00:00:03.06 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video game deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it, and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show, one of the hosts of One Hour One Decision, 1H1D, and Pony Enthusiast. Welcome back, Chris. 00:00:28.41 Chris Hello, Dave. How are you doing, man? I'm excited to talk about this game and excited to come back as well. 00:00:35.84 Chris So this is great. 00:00:36.25 Dave Yeah, of course. Yeah. For, uh, for a long time listeners, Chris was a guest on the episode about the forgotten city. That's the name of that game, right? 00:00:44.29 Chris Yes. Yep. 00:00:44.97 Dave The forgotten city. I want to say the forbidden city, the forgotten city. 00:00:46.08 Chris Yeah. 00:00:48.55 Dave It's a really good game despite me flubbing the, uh, the title. 00:00:48.68 Chris It's good. 00:00:52.29 Dave Uh, but Chris was the guest on that episode. That's a fun, uh, fun story and stuff. So maybe you go check that episode out, but it's great to have you back, man. 00:01:00.18 Chris Yeah, man, thanks for having me on. And thanks for bringing this game to me, ah to to in front of me, because I was really surprised. I've never tried a David Mullins game, so I'm excited to talk about it. 00:01:13.63 Dave Yeah, absolutely. So we do have quite a special game for everybody today. 00:01:16.04 Chris Daniel, Mullins. 00:01:18.03 Dave It is Pony Island, and Pony Island is an arcade adventure game developed and published by Daniel Mullins Games for PC in 2016. And if this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thank you for stopping by. I appreciate you clicking on a new podcast. Here's how spoilers work for today's episode. A Pony Island is a special game that is going to stretch and challenge the spoiler policy on the podcast. But as always, we will go ah no story spoilers for a while. So if you have not played Pony Island, we're gonna talk about the game. We're gonna talk about what it's like to play the game. um We'll set up the story, things like that. This is one of those games that people say like, the less you know about it, 00:02:02.37 Dave the better. And I don't necessarily agree with that in most cases, I think it's fine to talk about what the game plays like in Pony Island because you are playing a game. But it's a short game. And it is a game that is full of surprises, we'll say. So it may not be the worst one to go play it, you can buy it for like 99 cents, and then Uh, you know, it takes a couple hours and then come back and listen. Otherwise, don't worry. We're not going to spoil the big stuff that happens until the spoiler section. And you can check down in the show notes for a timestamp for when the spoilers will start for pony Island. So, uh, what is pony Island? We have elevator pitches here. I say pony Island is an experimental game within a game, uh, that kind of put Daniel Mullins on the map. Chris, what would you say? 00:02:52.83 Chris Yeah. Um, if you like the Chrome dino jumping game and you like fourth wall breaking and puzzle games, this might be the game for you. 00:03:02.54 Dave Yeah, that's true. I do love the Chrome Dino game. That's a favorite of mine. 00:03:07.66 Chris Yeah, it's, it's, it's a great time sink for sure. 00:03:10.73 Dave Yeah, saved me, saved me when the internet went down, saved me when I was an elementary school teacher and just needed to kill 10 minutes. We just have a little ah contest with the kids to see who could get the high score on the Chrome dinosaur game. 00:03:25.85 Chris Yeah, I mean, I guess if they got Chromebooks and stuff too, why not? Right. So. 00:03:29.30 Dave Yeah, yeah. ah So Pony Island, I played on PC. To my knowledge, it's still only available on PC. ah Two and a half hours to beat. I played it entirely on Twitch. And if I remember, I will put the video of that stream on my YouTube channel. ah it It was a fun game. I think people enjoyed going along for the ride on that stream. 00:03:51.06 Chris Yeah. 00:03:51.07 Dave How about you, Chris? 00:03:52.98 Chris Uh, I clearly, uh, took almost double your time. I took four hours to complete this game. I don't know where I took that long, but I think at one point I was trying to get all the tickets and I guess we'll talk about that a little bit later. 00:04:09.16 Dave Yeah. 00:04:10.69 Chris And then I just kind of gave up and I was like, all right, screw it. Let's just get to the end. And that's kind of what happened. 00:04:14.56 Dave Yeah, there are collectibles. So like I can see this game, you know, I can see spending a little bit of extra time in here if you want to get all that stuff. 00:04:17.32 Chris Correct. 00:04:22.88 Dave So ah we always start the episodes out by talking about our histories with the game and with the developer, I suppose now that Daniel Mullins since Inscryption came out, kind of blew up a little bit. 00:04:34.61 Dave So ah Chris, have you ever played a game by Daniel Mullins before? ah When I gave you a list of possible games to come on the podcast, you picked Pony Island. So what was it that made you want to play this? 00:04:47.20 Chris Um, it just looked really weird. Um, and also I've never played a Daniel Mullins game before and it was fairly cheap. And I was like, cool. I'm, I'm, I'm good with cheap games that potentially are really good. 00:04:59.22 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:04:59.64 Chris I heard good things about Inscryption and, um, You know, you pitch you pitch gave me those choices, like you said, and I was like done Pony Island. Let's do it and see where it is, because this is kind of his like beginning of where he kind of took off. 00:05:13.64 Dave Yeah. 00:05:14.35 Chris And I was really excited to try that out. So, you know, let's do it. 00:05:16.95 Dave Yeah, only has a, so Daniel Mullins has a bunch of games on itch, but only three games on Steam. And this is the first one on Steam. So it's not the first game he's ever made, of course, but it is the first full release like this. 00:05:31.37 Chris Mm hmm. 00:05:32.06 Dave ah So for me personally, this is my first time playing this game. um I managed to avoid all spoilers aside from the fact that this is one of those games that people get really cagey about if you like, You're like, oh, Pony Island. They're like, well, did you play it? OK, you didn't play it. Can't say anything. It's one of those games. 00:05:49.99 Chris Right. 00:05:51.28 Dave So I knew that. But ah my introduction to Daniel Mullins was an Inscryption, which I love. 00:05:56.54 Chris Okay. 00:05:57.24 Dave A Former episode on the podcast about Inscryption. Quite a long episode with John from Gaming in the Wild. Good conversation, though. So another one you can go check out in the back catalog. But I loved Inscryption. So in that kind of like, maybe curious, like, OK, let me go check out Pony Island. And now maybe I'll go check out the hex after this and complete the trilogy. 00:06:19.21 Chris Yeah. 00:06:22.55 Dave And then ah semi recently, as we're recording this, there is the announcement of the Pony Island sequel that's going to come out probably 2025, I'm guessing. 00:06:29.11 Chris Yeah. 00:06:32.24 Dave So ah what better time than now to try Pony Island and 00:06:36.77 Chris Absolutely. 00:06:37.84 Dave ah to get into our opening thoughts here at the beginning. um I enjoyed my time with this. I think part of it was that community thing of like playing this on Twitch with people in the chat and things like that. 00:06:49.51 Dave um i I kind of feel like, so for these games, you know, quote, these games, these games that do meta things, right? Like Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale and OneShot and Inscryption. um games that are like this. I kind of feel like the first one you play is always going to hit the hardest. Like, I don't think a game like this that does the same kind of trick will ever hit as hard as the first one, which for me was Doki Doki Literature Club. 00:07:09.77 Chris Okay. 00:07:20.59 Dave ah That kind of blew my head because I was like, oh games can do this shit. Okay um But then like as you play more and more of these you're like, okay, it's this again It's this is the sixth game I've played that does these things so like that Impact and I believe Pony Island came out before all of the games that I just mentioned Maybe I think or like very similar time frames so 00:07:41.90 Chris Mm hmm. Maybe. yeah 00:07:48.12 Dave Without that shock value. I think this game lost a tiny bit But I do think that it was an entertaining ride ah the gameplay is super simple, but I did enjoy it and i'm Kind of the thing that like made that up like so I didn't have the surprise factor But the thing that made it up is I think this game is really funny and I didn't know that this was gonna be a funny game So that was a nice surprise 00:07:53.11 Chris yeah 00:08:13.08 Chris Yeah. And for me, I like the same thing. I had no idea what to expect with this game. 00:08:21.07 Dave Yeah. 00:08:21.10 Chris I knew it was going to be weird. i didn't I didn't realize it was going to do a lot of the fourth wall breaking. And um it's funny because you talk about how Inscryption kind of watered this down a little bit for yourself. 00:08:36.16 Dave Kind of. 00:08:36.21 Chris For me, like the last time I've kind of had this like fourth wall breaking really was like Metal Gear Solid 2. 00:08:45.45 Dave Oh, yeah, yeah. 00:08:48.71 Chris And the thing is, I did play Doki Doki for a little bit. I didn't get to the part where it started to do all the weird stuff. So I don't like it so i can't I can't use that as an example. But um yeah. like And that in that way, it was I was super like happy about it because I like when games try to mess with you. And like I feel like there needs to be more games that do do that, but like maybe in subtle ways and stuff that they can figure out how to mess with the player. I like this. This seems like it would fit perfectly like in a horror game or something like that. 00:09:22.04 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:09:22.31 Chris um But I guess in a way, there are some horror elements to it because there's like good versus evil Satan and stuff like that here, but you know, that's that. 00:09:33.62 Dave Yeah. 00:09:33.69 Chris But yeah, but that was that. like i I was just like also, 00:09:37.92 Dave Yeah. 00:09:40.59 Chris blown away by just the game design in general because it's so simple, but it just layers itself on top of each other that you're like, you feel like, okay, I'm making progress and I like understanding the mechanics as I'm going through it. And I was like, this is cool. 00:09:57.18 Dave yeah 00:09:58.09 Chris like it's. It's very simple, like you said, but it is also just satisfying in that way too. 00:10:05.31 Dave Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, one question for you before we move into the next section, uh, on one H one D you do the, uh, will you keep playing after one hour? 00:10:16.18 Chris Yeah. 00:10:16.27 Dave So would you have kept playing after the first hour? 00:10:20.95 Chris Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100% of whatever. 