finally able to participate in a GotM again! I agree with previous comments about how unexpected the messages from Steam friends were. I have to say I fell for all of Asmodeus.exe tricks. He also really got me with the game crashing... Haha I rebooted the game twice wondering what was wrong. This was my favourite boss fight in the game and the reason why I ended up rating it a 7 out of 10.

Playtime: 1h 28m
Notes: 2 Secrets and 7 out of 24 tickets.

Review:
This was a fun little game with devious mechanics. I fell for it a couple of times. I would've rated it lower if the platforming sections would've been more frustrating but luckily I found them to be manageable even if you have to coordinate your clicking really well.

What I liked:
* There are different elements to the game which are fun to explore
* The puzzles made me feel really smart.
* The style and atmosphere of the game fits within the horror genre without being scary.
* It surprised me multiple times.

What I didn't like:
* The music or sometimes lack thereof but the presence of an insistent sound is a bit annoying at times.
* The platforming parts weren't my favourite.

I'm curious about this developer's other games as I haven't played Inscryption yet. I'm looking forward to Pony Island 2 as well now.

Pony Island
Completion January 03, 2024
Main+Extras 2h 42m
Notes 6 tickets
Review
+Unique game that uses meta ability to tell it’s narrative
+Great set of puzzles mixed into the game
+Does not outstay it’s welcome
-It’s platform section can be tedious and repetitive
-While it’s meta nature is great it’s overall narrative is relatively generic
Review:
Pony Island is an interesting take on breaking the meta narrative of a game and it works extremely well when doing this throwing up different ways to break the meta in the game. It’s wrapped in a series of interesting and fun puzzles especially around the completion of games and run of game loops and it is thankfully short as there is possibility this game overstaying it’s welcome. Unfortunately the in game narrative I felt was rather meh compared to it’s meta narrative tricks and the platform section ultimately got tedious
8/10

I played it a while ago and I'm waiting for the sequel to come out.

Finished this a few days ago but I guess I forgot to ever write anything here.

I think I'm a little bit less up on it than the average person. Sure, the presentation is really stellar at first, and some moments, like the ridiculously sick fake Steam message, are really fun to go through the first time, but the gameplay of this one is just never anything special. Just boring puzzle -> pony section that's either super easy or super punishing -> boring puzzle while you wait for something neat to happen. Obviously, it's not really long enough for repetition to become a dealbreaker, but I was seemingly always ready for the next 'cool part' to start.

6/10

Pony Island was pretty good. I liked the meta of it all. I will say I grew tired of the jumping sections by the end of it but I still had fun.

I did play this on Steam Deck as it was marked with the green verified thing. However I think it should have been marked as a yellow playable instead due to all the typing. The game is an 8/10 overall for me.

Just finished the game.

Pros:
Creativity. The friend messaging you part surprised me, almost had me.
Cost less than a buck.

Cons:
Everything else unfortunately.
Didn't enjoy the vague threadbare story.
Found platforming to be frustrating and unfun.
Getting the achievements needed to replay repetitive parts.
Overly simple gameplay for my liking - felt like a kid's browser game.