Pony Island

Pony Island is officially described as a "suspense puzzle game in disguise". At the centre is an action game called Pony Island. It is a simple 2D side-scrolling game where the player uses the left mouse button to make a pony jump to clear gates as it moves forward by itself. As the game breaks down, the player slowly delves deeper into the game that turns out to be an arcade machine devised by a sinister force. The game Pony Island is a recurring theme that returns in many different forms, with different protagonists, colours and enemies, but also improved abilities such as wings to float in the air and a laser to destroy creatures.

The player has to investigate the computer running the game, revealing secrets by manipulating items, text chatting with the creator of the game as well as an entity that wants to free the trapped souls, browsing documents and programs, logging into different accounts and so on. This is the adventure aspect of the game, which is largely linear, but requires the player to interact with the interface and the many errors and code in unusual ways to progress, often deliberately breaking game mechanics.