00:10:22.16 Dave Yeah. Nice. Okay. Well, there we go. 00:10:24.80 Chris I mean, I play this on one stream too. So like, just like you, and but clearly a lot longer than you did. 00:10:27.95 Dave Yeah. 00:10:31.62 Chris But yeah, like I was , I was really in it ah to do to do just see what happens at the end of it. So yeah. 00:10:40.30 Dave Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to put a pin in that we're going to listen to a bit of music from Pony Island. And when we come back, we are going to give a very brief story set up, but we'll talk about some of the other things that are going on in Pony Island. 00:10:57.22 Dave So Pony Island begins as your character starts an arcade machine for a fictional game within the game called Pony Island. So this game is called Pony Island, and inside Pony Island, you're playing a game called Pony Island. So ah if you're like me, and I think the game makes you do this, but if you're like me, you always click the options first when you start a new game, and this is where the game kind of sets the tone with you. ah for And by the way, I'm not saying anything else about what happens in the story. Once you start playing Pony Island, the game within the game, you start to see what's actually going on, where the surprises start to roll in. ah But I think that this options menu at the beginning 00:11:41.57 Dave really sets the tone for the jokes, the ah kind of meta elements to the game. It's a lot of fun. So you can go in, you see your standard options. You know you check your anti-aliasing. There's an option for advanced RNG. There's an option for a free ticket. And if you click it, you get an arcade ticket out of the machine. And those are your collectibles in the game. And then there's a bunch of other weird options like, ah do you want to turn on or off the cheerful facade? Do you want to turn on or off pony physics? And there's one that's just a picture of a snowman and you can click or unclick that. ah But what you actually need to do is you need to click the option in the options menu that says fix start menu. And then that will allow you to start the game from the beginning. ah So when you start that, 00:12:40.28 Dave You get a quick tutorial for how the puzzles work. They're kind of like this coding logic based puzzles. You get a tutorial for that. ah And then the game loads and ah the loading bar is progressing across the screen, ah but it gets stuck. You have to do a kind of coding puzzle to fix it. And then the game begins, the weirdness begins. 00:12:59.65 Chris Mm hmm. 00:13:03.79 Dave We'll put a pin in that for now, ah but This introduction, I think like so when you see a lot of these games that we mentioned, like Undertale or one shot or Inscryption, they take a while to get to this like weird meta type stuff. Pony Island hits you with it right away, like within the first five to 10 minutes. 00:13:24.33 Chris Yeah. 00:13:27.33 Chris hundred percent Yeah, I and I'm I'm totally for that because you know, sometimes the build up like that almost like Quentin Tarantino waiting for the bomb to go off under the table kind of thing can get a little tiring um and and and you're just you just want you just want it to happen like 00:13:32.36 Dave Yeah. 00:13:49.53 Chris The philosophy of my podcast is if you can't grab me in the first hour, it's not worth my time. And there's so many games out there, you've got to hit you got hit me in that first hour. Otherwise, it's just it's just not worth it. 00:14:00.68 Dave Yeah. 00:14:02.20 Chris And this game was like, he hit it right there like and I was like, I'm in. like This is just so weird and quirky. I'm like, okay, this is very cool. I'm gonna see what's up with it. 00:14:13.56 Dave Yeah Yeah, and you can see it right from the beginning, you get a sense of this game's sense of humor, which I think, again, is really funny. 00:14:19.82 Chris Yeah. 00:14:21.79 Dave And again, I always compliment games that are funny because I think it's really hard to make funny games. like It's really easy for 00:14:27.50 Chris Yeah. 00:14:30.23 Dave games to come off as try hardy like fucking like Borderlands or something like that, which I I Borderlands is one of the least funny things I think I've ever seen ah because it's trying so hard to be funny. 00:14:35.27 Chris Yes. 00:14:43.55 Dave And this one just has a nice kind of relaxed, very, ah again, meta, but cool sense of humor. And I enjoyed that. And it persists through the entire game with characters that you meet, places that you go and then like the types of jokes that this game makes. 00:14:59.69 Chris Right. 00:14:59.71 Dave Um, they're not, they're not like loud and in your face jokes. It's just like pretty, uh, pretty quiet and understated, but funny. 00:15:08.00 Chris Yeah, for sure. And like, even though the dialogue was fairly simple, I'd say it's still like you can make a connection with that, that other person on the other side of it. And I was like, All right, that makes sense. 00:15:21.25 Dave Yeah. 00:15:22.01 Chris I was cool with it. So 00:15:25.15 Dave Yeah, um and then there is one other thing about the story that I wanted to just like introduce here and we'll dive into it in the spoiler section here. But one thing that I had wondered, because I kind of knew in my heart, I knew Pony Island was a quote, one of these games, you know, it's a game with surprises for you. And so sometimes if you have something like this that gives that shock value, you start to wonder like, is that all that's here? 00:15:55.15 Dave Is it all shock value? Is there substance to it too? 00:15:56.76 Chris The um Yeah. 00:15:58.07 Dave Or is it a one-trick pony that you'll never appreciate after the first time you know you get that shock? And Pony Island, in my opinion, is not like that at all. There is substance, there is ah there are themes behind the story in this game. And one of the themes that I just want to bring up is this a meta textual narrative about people playing games and people making games and the kind of insecurities that creators can have about the things that they make. 00:16:26.25 Chris Right. 00:16:32.60 Dave and won't say too many more details about that, but I did think that this was a really interesting thing to weave into all of the jokes and all of the surprises that the game has for you. I think that this is pretty cool and it was unexpected. 00:16:50.32 Chris Yeah, for sure. And um it was just, I don't know, like the fact that ah you you kind of hit it on the head. It was like a one trick pony, but it is like the fact that it is about a pony and the idea that you're playing a game that is essentially an endless runner or like a chrome dino game. 00:17:12.93 Dave Yeah. 00:17:13.87 Chris But there's more to it and it's and it's ah it's crazy. I would love to have a conversation with Daniel Mullins, and like just to understand how he layered all these things together to come to this idea. like what was the What was the genesis of this? you know and it would be fascinating to you like to really hear but hear him talk about this game.. 00:17:38.34 Dave Yeah, absolutely. 00:17:38.78 Chris yeah 00:17:39.02 Dave And you brought it up, so we'll go right into talking about the gameplay. ah There's three main kinds of modes of gameplay. The first one is this endless runner game, Pony Island. 00:17:49.27 Chris Yeah. 00:17:49.44 Dave ah The second are the puzzles, the kind of coding logic type puzzles, and then all the connective stuff in between. And we'll focus mostly on the endless runner and the coding puzzles. And they're simple. 00:18:01.54 Chris Yeah. 00:18:01.53 Dave But part of it, I think, is since we do have this kind of narrative theme about making games. ah What's one of the simplest types of games that you could make, I think? A platformer, an endless runner, something like that seems to be like the first type of game that people might experiment with making. So that's what we have here. We have an endless runner, it's called Pony Island, um where you you you know you run, you jump over trees, eventually you get an attack and 00:18:27.94 Chris Yep. 00:18:35.32 Dave out of maybe the two and a half hours of gameplay, I would say, I don't know, a solid half hour is doing endless runner levels, including ah the ending, which is, um you know, a big one. But this is really simple. 00:18:48.94 Chris Yeah. 00:18:51.74 Chris Mm hmm. 00:18:53.32 Dave So I don't know, I don't play a lot of endless runners. I thought it was fine that it was simple. How did you feel about these? 00:19:00.32 Chris Yeah, I mean, I thought, again, like he just had a good like Daniel Mullins had a good pulse on like when to start introducing new mechanics into the game. 00:19:15.56 Dave yeah 00:19:15.94 Chris And I thought like, you know, you're just kind of lulled into this false sense of security with, oh, you're just playing an endless endless runner. And The fact of the matter is like there's much more to it and then you like you know stuff happens as we'll talk about in the spoiler wall. like This is the game. This is the kind of game that is just so frustrating to kind of talk about unless you talk about the whole thing, and but like I'm trying. 00:19:36.31 Dave Yeah. It can be, yeah. ah so 00:19:41.56 Chris so but like but yeah it's like um I just I thought I thought it was I thought it was great. Like just you, you learn that part. And then he introduces this next part, which I guess you're talking about the coding puzzles and stuff like that. 00:19:55.88 Dave Yeah. 00:19:56.42 Chris And it and it just like um it all just comes together in such a wonderful way, at least for me. So, ah you know, I'm like, wow, well done, sir. So. 00:20:07.55 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. And like, I think that if you are judging Pony Island based on, you know, like is, are the puzzles really great? Is the endless runner really great? Like, I think both of them are super simple. They're not, you know, anything special by themselves. 00:20:23.13 Chris Right. 00:20:25.76 Dave Um, but I do think that it's interesting that since we have that, you know, narrative about creators making games. 00:20:33.03 Chris Hmm. 00:20:34.27 Dave I think that an endless runner is a good type of game to have in there. And like, once I realized that that was what was going on, I can kind of forgive the game within the game, Pony Island, the endless runner for being simple. 00:20:43.73 Chris Hmm. 00:20:50.35 Dave It's not very difficult. um Most of the time that I died during that is just because I got to like, you know, Kaki was just like, you know, 00:20:58.25 Chris Yeah. 00:20:59.05 Dave not timing my jumps the way that I probably should be. Nothing is really that hard. um You might like there's some enemies that come in, you might die before you figure out what their gimmick is, ah stuff like that. But it's, it's really just like this and the coding puzzles almost shift the pace up and like never let you do the same thing for too long. 00:21:21.67 Chris Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 00:21:24.45 Dave um And the music during the Pony Island sections is really great too. So that really helps. 00:21:30.54 Chris Yeah. 00:21:31.72 Dave I love those. 