As his first game, Mullins breaks the mold of what a game is. This type of meta gaming is easy to do wrong. Pony Island walks the line between cringe and profound perfectly. It makes you learn the basics of game development, the different things that can happen during it and the hardships involved. It tells a compelling narrative through its messaging, taking a game and creating an experience that makes you reflect on your own choices.

You’re a guy playing a game in an old, dilapidated building. This abandoned game cabinet has taken the souls of many of its players and it’s up to you to set them. The game itself comes alive and speaks directly to you. Two different entities are influencing you; one wants you to free the souls (or do they) and the other just wants you to never stop playing. Do they have ulterior motives? Well one definitely doesn’t want you to free the souls and it gets in your way by changing levels or extending the length of them entirely. You are able to debug these changes with the help of the other entity to ultimately attempt to destroy the core files for the game so you can set the souls free. It’s a basic depiction of game development that’s gamified in its own way. It’s not difficult, but the puzzles take just the right amount of thinking to solve. Its pacing is its strong suit as the game is only a couple hours long. There are optional collectible tickets hidden in the game for completionists, but that’s not for me. I’m here for an interesting story and that’s what I got.

I enjoyed Pony Island, but I wish I had played it as my first Daniel Mullins game. It’s pretty basic compared to his other works, but I think it was a great first foray into the genre of meta. Games centralized around this idea tend to be pretty cringe, but I think his design philosophy keeps them from falling into that category. They don’t seem to have anything drastic to say, but rather to influence the player to think more about their own choices and why they do the things they do. I’m excited to see what the sequel to this game will do differently now that he has more experience under his belt. If you haven’t played one of his games, definitely give this one a shot, and if you have and you like his other games, just play this one because it’s short and has the signature style his other games perfected.