Ponies are Evil

Pony Island's premise is a clever twist on the kind of "hacking" adventure-slash-visual-novel game that has you investigating and uncovering secrets in a virtual computer environment. The twist is that it's the devil's computer and that he wants you to play his videogame. This actually leads to some interesting theming around both archdemons and cynical game developers.

Unfortunately, it's only got about an hour of content stretched across two or three hours of pacing. Text scrolls slowly; action scenes plod along; unpredictable deaths force tedious retries. The game rarely managed to surprise me, because of how sluggishly it unfolded itself.

And the action, such as it is, really isn't any good. The game's various mechanics consist of point-and-click pixel-hunting, a slow-paced auto-running platformer, and an automatic variant on hacking puzzles (the program counter is always moving).

Despite being a short game overall, Pony Island's neat premise wears out its welcome well before the end.

Better than: Toren
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story
There are a few good tricks up Pony Island's sleeve: I hope they show up in some better games, too.