00:21:33.05 Chris Absolutely. i Like, you're absolutely right with it. Like, but both like he just knew, okay, this is probably taking a little bit too long. Let's switch it up. And then and then the idea of just like, 00:21:48.01 Chris even the endless one or adding the complexity of it, right? Like adding not just the jumping, but then like you have an attack that you eventually get. But even getting that attack is like another mechanic too that we could talk about later. 00:21:55.58 Dave Yeah. Right. 00:21:59.35 Chris But it's just like, it's just stuff like that where it's like, like, wow. ah He just, it just didn't feel boring. I don't know, like, like a regular endless runner. Like you're right. Like if you were to just have the endless runner, if you had just a coding puzzle, it wouldn't work. The fact that he was able to marry these two mechanics or these styles of games together is like, you know, well done. 00:22:22.23 Dave Yeah. 00:22:25.87 Chris And also well done to the QA team that worked on this too, because you have to have that balance too, right? 00:22:26.04 Dave Yeah. 00:22:29.39 Dave Mhm. 00:22:31.62 Chris Like you you have to be able to tell, to tell them like, Hey, This isn't working and whatnot. And he's able to get that feedback. So. 00:22:39.46 Dave Yeah, all the puzzles are pretty short. It might take you a couple minutes to figure them out, but you're not sitting there doing consecutive puzzles for 20 straight minutes like that never happens. 00:22:48.92 Chris Right. Right. 00:22:50.41 Dave And you're very rarely spending a ton of time in a row doing the endless runner stuff, too. So it's constantly switching up what you're doing. And when you're not playing either of those games, maybe you've got narrative surprises coming your way. So the time kind of flew by ah when I was playing the 00:23:04.74 Chris Yeah. 00:23:08.23 Chris Sure it is. 00:23:09.75 Dave The coding puzzles um use coding as a shorthand even though I don't know shit about coding. So it might be the wrong ah Word, but it is kind of like a logic based puzzle um What what it is is you have a key that is automatically moving down these columns And then you might have multiple columns on the screen and the objective is to get the key past obstacles to get it to the end and the way that you do that is by changing the rules of 00:23:26.92 Chris right 00:23:39.97 Dave like what's in the lines as it moves down from line to line to line to line you can insert things that will say okay move to the column on the right ah eventually you have ones that will like skip over stuff ah you might need to 00:23:52.94 Chris Mm-hmm. 00:23:55.13 Dave make the key pass over something in order to build up a certain ah stat or something like that. 00:24:01.51 Chris Right. 00:24:02.04 Dave they It's like you said earlier, especially with these puzzles, the slow ramp up in complexity from, so like the endless runner sections never get to a point where they're like difficult. 00:24:16.11 Chris right Yeah, yeah. 00:24:16.70 Dave I thought there were a couple of the puzzles late in the game that were legitimately challenging. And I had to like, I was sitting there on stream just like, what it what is, what am I missing here? 00:24:29.06 Chris yeah 00:24:29.29 Dave And I think for one of them, I had to get the chat's help to solve it. 00:24:34.55 Chris Oh yeah. 00:24:34.75 Dave ah Partly because like, you don't want to be on stream and just sitting there staring at it like an idiot, but. 00:24:37.59 Chris 100%. 00:24:41.32 Chris I did that. I did that many times. That's why I took four hours. 00:24:43.16 Dave Yeah, but I did like the slow ramp up in complexity with these puzzles. 00:24:44.47 Chris I don't know. 00:24:49.90 Dave And I thought these are like, you know, would I play a five hour game that was nothing but these puzzles? Probably not. But for their role in Pony Island, I thought they were cool. 00:25:00.90 Chris Yeah, totally. And Man, it's like oh there's more to it, but I'm like, okay, we won't, we can't talk about it right now. All right. Well, let's just keep going. 00:25:09.82 Dave Yeah. 00:25:11.70 Chris We'll just keep going Yes Yeah Right 00:25:12.01 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. we can ah We can give credit to the music, which I mentioned before. ah The composer is Jonah Senzel, who I looked up also did the OSTs for the Hex and Inscryption. So a nice working partnership there between them. And again, I haven't played the Hex. The Inscryption soundtrack is fantastic. And the Pony Island soundtrack is very different, but also I think really, really good. um 00:25:39.21 Chris Yeah, it totally fits, totally fits it. 00:25:42.80 Chris like like and And just the kind of that, you know where you're playing it one style of game versus another, it just like he just knew how to hit it on the head with like the feeling that the player would be playing ah like would would be playing with this like emotion. 00:25:59.82 Dave Yeah. 00:26:02.36 Chris It was just well done, very well done. 00:26:04.33 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. What I like about this, so you're playing an endless runner. It has these, you know, old school PC looking graphics, right? 00:26:13.97 Chris Mm hmm. 00:26:14.49 Dave Like ah eight 16 bit type of graphics. And ah the music fits that style of sound too. So it's like, it's very melodic. It sounds extremely video gamey, pretty catchy too. Like you, I mean, by this point, people have heard it in the episode. But I really like it. But underneath that like super video gamey sound that might accompany a game, an endless runner called Pony Island. there's a little bit of a sinister tone to the way it sounds, which fits the rest of the game. 00:26:47.58 Chris Oh yeah. 00:26:50.84 Dave It's not a horror game, not so much as Inscryption is like spooky from time to time. 00:26:57.11 Chris Hmm. 00:26:57.33 Dave I never got that from Pony Island, but it does have that kind of sinister vibe to it, which I think it's a nice mix. You've got that ominous tone, but this real catchy chiptune going on, it's good. 00:27:10.05 Chris Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was. Yeah, like I was I was definitely grooving to the game while I was, you know, gnashing my teeth, gnashing my teeth at the yeah at these some of these puzzles, these coding puzzles. But yeah, it was good. 00:27:25.73 Dave Yeah. 00:27:27.89 Chris I had a good time listening to that soundtrack. 00:27:30.48 Dave Yeah, for sure. Also, the kind of visual aesthetic I think is worth shouting out. It's, like I said, an old school PC looking game that is low fidelity and kind of grimy because again, you're playing like your character in the game is playing an arcade machine and the arcade machine is a little grimy, kind of dirty. 00:27:49.80 Chris Right. 00:27:52.72 Dave I kind of like that vibe of it too. It's not ah it's not pristine looking. 00:27:57.99 Chris Right, yeah, and. Well, like there was that part of it, but then there was like I thought the visuals from it like it threw me off when you could see the person's hand like your players hands too. I was like, oh wow, like this is actually pretty well rendered too. 00:28:13.58 Dave Yeah. 00:28:17.61 Dave Oh, right. Yeah. Cause it's a totally different style of graphic, but from like the arcade machine, but then like the world that your player character is in is rendered in 3d. 00:28:20.77 Chris Right. 00:28:28.19 Chris Yeah. 00:28:28.22 Dave Like, uh, yeah. 00:28:29.54 Chris And it's like it's I thought it was. It looked pretty good for what it was like. So it was nice to see that, you know, again, this guy's like, dang, I was freaking so talented, like I was surprised about this whole thing. 00:28:33.30 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Not bad at all. 00:28:43.61 Dave Yeah. 00:28:43.73 Chris ah And yeah, like, 00:28:46.56 Chris It is just that I just fit everything to a tee. I don't know. I'm just gushing over this game because I'm like I'm so excited to try the other games in this in his library, so to speak, and you know the Steam Summer Sales going on right now as we're recording this. 00:29:04.68 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 00:29:05.17 Chris I think I'm going to grab these as well. 00:29:07.47 Dave Yeah, good time to pick them up. I know that the hex is really cheap and Inscryption by this point ah should be fairly fairly cheap when it's on sale and I haven't played the hex but Inscryptions totally worth a play. 00:29:20.16 Chris Yeah. 00:29:21.13 Dave And that's another one that like Inscryptions quite a bit longer, like 20 hours or so, but it it also, similar to Pony Island, does not waste time getting into, you know, hooking you into the game. 00:29:25.82 Chris Oh, oh, wow. OK. 00:29:34.25 Dave So, yeah. 00:29:34.90 Chris OK. 00:29:41.89 Dave Fuck, I had something I completely forgot. Okay, music. So I think we've talked about the stuff there is to talk about without getting into too many spoilers. And you know, I feel like we've hit the stuff. If we keep talking, we're going to start talking about things that we maybe shouldn't yet. 00:29:58.90 Chris Yeah. 00:30:02.06 Dave So it's time to, uh, maybe the earliest in the history of the podcast. 00:30:02.10 Chris Right. 00:30:07.82 Dave It's time to give our final thoughts and, uh, answer the question, Chris, what kind of person would you recommend to play pony Island? 00:30:17.07 Chris um Anyone that has a PC? ah No, I mean, like it it's it's such a weird experience. Like you have to try it. I think honestly, you have to try it. um And it's not it doesn't take that long of a um like you could you could finish this in one sitting like you and I both did it. 00:30:37.98 Dave yeah 00:30:39.20 Chris like It's possible to do it. And just to experience what this guy was able to do was just Phenomenal, phenomenal work. um And I'm here for it. I'm here for him to go to see what he has in store for Pony Island 2 and the rest of the games that he's done. So yeah, 100%. 00:30:58.83 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that as long as somebody is up for an experimental type of game like this, then it's a pretty easy recommendation. 00:31:07.89 Chris Yeah. 00:31:10.10 Dave I mean, it hits all like the pillars of easy recommendations, right? 00:31:14.14 Chris Yeah. 00:31:14.35 Dave It's short, it's cheap, and it will probably run on any PC that you know has come out in the last 15 years or something like that. 00:31:21.84 Chris right 00:31:21.90 Dave So like as long as you have, like Chris said, as long as you have a PC that can run games made in this century, 00:31:29.33 Chris Right. 00:31:29.90 Dave you can probably play Pony Island and it's an easy recommendation. like and Also, it's funny if you like games that are funny, give it a shot. 00:31:33.91 Chris Yeah. 00:31:37.85 Dave um I guess like if you want to really be challenged by gameplay all the time, then Pony Island will probably not do it for you. But I think that, again, people who are coming back to this podcast, ah people who really love all all different kinds of video games, um if you loved Inscryption and you didn't like me and you didn't play the earlier games, 00:31:46.93 Chris Right. 00:31:55.03 Chris Yeah. 00:31:59.84 Dave um It's interesting to start later in someone's career and then go back to see like you can play Pony Island and see the seeds of things that went into Inscryption later on. 00:32:07.11 Chris Mm hmm. 00:32:14.20 Chris Yeah, ah that's that I was curious, so like if you saw that, like you could see ah he took some certain game mechanics, game elements or um trickery that he did here and he brought it over to Inscryption and stuff like that. 00:32:14.31 Dave So definitely 00:32:28.57 Chris So I was kind of curious about what I was going to ask you, but I guess it's clear he did so. 00:32:32.33 Dave Yeah, there's definitely a through line with some of that from Pony Island to Inscryption. The, like, game. 00:32:41.25 Dave Inscryptions, a card, a card game, a deck builder, and the deck builder are legitimately very, very good. 00:32:43.87 Chris Right. 00:32:47.09 Dave So like the game within the game is much better in Inscryptions than Pony Island, the Endless Runner. 00:32:47.41 Chris OK. 00:32:51.97 Chris Hmm. Right. 00:32:54.43 Dave But Inscryptions is also a much longer game, so ah it needs that to sustain it for a much longer time. 00:32:56.57 Chris Hmm. 00:33:01.46 Dave So it is yeah worth playing Pony Island if you started with Inscryptions and you just want to see like, hey, where did these ideas start? 00:33:09.84 Chris Yeah, OK. 00:33:10.47 Dave so ah for sure. So we are making quick progress through this episode, but it's time for housekeeping before spoilers. ah So we always start the housekeeping section by having the guests talk about the things that they do. So ah Chris, tell everybody about one hour, one decision and what you and Tom are doing over there. 00:33:31.50 Chris Yeah, well, thanks for this opportunity again, um Dave. and like What Tom and I do is we are a weekly podcast where we will play a random game on Xbox Game Pass and we'll play for an hour and decide if it is worth our time to continue playing past that hour. ah We are at this point in time, just over 180 episodes. So we've we've burned through quite a bit of that Game Pass library. 00:34:00.29 Dave A hundred and eighty hours of gameplay. 00:34:03.76 Chris 180 hours of gameplay. 00:34:03.79 Dave Yeah. 00:34:05.70 Chris and we've also ah but the thing is, Xbox keeps releasing new games and new content, so we're just churning through that library and I'm here for it. 00:34:12.97 Dave Yeah. 00:34:16.96 Chris And yeah, so we've been doing it now. for quite some time and it's been, ah you can check us all, check check out all our podcast episodes on any major podcasting platform. ah We have our ah YouTube videos out on on the quit the build channel as well. And um yeah, we've just been chugging along. And we play our games on stream, on live. We play them live. We don't have a schedule. We just pop up randomly, just like we pop up randomly with games. 00:34:43.25 Dave Mm 00:34:45.14 Chris So we played our game for an hour. So if you guys are ever around, twitch.tv/1h1d, check it all out. So. 00:34:51.96 Dave Nice. Yeah. It's a good show. I, um, you know, I told you all the time ago when we did the forgotten city episode, but it's a show I listened to all the time. It's nice. You're often covering games on the show. Like you would expect, cause you do legitimately, they're not just saying they play random games, like legitimately, you will press the pick a random game button and just be like, all right, never heard of this. Guess we're playing it. 00:35:15.59 Chris Yeah. 00:35:15.80 Dave So there are a lot of games that, uh, other podcasts are not talking about. And I appreciate that. And the episodes are fairly short, about a half hour for every episode. 00:35:25.19 Chris yeah 00:35:25.32 Dave So a really easy, informative listen to ah get a sense of what a game is offering at the beginning. um So yeah, definitely recommend people check out 1H1D. And I will put a link down in the show notes so that people can easily find that, follow you guys on Twitch and stuff like that. 00:35:44.42 Chris Thanks, man. Appreciate it. 00:35:46.15 Dave For Tales from the Backlog, as always, I know it's been a very short non-spoiler section here today, but ah we would appreciate, as always, ratings and reviews are helpful. If people are searching for podcasts about Pony Island, they might find this one or you know any of the other games I've done on the podcast here. That's very helpful. Also give my dog a blueberry if I get a review, and he loves blueberries and he's a good boy, so help him out. And ah you can also join the Discord server where you can join the conversation, of course, about games on the podcast and about the podcast. 00:36:16.54 Chris Thanks. 00:36:20.79 Dave But also the Discord server is a lively and friendly community of people who hang out every day talking about the games they're playing. We're still doing our backlog resolutions challenge for 2024. Pony Island was on my list for my backlog resolution. So I got to check that one off when I finished it. We have a bunch of people doing that. It's a lovely place and there's an invite link down in the show notes so you can join also. If you want to listen to my other podcast, it is a comedy show top three list podcast. It is called a top three podcast. And last but not least, if you want to support monetarily, you can do that at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson, where Pony Island is on the show because it won a poll. 00:37:08.40 Dave Every month I do polls for a game that I'll cover on the podcast and Pony Island was the winner of one of those polls. 00:37:16.38 Dave So if you want to have a say in what games make it on the podcast and you want to just help me out, throw a couple bucks my way, patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson is the place. So. With that being said, Chris and I are going to take a break. And when we come back full spoiler time, the gloves come off for pony Island. 00:38:45.62 Dave Okay we're back and it's full spoiler time for Pony Island and as always we're not going to do ah a chronological walk through playing Pony Island so late game spoilers will come up soon so again if you do not want to be spoiled on anything that we haven't already said please leave go play Pony Island if it sounds cool and come back that's the beauty of podcasts so 00:39:16.64 Dave What you find out in Pony Island eventually is that the meta elements, ah and it begins when you are first playing the game. After you fix that broken loading bar at the very beginning, you get a message that pops up that says you just had to fix it. It says like, everything was fine, I tested it, it's okay, but you just had to fix it. And you find out later that that is Satan speaking to you. 00:39:46.60 Chris Mmm. 00:39:47.34 Dave It is, his Lucifer himself is speaking to you. 00:39:49.72 Chris Yep. 00:39:51.62 Dave And the whole plot is that Lucifer, Satan, is using the game to capture souls. This is, I guess, Satan's latest ploys to capture the souls of the living ah is via this video game. So, what did you think of this revelation? Because this is like, this is the quote, plot of Pony Island. 00:40:17.16 Chris Right. um I didn't, I didn't know that, that Mons was going to go this route. 00:40:25.00 Dave No, neither did I. 00:40:25.87 Chris I was like, wait, what? 00:40:26.23 Dave Yeah. 00:40:28.08 Chris Satan's making games? I was like, okay. um And, and then I was like, okay, let's see, let's see what Satan's all about here. And, uh, clearly he's not a very good game designer, but, but like, but at the same time he is like, I dunno, it's, it's, it's weird to like, because now it now is, well, is Satan's game good or is Daniel Mullen's game good? 00:40:41.35 Dave Right. 00:40:55.50 Chris He's like. 00:40:55.56 Dave Right, you start to get into that. 00:40:57.86 Chris Right. And it's like, okay, well, the endless runner part is just an endless runner. Like we talked about, it's like, and I think the idea is that, you know, if we're going to talk, talk about this, like Satan sees people be like, Oh, they're just going to play these mindless games and that'll allow me to harvest their souls very quickly. 00:41:18.30 Dave Yeah. Yeah. I think that this is like a little bit of commentary about, remember the satanic panic about video games and D d and D and stuff like that. 00:41:23.30 Chris Right. 00:41:29.31 Chris Yep. 00:41:29.30 Dave I think this is a little bit of commentary about that. Be like, guess like fucking guess what? Satan is trying to steal souls, but it's not because of satanic content in games. 00:41:40.01 Chris Right. 00:41:41.25 Dave Satan is literally making video games trying to steal souls. 00:41:43.65 Chris Right. 00:41:45.03 Dave There's a nice little nod to that ridiculousness. ah from a time long ago now. 00:41:52.14 Chris Yeah. Well, it's still there. 00:41:54.01 Dave I guess for some, for some it's still there. 00:41:54.72 Chris It's still there. 00:41:56.96 Dave Yeah. 00:41:57.11 Chris It's still there. 00:41:58.75 Dave Boy, if you still think that ah video games are satanic and evil, ah it's got to be exhausting because there's just so many more video games now. 00:42:07.03 Chris Right. Right. Yeah. 00:42:08.72 Dave But I know there are still people like that. So like I guess what you actually learn and like I think you watched the video about like the real story of Pony Island. 00:42:21.11 Chris Yeah. 00:42:21.28 Dave um So you can confirm this is part of like the secret ending that you get if you get all the tickets, you find out like who your character really is or something like that. Like your character is like from the 12th century and you've been trapped in the game the whole time or something. 00:42:33.06 Chris Yeah. 00:42:37.24 Chris Yeah, yeah. Essentially, it's really weird. And there's like more like, so yeah, if anyone has two hours of their time to watch this video, I would say Give it a shot because it was this person meticulously breaking down the whole story of it. And yes, your character is this 12th century person kind of trapped in purgatory playing this game. 00:43:07.23 Dave Yeah. 00:43:09.00 Chris And you're trying to figure a way to get out. And the thing that blew my mind, though, was what they said ah in this video that essentially You're the person that helps you and the person and Lucifer are the same person. 00:43:28.22 Dave Yeah, I've heard that theory too. Yeah. 00:43:30.61 Chris And I was like, wait, what? And they got through this whole thing showing how they are the same person. And it's like they went through. They went like it was crazy. They went through the whole thing about love. like um biblical, like Lucifer was the fallen angel and all this other stuff. So he's just like, he's just trying to make his way back to heaven. I was like, what, what is going on? Like, this is, this is what Daniel Mullins was talking about like this whole thing. It was crazy. 00:43:58.46 Dave Yeah. 00:43:59.19 Chris Like what he, like how it went, how it went there. And, um, and yeah, so I was like, okay, uh, this was very intriguing and, maybe a little bit tinfoil Hattie, but I was, I was like, this is cool. This is like, if this is what he was talking about. 00:44:17.26 Dave Yeah, I do definitely think that like, because I've heard from other sources, the idea that the hopeless soul and Satan are the same. 00:44:17.93 Chris Cool. 00:44:28.19 Dave And it's basically like, I don't know, Satan trying to end this whole thing, like, Satan's tired of making games, or Satan's tired of being evil, or something like, or both, I don't know. 00:44:36.38 Chris Yeah. 00:44:40.93 Chris Right, right. 00:44:42.53 Dave I didn't get that myself, but I've definitely heard it. What was interesting to me about this, and they say this in the game, is that Satan's using the game Pony Island to capture souls, but it's not working really well. 00:44:55.14 Chris Yeah. 00:44:56.76 Dave like Satan's not very good at this, ah not good at capturing souls through the game, and not good at 00:44:58.07 Chris No. 00:45:04.39 Dave making the game. ah So I thought that was really interesting. There was two ah kind of jokes about this, about like Satan's plan to capture souls, and they both come in kind of like a like a mobile gamey micro transaction type of ah joke where like you beat a couple island levels of Pony Island, and then you get to the game over screen that says like, experience the rest of Pony Island, please insert your soul to continue. 00:45:30.95 Chris ah Yeah. 00:45:31.37 Dave And then there's another one, ah because Pony Island starts with like that black and white, very, very simple thing. And then you come back and you play the upgraded version that's really bright and colorful. 00:45:41.45 Chris Yeah. 00:45:43.60 Dave And at the end of that one, it says, ah place your head against the screen to release your soul or continue in peasant mode. 00:45:52.31 Chris yeah Right. 00:45:52.43 Dave Like Satan, like Satan's getting frustrated with people not releasing their souls to keep playing this game. Like people in the arcade. See that screen like insert your soul to continue or like now I'll just fucking I'll go play ski ball or something like I'm i'm good ah There was a lot of souls in there but like 00:46:06.19 Chris Right Right. I'm good. So crazy like that. Satan thought that a mobile game or or this little arcade game was going to give him enough souls. Apparently there was enough, though, because. Yeah. 00:46:25.12 Dave The thing that I didn't understand really was like, so if you're characters from the 12th century, like how are you, how are you here? 00:46:29.86 Chris Right. 00:46:32.16 Dave How did people from centuries past stuck inside a video game like Satan take all the souls that he's collected throughout all of time? 00:46:37.07 Chris Right. 00:46:42.14 Dave And now they're held in the video game. Like it's like, it's like, it's like stolen soul storage or something like that. 00:46:47.92 Chris That's a good question, because technically he hasn't he doesn't have his soul yet, right? 00:46:55.11 Dave Not, not your soul, I think, not the player character. 00:46:56.96 Chris Right. but So like purgatory is like just like a DMZ 00:47:05.53 Dave Yeah. 00:47:05.57 Chris Like you're not in heaven, you're not in hell, so he's just trying to get your soul at this point. 00:47:12.29 Chris But like at the same time, that also means that like God is like allowing Satan to be like, you know, yeah, you want you want to mess with these guys? Go ahead. This is your place to do it. And it's like, that's... 00:47:24.19 Dave We get to get into, uh, get into like some theology on the podcast. 00:47:28.68 Chris I mean, the game does, right? The game does go. 00:47:30.19 Dave Yeah. The game does for sure. 00:47:32.06 Chris And it's like it's it's it's interesting, like even the whole once you break the game, right, and you're in that whole area of the computer, like, you know, the desktop, so to speak. 00:47:42.44 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 00:47:47.63 Chris That was like, that was another game, right? It was another game that you had to play and your talk, like the whole, like the fact that you can have a conversation with the hopeless soul and, and then Lucifer pops up as in another chat and. You know, you, you, you put your name in and they, like they, they, like all that stuff. I mean, it's simple. It's just a text-based game, but it's like, it was just satisfying. Like just kind of go through that conversation. 00:48:11.72 Dave Yeah, I thought it was really funny. So like this is before you know that it's Satan, right? 00:48:17.68 Chris Right, right. 00:48:18.11 Dave um When you first chat with a hopeless soul, because you're on you, the game forces you to crash the Pony Island game. 00:48:27.80 Chris Yeah. 00:48:28.72 Dave to get out of that, I think it's maybe even to get out of that, like enter your soul screen or something like that. And you go to the desktop of the arcade machine and you get a chat message from the hopeless soul talking about how they're stuck in the game and let's work together. We can get out of this. And then another chat box pops up and it's from Satan and it's like, Hey, who are you talking to? 00:48:50.64 Chris yeah 00:48:51.18 Dave They'll talk to them. I thought that was really funny. 00:48:52.85 Chris yeah 00:48:54.06 Dave ah 00:48:54.74 Chris So good. um And apparently, there is a point in the game. I didn't see this, but I saw it in that video. 00:49:03.72 Dave Yeah. 00:49:04.10 Chris But if you go to a particular um , if you log into a particular section, you'll see the hopeless soul making a portal and you're like, wait, and then he disappears. And you're like, what? what like And again, that kind of reinforces the fact that they might be one and the same. They're just playing both sides. 00:49:23.58 Dave Gotcha. 00:49:24.80 Chris And it's like, whoa. like But I didn't get to that part, so I don't know. I can't verify that, but obviously there were screenshots or video of that, too. So I'm like, whoa, it's like there's just so much stuff that like if you keep unraveling or like peeling the layers off here, you see there's just like more to it. 00:49:34.90 Dave Yeah. 00:49:46.67 Chris And I was like, damn, like the fact that this guy had this much foresight to think about, well, if a player is going to go here, that I need to make sure I have this kind of opportunity. 00:49:57.57 Dave Yeah. 00:49:57.79 Chris Because I even like the fact that there's like certain passwords and stuff like that, that you and like names that you use, he takes into account. 00:50:05.93 Dave Mm hmm. Yeah. 00:50:07.84 Chris So it's like it's crazy. um And not crazy, but like it's cool. It's cool that he did that. 00:50:14.51 Dave Yeah, yeah, I mean, the so I talked about this in the non spoiler part, but like these these meta elements that you start to get into this like you're playing a game within a game and now you're crashed to like the operating system behind the game within the game, but then it also gets into these meta elements with like you the player and 00:50:31.03 Chris Right. Yeah. 00:50:38.18 Dave ah it doesn’t It doesn't do anything with your file system like some other games do. um But, and I was expecting that and I was kind of freaking out because I was like, oh shit, I'm on like, I'm on stream doing this, like my stream like, you know, my desktop or something like that, or like my file explorer looking for this shit. 00:50:54.10 Chris Right. 00:50:57.01 Dave But anyway, um it doesn't quite do that. But it does get into this whole thing about ah the way to delete this or escape is you have to delete these core files within the operating system of the game. 00:51:10.99 Chris Right. 00:51:11.44 Dave So those are your objectives. You have like ah these three boss encounters ah before you break those. 00:51:18.34 Chris right 00:51:20.79 Dave Most of them are puzzles. Like you have to do the puzzle thing. Uh, the one that I thought was the best one of the puzzles was the one that was like, you take turns placing things on the puzzle, like a tic-tac-toe type situation, ah which I thought was a really good puzzle. 00:51:32.60 Chris Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 00:51:37.75 Dave That was fun. 00:51:38.62 Chris Yeah, that was cool. Uh, I mean, for me, I love the fourth world breaking. I thought the last puzzle was great because of that. 00:51:46.13 Dave Oh yeah. 00:51:47.62 Chris Uh, but I agree that that second, like again, but they built up, right? 00:51:47.62 Dave Yeah. 00:51:51.78 Chris Like the first one was very simple. Like you had four locks that you had to unlock. 00:51:55.50 Dave Yeah. 00:51:55.77 Chris And apparently though, if you talk to that person, talk to that boss, he tells you to tell something to the last boss. 00:51:58.86 Dave Oh, okay. 00:52:06.00 Chris and in that, I was like, oh, what? like Again, this is all stuff that you learn ah you learned in that video. 00:52:11.37 Dave Yeah. 00:52:12.37 Chris But I was like, oh, that's crazy. like And i don't I don't think that gives you like a fail-sit, but just like a different ah conversation happens with that. 00:52:22.27 Dave Right. 00:52:22.71 Chris But, um, but yeah, like it was just, again, like how they, how they had layers upon layers. And then like the fourth world break in the third one. I don't know why, but the steam notifications really threw me off. 00:52:31.11 Dave Yeah. 00:52:37.26 Chris I was like, what is going on here? 00:52:37.51 Dave Yeah. 00:52:38.70 Chris Why is this guy texting me right now? 00:52:40.68 Dave Right. 00:52:40.96 Dave Yeah, I won't. I won't name the other game that did this exact same thing, but I have played another game that does this with your friends on Steam or on PlayStation where I played it. 00:52:45.17 Chris Okay. Okay. 00:52:52.10 Dave It did the same thing. But so for people who maybe didn't play and are just kind of listening along, you get into a dialogue boss battle with this third ah like guardian of these core files and 00:52:58.09 Chris Yeah. 00:53:03.55 Chris Yeah. 00:53:04.29 Dave um this boss just asks you a series of questions like memory questions and they give you the instructions look at me the whole time don't take your eyes off me answer my questions and then stuff starts to pop up around the screen to distract you like a pony pops up down in the bottom and like the boss goes on this thing about you know how how wonderful the pony is but then there's information that 00:53:06.48 Chris Mhm. 00:53:14.12 Chris Yeah. 00:53:30.67 Dave The boss says that you miss it because you're looking at the pony, but the big trick is that it pulls someone from your Steam friends list and it mimics like they're sending you messages. 00:53:33.32 Chris Yeah. 00:53:40.73 Chris Yeah. 00:53:44.50 Dave And it's after the boss asks you like, type in something disgusting, I think. They say, type in something vile. 00:53:50.99 Chris Right. 00:53:52.90 Dave And whatever you put in, you immediately get messages from someone on your friends list being like, whoa, what the, like what? 00:54:00.23 Chris Yeah. 00:54:00.69 Dave That's what you wrote. and That was funny. Also, uh, just a quick shout out, uh, the person who had picked for mine was a friend of, uh, of mine, Chris Taylor, who, if you know, Chris Taylor, Chris likes to talk a little shit from time to time. So it was like the perfect person to pick from the friends list to message. 00:54:21.21 Chris yeah 00:54:23.66 Dave Uh, but you get that, that, that panic, like, did it actually send what I wrote to people on my friends list? Like. 00:54:29.82 Chris Yeah. 00:54:30.66 Dave But you know, just ah just a trick. But while you're looking at the messages, the key information, the puzzle solution, the boss is telling you that, but you're not looking at it because you're looking at these messages. I thought that was kind of fun. 00:54:42.67 Chris Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Like, I mean, and the thing again, like I was on stream playing this game. I looked at those messages. I was like, and then I immediately messaged that guy. I was like, dude, what the hell are you doing? Like I'm on stream right now. Stop. but and He's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, Oh, it's the game. Got it. 00:55:03.69 Dave Yeah. 00:55:03.74 Chris Okay. they 00:55:04.83 Dave i I guess the one thing that they gave it away that like, I wasn't fooled by it, but you get that quick panic. 00:55:10.47 Chris Right. 00:55:12.02 Dave We're like, wait, what? Huh? But then you sort of be like, well, who sends messages on steam anymore? 00:55:18.01 Chris Right. 00:55:18.00 Dave Like they would have just sent me a message of discord, you know? 00:55:18.53 Chris That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, every once in a while I'll get those messages on Steam. 00:55:24.91 Dave Yeah, sometimes. 00:55:25.21 Chris So I was like, maybe this is real. But yeah, no, it was. 00:55:28.81 Dave Yeah. 00:55:30.62 Chris I was a fool. That was it. 00:55:31.77 Dave Yeah, those metal things were pretty fun. 00:55:35.46 Chris Yeah. 00:55:35.44 Dave um And there's one more, I wanna save it for after we do like the last kind of talking point, then we'll talk about how it all ah finishes. But um the ah the other thing that I wanted to talk about is so like, again, Satan's using this game to capture souls, um but we do have this commentary about the creative process and ah creators, how they feel about the things that they make, 00:55:43.38 Chris Mm hmm. 00:55:57.27 Chris Right. 00:56:01.52 Dave um game development and feedback and all the insecurities and things along the process. 00:56:09.45 Chris Yeah. 00:56:09.79 Dave So ah this is the thing that I was not expecting, I guess two things, I was not expecting and i was not expecting this game to be about something. 00:56:22.26 Chris Right. 00:56:22.26 Dave And I did not expect the humor also, but that's, you know, I just didn't know. ah So I thought this was really cool and like the characterization of Satan as the game developer, but either not a very good game developer or a novice game developer or both. um and insecure about his creative work. 00:56:45.45 Chris Mm 00:56:47.89 Dave I thought that this was ah really, really interesting and there's a lot to this. 00:56:53.91 Chris Yeah. I mean, you know, Lucifer, Lucifer definitely has low self-esteem. I mean, look, the guy got kicked out of heaven. 00:56:58.79 Dave Yeah. 00:57:00.31 Chris So he's got, he's already got low self-esteem from that. 00:57:03.01 Dave That's true, yeah. 00:57:03.27 Chris Right. So like he's, he's trying to make him, he's trying to prove that he's worthy. And the fact of the matter is this game, he's gone through several iterations as you kind of go through it at the, at probably like the three quarters to maybe the end point of the game. 00:57:15.55 Dave Yeah. 00:57:21.14 Dave Yeah, yeah, you play like the discarded like former versions of ah Pony Island. 00:57:26.22 Chris Yeah. Yeah. 00:57:27.47 Dave So Pony Island in the game is the 2D endless runner, but there are the other versions of Pony Island, the discarded ones. 00:57:32.69 Chris Right. 00:57:37.56 Dave There's a 3D one where it's the endless runner in 3D and it's real it's real bad. 00:57:38.92 Chris Yeah. 00:57:41.59 Chris Yeah. First person. and yeah You can see your feet. 00:57:43.93 Dave Like compared to the 2D one, 00:57:46.05 Chris That's important. 00:57:46.22 Dave Yeah, that is important in a first-person game, yeah. 00:57:47.19 Chris see 00:57:49.73 Dave ah There is a text adventure version of ah Pony Island where it's giving you endless runner scenarios, but in a text adventure, which I thought was really funny, it says like, ah okay, the fence comes to you. 00:58:00.29 Chris yeah 00:58:03.20 Chris I think. 00:58:05.49 Dave Do you jump? Do you shoot? Do you do nothing? And you're like, ah jump? And it's like, you jumped over the fence. 00:58:13.43 Chris Yeah. 00:58:13.72 Dave offense is coming toward you. Do you jump? Do you shoot? I thought that was a good joke. 00:58:18.55 Chris Yeah, I think I think if you miss time, it also is like you break your neck and you die or something like that. 00:58:24.69 Dave Yeah. 00:58:25.54 Chris It's like a good Lord. OK, I mean, yeah, there's that. 00:58:29.72 Dave Yeah. 00:58:30.71 Chris I mean, even I don't know if this is part of the boss fight, but um there is that boss battle where you're you know trying to take out the demon that is kind of, I guess, walking backwards. As in the endless runner, I don't know if that was part of a boss battle, but that was, again, like it. He just like he knew when to throw like a little curveball and change things up a bit. 00:58:46.51 Dave Uh huh. 00:58:57.62 Dave Oh, yeah. 00:58:57.80 Chris I was like, yeah. 00:58:59.21 Dave Yeah, that was um I think that was in the adventure mode of Pony Island where I thought this was cool. 00:59:02.55 Chris Okay. Yes. 00:59:05.78 Dave So um it's like the player is catching up to the things that the developer has made. 00:59:09.76 Chris Mm-hmm. 00:59:14.58 Dave Like think of like an early access game or something and like the developers like scrambling to get content out there 00:59:14.62 Chris yeah Yeah. Yeah. 00:59:21.30 Dave for the player because they just keep they're moving too fast through the game and so there's some like really hastily put together stuff like Satan basically says like go take a break like I need time and then so you you go do something and then you come back and it's like 00:59:33.99 Chris Yeah. 00:59:39.19 Dave just this really hastily made adventure map. 00:59:42.26 Chris yeah 00:59:42.33 Dave And then it, Satan's like, okay, it's time for the final boss. 00:59:48.60 Chris Right. 00:59:48.59 Dave And the final boss is me. 00:59:52.16 Chris Yeah. 00:59:52.56 Dave Like, you know, just clearly just scrambling for ideas. 00:59:56.23 Chris Yeah. 00:59:56.28 Dave And I think that's the one where you do the endless runner boss fight against the demon. 01:00:00.37 Chris Mm hmm. 01:00:00.55 Dave And it's just like a, it's really simple. Like it has like two attacks, like a high attack and a low attack and that's it. 01:00:04.66 Chris Right. Yeah, yeah. 01:00:07.50 Dave Because again, Satan doesn't have time or isn't good enough to make like a good thing. 01:00:10.27 Chris Yeah. yeah 01:00:13.02 Dave And this is why these endless runner sections are really simple. Like again, would I play the entire game Pony Island and think it's good? 01:00:20.00 Chris Yeah. 01:00:25.87 Dave Probably not, but In the context of this, where you're dealing with an insecure creator, who's maybe not very good, who's scrambling to put together content for you, I thought this does the job. 01:00:29.81 Chris Mm hmm. 01:00:39.97 Dave And it's like, it's, it's fun enough to play for two minutes at a time, you know? 01:00:40.27 Chris Absolutely. Yeah, I think I mean, in a way, it kind of gives you Like is Daniel Mullins, like was he at the time when he's building this game very insecure about this whole thing, right? 01:00:54.62 Dave I'm sure, I'm sure most, I'm sure most people who make games are insecure, no matter how good they are. 01:00:56.57 Chris Like, yeah. 01:01:00.74 Dave Like they go through periods of that. I'm sure. 01:01:03.45 Chris And like, ah but like the fact that he knew, okay, this is this isn't good enough right now. I'm going to stop and just switch to a different mechanic. 01:01:11.91 Dave Yeah. 01:01:12.08 Chris And like he was able to do that and that was great. Like, yeah. and The fact that he had this adventure mode was like but it's just incredible. ah you You're just going through this world i'm almost in like a Super Mario World style, yeah, overworld in that sense. 01:01:28.61 Dave Yeah, it's like an overworld, yeah. 01:01:32.12 Chris and then eventually you kind of break off of that too, right? And then you kind of roam around the world. 01:01:37.17 Dave Yeah, you break off the track because you're on you're on like a Super Mario World track that you just move from level to level. 01:01:42.23 Chris Yeah. Yeah. 01:01:45.80 Dave I like the joke in there about how you need to get the wings to jump over the gap, ah but it's like you need a hundred experience points to level up and get the wings, but you get one XP for each time you beat the level. 01:02:00.53 Chris yeah 01:02:01.61 Dave And I think you can just do it a hundred times like in the game. 01:02:04.20 Chris You can do a hundred percent. Yep. You can do it. You can do it if you really wanted to, but yeah. 01:02:06.89 Dave But if you really want to, but ah the game asks you like what you could do, what you should do is hack into the code and cheat basically. 01:02:19.47 Chris Yep. 01:02:19.51 Dave And Satan gets mad at you for doing that. 01:02:22.88 Chris Yeah. I'm actually curious what if he, if he doesn't get mad, if you just go through the a hundred, but, but you know, 01:02:27.54 Dave That's, yeah. I would assume so. It seems like there's, like you said, a lot of situations where Daniel Mullins thought of a lot of different scenarios. 01:02:37.48 Chris and Yeah. 01:02:39.71 Dave ah So I guess I would guess that Satan might have a different joke for you if you do that level a hundred times. 01:02:45.69 Chris Sure. 01:02:48.17 Chris Right. So. 01:02:49.63 Dave Yeah, I just thought that this was, um you know, I didn't expect this game to be about ah imposter syndrome and creators with low self-esteem or creators who feel the pressure to meet the needs of their audience or ah stuff like that. 01:02:57.55 Chris Yeah. 01:03:06.14 Dave And I mean, this is something that you don't have to be a game developer to identify with. You can be any type of creative to ah know the feeling of being like, 01:03:12.82 Chris no 01:03:18.36 Dave ah is the is what I'm making good enough i and feel the pressure to keep making stuff as you go, ah because that's what, I mean, I don't like to use the word content to describe what I make, but I mean, it is, and people are looking for stuff to listen to, to play, ah they're looking for stuff. 01:03:33.09 Chris No. 100%. Yeah. 01:03:41.99 Dave And when, if the well dries up over here, they'll go somewhere else. And I think that like, 01:03:46.60 Chris Right. 01:03:48.31 Dave especially for a game developer, like the pressure to put more in your stuff must be pretty great. That's why I like the idea to take the 2D game and expand it into adventure mode where it's like every game has to be bigger, more content, but Satan can't keep up with it. 01:03:58.16 Chris Yeah. ah firm right 01:04:09.91 Chris yeah 01:04:09.93 Dave I just thought it's neat. 01:04:11.81 Chris It was, it was, uh, yeah, definitely well done, uh, on that, on that commentary about, yeah, just the pressure of. Yeah. Like we see it every day. Like we were playing different games where you you have these live service, like life service games that are constantly having to churn out, uh, churn out new levels, new content, because people are like burning through content in like days when they were expecting this stuff to last for maybe a couple of months to give themselves some time. 01:04:25.55 Dave Yeah. 01:04:38.54 Dave Yeah. 01:04:39.82 Chris So. Yeah. 01:04:40.96 Dave Yeah, as we're talking, you reminded me of two things. As we're talking, the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Dawn Trail just came out like two days ago. 01:04:49.27 Chris yeah uh-huh 01:04:51.18 Dave And I've already seen people on Discord being like, yep, I'm done with it. Just no life for like 40 straight hours, didn't sleep. And they're like, I'm done. 01:04:59.87 Chris oh my god wow why come on it took us like like two years to build this like 01:05:01.20 Dave And people at Square Enix have to be like, what? Like, what? You're already done? 01:05:09.82 Dave Uh, and then. 01:05:13.34 Dave Exactly. Yeah. And then the same thing, kind of like another news story, really dating this episode, which is fine. Uh, but another news story about how hell divers too has lost a bunch of players because they're not constantly putting out new stuff. And 01:05:28.49 Chris Yeah. 01:05:29.72 Dave it it doesn't seem you it doesn't matter how much you put out for your game, there's always gonna be people who burn through it super quickly and then I imagine it's a rough place to be in as a developer, especially for a live service thing, to just be like, well shit, like we worked really hard on this and people know life did and now they're like they're mad that they don't have new stuff and we're losing people from our game. 01:05:42.49 Chris Yep. 01:05:54.40 Chris Right. It's ah it's that always like that, like that one, one to five percent that complained and the complaint is the loudest that everyone else is like, oh, well, maybe I shouldn't jump on this anymore. 01:05:59.45 Dave Yeah. 01:06:05.36 Dave But the other people, you know maybe the regular players, um and Helldivers is an interesting example, because they're a small team. They're not Bungie. 01:06:13.78 Chris Right. No. 01:06:16.66 Dave They're not Blizzard. So they're a small team now faced with the idea that they have to meet the demands of all the people who play the game constantly. And if you don't continue putting out new stuff, you're going to lose those players. and that's what 01:06:32.40 Chris Right. 01:06:33.25 Dave Helldivers still has a healthy number of people the last time I checked, but they're not at the top of the steam charts anymore. And it's just because they couldn't keep up with it yet. 01:06:40.70 Chris No. 01:06:44.42 Dave They couldn't keep up with all those people. And that's kinda here. It's here in Pony Island, the same type of idea. 01:06:50.69 Chris Yeah, I mean, like, you could say the same thing with pal world, right? Like, that was another game that had a lot of interest. 01:06:53.99 Dave Yeah. 01:06:57.59 Chris And it fell off a little bit. I think they've I don't know like as of this recording, but like they they definitely have added more content to it, but it's like, what can you do? Like they, They are going to be in this constant cycle of trying to make sure that their players are fed in this sense. 01:07:16.64 Dave Yeah. 01:07:17.53 Chris right so yeah 01:07:19.58 Dave Yeah, and there's there's a couple other things in Pony Island that kind of like map onto to things that I imagine people who make games might stress about or maybe they're not stressed, but they get annoyed by like how many times you hack the system and you cheat to give yourself upgrades, um you know, 01:07:37.27 Chris Right. 01:07:41.73 Dave It could be how someone might feel if you build a level of challenge and then people are like, I'm going to mod the game so I'm invincible and I have a rocket launcher and stuff like that. 01:07:51.30 Chris right Yeah. 01:07:52.27 Dave Or I'm going to use console commands to make myself invincible and level 7000 and stuff like that. 01:07:57.94 Chris Exactly. 01:07:58.66 Dave um There is a really good one. 01:07:58.76 Chris Yep. Right. and No, I was just gonna say like the fact that they, you know, you have to hack to get the wings and then and then the lasers and and all that stuff is just like, that's just how people are right now. 01:08:08.31 Dave Yeah. 01:08:14.74 Dave Well, that's funny because like you have that where people are like, I don't want to do the grind to get the upgrade. 01:08:22.13 Chris Right. 01:08:23.82 Dave I'm just going to hack it and make myself, you know, super powerful. 01:08:28.32 Chris Mm hmm. 01:08:28.60 Dave ah But then you also have the other side of that where Satan, the game designer, has designed an insane, again, mobile game level of grind to get that upgrade. uh like so like it's it's both sides like no one is no one is really in the right in those situations, I guess. I guess you know people. If you want to cheat to give yourself stuff like, go ahead, cheat. I don't give a shit. But you're not like engaging with the thing that the person made in the way that was intended, I guess. 01:09:01.39 Chris Yeah. 01:09:04.89 Dave um There's a really fun joke earlier. 01:09:05.28 Chris yeah 01:09:07.01 Dave I just wanted to shout this out. I don't want to get through the whole podcast without shouting this out. 01:09:11.05 Chris Yeah. 01:09:11.80 Dave the first time that you play Pony Island it's really easy it's just like you know the first level of an endless runner you just jump over a couple of fences and that's it and Satan gets really mad about like how quickly you got through it and then 01:09:21.80 Chris Yeah. 01:09:28.81 Dave Satan puts you in the game again and is like, okay, now try this one. And there's these skulls that kill you instantly as soon as they spawn on screen. 01:09:38.30 Chris yeah 01:09:39.43 Dave And so it's impossible to be like you can't avoid them. 01:09:41.64 Chris Yeah. 01:09:42.73 Dave They form a circle around you and then come kill you. 01:09:44.57 Chris Mm hmm. Yep. 01:09:46.81 Dave And then after a couple of times you die, there's a message on screen that Satan says, my game is difficult but fair, which I thought was really good. 01:09:57.07 Chris Yep. That's like, uh, yeah. 01:09:57.76 Dave Where have we heard that before? Difficult, but fair. 01:10:00.88 Chris I mean, every soul's like, I don't know. 01:10:03.58 Dave Exactly. Yeah. 01:10:05.99 Chris So yeah, it is what it is. But, um, I mean, it's, it's just, it, it, it was, he just, he just hit the nail. 01:10:08.57 Dave Yeah. 01:10:15.45 Chris I mean, and it's still relevant, right? Because people are still making souls games, still making difficult games, which I'm, I'm starting to come around to, to be honest, like, 01:10:19.06 Dave Oh yeah. You played a bunch of Elden Ring, didn't you? 01:10:27.66 Chris I did play, I did play Elder Ring. I did play co-op though. And I've, uh, I, and, recently I just started playing Lords of the Fallen. 01:10:31.28 Dave Hey, that you played Elden Ring. Don't, don't qualify that you played it. 01:10:38.55 Chris I've been having a decent time with that. 01:10:38.98 Dave Yeah. 01:10:40.70 Chris And, um, and then even, even, even more so, I, I'm, I'm not a fan of Roguelikes, but I started playing the Rogue Prince of Persia. And that was a game, well, it's mostly because the soundtrack was phenomenal, but like it, 01:10:49.63 Dave Oh yeah. 01:10:57.14 Chris It was a game that I was like, okay, I'm gonna buy this and see if this works. So I'm I mean, I enjoyed it and I'm still kind of playing it. Maybe not as much as I did when I first purchased it, but you know, it is still early access at the time of this recording, so. 01:11:16.64 Dave Right. Yeah. 01:11:20.94 Dave So eventually you get to a point in Pony Island where 01:11:27.35 Dave you've broken, you've deleted the core files and it's time to initiate like a system meltdown basically to break the game, release all the souls and and get out. 01:11:38.37 Chris Mm hmm. 01:11:40.03 Dave So um eventually it's found that like, it's told to you, I think the hopeless soul tells you that like, you need to uninstall this game. 01:11:50.87 Chris Right. 01:11:51.24 Dave And this was another clever meta joke about gamers. They said, like the goal is to get you to uninstall the game, to release all the souls. 01:12:01.30 Chris Yeah. 01:12:03.25 Dave The only way to get you to uninstall the game was to make you play the game. And I thought that was a joke about all of us on Steam who have all these fucking games and never play them. 01:12:13.05 Chris Yeah. Yeah. 01:12:14.13 Dave So You need to uninstall the game, you initiate this meltdown, and you do this big Pony Island escape endless runner section, um where there's a ton of stuff on screen, the music's going wild. ah You don't have lives in the game, like you can't die, but you have a bunch of other souls trying to make the escape with you, and it keeps track of how many of those souls die. 01:12:34.38 Chris Right. 01:12:43.60 Chris Yeah. 01:12:45.22 Dave but Is it possible to get out with none of them dying? 01:12:48.48 Chris I don't think so. I mean, maybe, maybe there's, you had only 50 die? 01:12:50.24 Dave It's tough. I had like 50 of them die. 01:12:55.73 Dave Maybe, I don't know. 01:12:56.29 Chris OK, that's impressive. You only had 50. I think I was definitely in the ah love low low 500. 01:13:05.39 Dave Oh shit, okay, maybe I'm wrong. 01:13:06.30 Chris ah So I was like, ah yeah, it's I mean, and it's funny because as you're as you're going through this, you see that you see the soul is just like dropping as you're like, oh, no, I'm like, I'm trying to save them. But like you can't. And it's just it's just constant. um stuff that's going on on the screen that you're trying to, you know, get rid of, uh, Satan at this point. But, um, yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's just so weird. but So, but so satisfying at the same time. 01:13:42.05 Dave Give me just a second. I'm going to find that death count. 01:13:45.71 Chris Okay. 01:13:52.89 Dave Yeah, I looked up my ah my twitch video real quick just to see the death count. I'm at 63 missing. So yeah, I did make it through 01:14:03.68 Chris Damn, all right. 01:14:03.87 Dave without losing a lot. 01:14:05.76 Chris That's impressive. 01:14:05.81 Dave ah But yeah, it's like this parade of like you know ponies and unicorns and like there's some flying and stuff. And as you get further into this, you start to get into weird file stuff. like It just keeps saying missing texture on the screen as you're like going through at the end. 01:14:22.16 Chris Yeah. 01:14:24.28 Dave And the game ah you know the game within the game uninstalls. um And then the hopeless soul talks to you after that, like the last kind of meta thing about it and says that, okay, you are free. 01:14:39.28 Chris That's true. 01:14:40.21 Dave you the character or maybe you the player. I don't know if it wants to make this connection between like the character or like me, Dave playing the game. Like I'm free. 01:14:50.55 Chris Hmm. 01:14:51.19 Dave Like Satan's not stealing my soul, but then um he, the hopeless soul says they will never be free until you uninstall the game. Pony Island. So like you have to go into your steam and uninstall the game. 01:15:05.95 Chris Yeah. 01:15:11.66 Chris Which I did end up doing, but it's like, uh, I don't know. 01:15:13.45 Dave Yeah, I did it too. 01:15:18.10 Chris The other thing I was thinking about too, was how does this 12th, 12th to 14th century character know how to use an arcade or a computer, right? 01:15:28.41 Dave A computer. ah yeah 01:15:31.97 Chris Like. Does that mean that they've been playing this for so many times? And then, you know, they finally figured it out. I don't know. Like. 01:15:41.85 Dave I don't know, I mean, like given an eternity, I guess ah ah someone from that time would be able to figure out how to play a video game, I guess. 01:15:51.84 Chris Yeah. Yeah. 01:15:53.16 Dave Honestly, all right, so I didn't see this in my playthrough of the game, because I didn't get all the tickets. I just heard about this um on a podcast I listened to, and I was like, huh, that's weird. 01:15:59.37 Chris Mm hmm. 01:16:06.10 Chris yeah you Yeah, I guess it's fair. 01:16:06.17 Dave But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it has a shock value to be like, you've been in the game for a thousand years. But I don't actually think that that's like not additive to the story. like I thought it was fine to have the player character just be me, you know an avatar of me ah playing a haunted arcade game, basically. 01:16:31.14 Chris Yeah, yeah. 01:16:36.51 Chris Hmm. 01:16:36.65 Dave I didn't really need the 01:16:38.74 Chris Right. The 12th century part about it, but true. 01:16:40.94 Dave Yeah, it just brings up more questions than I needed about something like this. 01:16:47.42 Chris I'm like, I think at one point, does your character change to like a knight? 01:16:53.54 Dave Not in what I played, not that I know of. 01:16:56.22 Chris I was playing through, I don't remember changing, but i was as I was watching that video, there was the the character, especially in the adventure mode, turned into a knight. 01:17:07.83 Dave Okay. 01:17:08.09 Chris So there must be like a number of tickets or something that you have to do to unlock that. ah I don't know if it's an ability, but something that happens makes that happen that makes that change. 01:17:15.85 Dave Yeah. 01:17:17.83 Chris and I'm like, oh, interesting. But yeah, like what is the point of that? like Why do I care? Because like at the end, at least the ending that I saw, you see the pony kind of jumping across a castle. And you're on the floor, essentially, I guess you. 01:17:37.55 Dave Yeah. Like your character fell down. 01:17:39.68 Chris Right, like storming the cat, like, is and that's the other thing, it kind of goes through the whole thing about the the history of the in the Crusades and stuff like that, where 01:17:39.71 Dave Yeah. 01:17:50.92 Chris you know you might be a crusader during this time and trying to storm a castle of some sort, and then you died, and then this is how you became part of this whole Pony Island nonsense. 01:17:53.58 Dave Yeah. 01:18:00.98 Chris I'm like, what is going on? 01:18:01.60 Dave yeah Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. 01:18:02.82 Chris like Yeah, I don't know. 01:18:07.68 Dave Maybe if I watch that video, I'm sure it would make more sense to have somebody who's like actually put in the time, like try and lay that out. 01:18:11.17 Chris Yeah. 01:18:15.19 Chris Yeah. 01:18:15.22 Dave That's not really the point of this podcast is to explain stuff like that, but 01:18:17.04 Chris No. 01:18:19.52 Chris But we're on the spoiler wall. So that's why I was like, you know, I wanted to bring it up. 01:18:21.92 Dave Oh, yeah, it's all fair game. 01:18:22.92 Chris So. 01:18:24.52 Dave And like, not this is not me saying that there's nothing there. 01:18:24.89 Chris yeah Right. 01:18:30.72 Dave And what, what is there is not a possibly cool or anything like that. 01:18:36.15 Chris isn't it 01:18:36.34 Dave I'm just saying, for me personally, the part where a hopeless soul is talking to me, Dave, saying, Hey, you need to uninstall this game. That's the only way I'll be free. 01:18:46.74 Chris Yeah. 01:18:48.85 Dave That's the type of meta connection that I think is just a little bit interesting. And I don't necessarily need the story about the 12th century Crusader or something like it already had me. 01:18:55.74 Chris Yeah. 01:19:00.41 Chris True. True. 01:19:03.25 Chris Yeah. Did you, did you see the act like the secret ending after collecting all the tickets? 01:19:09.08 Dave I did not. I forgot to watch that. 01:19:11.17 Chris Okay. So like what ends up happening is you, um, Like you, I think you still go through the whole, um, sequence of the soul, uh, the souls and stuff like that. But then the hopeless souls, like, Oh, you, you completed everything in this game. And it's like, well, I guess you need one more final challenge. Don't you? 01:19:32.66 Dave Oh, right. 01:19:32.98 Chris And, and then, and then you fight the hopeless soul. 01:19:36.33 Dave Okay. 01:19:37.71 Chris Uh, and it becomes like, uh, almost like a bullet hell, but like in 3d or something like that. 01:19:42.66 Dave Right. 01:19:44.99 Chris Um, yeah. 01:19:45.12 Dave Right. Because there is a Pony Island section that's like a twin stick shooter, like a bullet hull type thing. 01:19:49.80 Chris Yeah. Right. 01:19:51.25 Dave Right. 01:19:52.21 Chris So, so yeah. And that's how it ends. I'm like, okay, interesting. 01:19:58.32 Dave I did hear about that. I heard it was really difficult. So yeah. 01:20:01.20 Chris Yeah. From yeah. I've heard that that was challenging too. I did not get to that part. I did not collect all the tickets, but I was like, all right, well, let's see what this is all about. 01:20:07.09 Dave yes sam Yeah, Yeah. 01:20:10.32 Chris So thanks. Thanks YouTube. but's but 01:20:12.73 Dave Yeah, that's, uh, that's, that's the beauty of it. 01:20:13.12 Chris yeah 01:20:15.28 Dave You know, you play the game, you get the experience that you get. 01:20:16.55 Chris Right. 01:20:18.00 Dave And then if there's more and you don't necessarily want to do it yourself, we, we're lucky that we live at the time where you can, you don't have to just take someone's word for it. 01:20:18.41 Chris right 01:20:27.50 Dave You can just go watch it. 01:20:28.68 Chris Right, exactly. 01:20:32.10 Dave Cool. Well, that's pony Island. And, uh, thank you, man, for, for coming on the show and thank you for, uh, doing the hard work of holding back all the spoilers in the earlier part of the episode. 01:20:42.92 Chris I know. 01:20:43.24 Dave Uh, it's been a fun conversation. 01:20:46.08 Chris Likewise, this was fun to finally try a Daniel Mullins game. 01:20:50.73 Dave Yeah. 01:20:51.22 Chris um And super excited and I am, Definitely going to take advantage of this Steve Stale, Steve summer sale to purchase something. ah ah One of his other ones and excited for Pony Island too. So. 01:21:04.30 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So one more question for you. 01:21:07.77 Chris Yeah. 01:21:09.00 Dave What do you think is going to happen in Pony Island too? Like, is it going to be the same type of meta story like this, like more game within a game, more Satan trying to collect souls? Like, do you think the ship has sailed or did you play this knowing that there's a sequel and think like you didn't know there was a sequel? 01:21:29.09 Chris I did not. No, I did not know about that. No. 01:21:31.98 Dave Okay. Now that you do know that, And thinking back on Pony Island, like, do you think that there's more with the way this game works or do you think it's got to do something different? 01:21:42.92 Chris I feel like, again, I think just because he knows how to design a game that he's probably gonna give you that false sense of security that it's gonna be the same game and then flip the script in some way. 01:21:56.02 Dave Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah. 01:21:57.45 Chris you know like I mean, again, you played Inscryption and you were expecting a certain game and then he just flipped the script. 01:22:05.31 Dave Yeah, absolutely. 01:22:05.38 Chris And I heard about the hex and the hex is from ah from what I understand very much like um the hateful eight. That's the way that they describe how that game plays. 01:22:18.90 Dave Ooh. 01:22:20.31 Chris So that's why I'm really excited to try that game out. 01:22:20.34 Dave Okay. Okay. 01:22:23.04 Chris So. 01:22:23.16 Dave Hell yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. Like. probably like the name Pony Island 2, seems like it might be a you know a false sense of security that you're like, okay, I played Pony Island, I know what's up. 01:22:36.88 Chris Right. 01:22:37.49 Dave And then you start playing, you don't know what's up. 01:22:37.92 Chris Right. 01:22:40.48 Chris Yeah, so how long has it been since the Inscryption's been out? 01:22:45.52 Dave 2021. 01:22:45.64 Chris Has it been 20, okay, so three years, ah and for sure, I'm sure he had ideas along the way for a sequel to this game. 01:22:55.68 Dave Yeah, probably, yeah. 01:22:56.47 Chris So yeah, you know he's got he's got something up his sleeve for this. 01:23:00.31 Dave Yeah, and I think... 01:23:03.98 Dave Like, Pony Island is good. I think this is a good game. 01:23:06.55 Chris Mm-hmm. 01:23:07.03 Dave And I haven't played the Hex, but I have, you know, I know some people who played it, they say it's cool. 01:23:12.22 Chris Yeah. 01:23:12.26 Dave And then Inscryption is awesome. So, Daniel Mullen's clearly very good at making video games. 01:23:14.23 Chris Right. 01:23:18.63 Dave So, at the very least, he gets the benefit of the doubt. You know, even if you're like, what is Pony Island 2 even gonna be? 01:23:24.07 Chris Right. 01:23:27.35 Chris Yeah. 01:23:27.48 Dave Just, you know, trust. Trust he knows what he's doing. 01:23:31.42 Chris Yeah. Trust the process. 01:23:32.18 Dave Yeah. Cool, exactly. Trust the process. Yeah. So thanks again, man, for ah for coming on. This has been awesome. Always good to chat with you. And I was happy to have a real weird one today to talk about. 01:23:41.97 Chris Likewise. Yeah, it definitely was weird. Thank you, Daniel Mullins. 01:23:49.78 Dave Yeah. So, uh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Daniel Mullins, and thank you everybody for listening all the way to the end. I appreciate you very much. And as always, uh, we'll put a link again down in the show notes so you can easily check out one H one D one hour, one decision, uh, and yeah listen to the podcast, follow them on Twitch, uh, and check out the games they're playing. And as always tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.