‘Pony Island’: A Metaphor for Depression

As we discussed in July’s episode of our LudonarrativeFM podcast, Pony Island is a metacognitive game that subverts our storytelling expectations. We left a thread dangling in this discussion that, in editing the episode for release, has been like a grain of sand in the oyster of my mind. I keep thinking about the dual nature of something that might sound really silly: the butterflies.

Butterflies in Pony Island stuck out to me primarily because of the stark color contrast between the “before” and “after” versions of the game. The “before” section happens at the game’s beginning, when the pixels are dark with greyscale enemies. You are fighting Lucifer, or so you are told. The “after” section is a kind of in-game reboot, in which the barren and desolate world that you’ve been playing is colored with vibrant, pastel life.

This aesthetic difference between the before and after sections of Pony Island is not simply aesthetic. In the first version of the game, demons are flying at and attacking you. You are told to shoot Pony Lasers to obliterate these evil demons. Everything about the game’s distrustful mechanics and angsty color palette serves to instruct you, the player, that your quest is brutal and existential, trying to hack your way out of a game-like prison.

In the second version of the game, the graphics restore to what the game describes as the proper version. The story immediately changes to portray something positive. Your ghost-like and heavily pixelated pony becomes dressed up in a smooth pink coat with a happy face. Your Pony Lasers become a brisk wind that blows away stray butterflies – formerly satanic enemies. Lucifer becomes Jesus.

Here’s where things get dicey: This aesthetic shift between the before and after versions in Pony Island is not simply about the relationship between aesthetic design and mechanics, or design grammar. More importantly, the shift indicates the emotional difference between someone who has depression and someone who does not. Maybe this could be said for someone who is treated for their mental illness, but also for those who have not been.

To get things out of the way, when I floated this idea in the LudonarrativeFM podcast, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from the creator of this game, Daniel Mullins. Mullins listened and, apparently, enjoyed our episode. But he thought we (or I) have given this idea about butterflies and depression too much credit. Mullins dismissed the idea in the way an author might dismiss a literary critic for reading too much into things.

Mullins’ point aside, I remain convinced that there is something to be learned in the implicit storytelling that the game’s aesthetic provides. I don’t mean to push back against Mullins, the designer of nearly the entire game, for being too meek. But I’m reminded of a former professor of mine who once corrected me, saying, “If you build a house and it’s haunted, then you’ve built a haunted house.”

I walked away from the haunted house of Pony Island thinking deeply about how this game represents the lenses with which we walk through life.

For those who don’t suffer from mental illness, life is represented a lot more accurately by the “fixed” reboot version of Pony Island. Life is as it seems, predictable and beautiful, where you have hope and the agency to change things.

For those who suffer from mental illness, life is not always so stable. I can’t speak with authority on mental illness, but something just seems right to me about this idea that the crests and troughs of mental illness feel like two different worlds: depressed days and normal days, anxious days and calmer days, and so the list could continue.

It’s worth stressing the importance of not reducing the inherent complexities that people face from their mental health. This is especially true in talking about videogames, where topics of disability are underexplored from professional lenses of expertise. My comparison of the aesthetics of Pony Island to mental illness is a small attempt to point out subtle ways that otherwise cutesy games can provoke deep existential meaning.

Recently, games like Doki Doki Literature Club have come under fire from the news media for its light-handed treatment of depression and suicide. These tropes, so the narrative goes, actually produce negative stereotypes that harm our concepts of mental health. As I’ve written for Epilogue previously, I think the game isn’t that simple and clear-cut. But it’s worth addressing the political and heated manner with which we have approached these discussions about gaming and mental health.

Also in the news recently is Hellblade, a game that has caused both praise and polemics from gaming enthusiasts. I think Sam Greer best summarized this discussion with her recent EuroGamer piece on Hellblade, “Hellblade was a good depiction of mental illness but games need to be sharper: Audiences and critics must ask more.” We need to be sharper. We can and must ask more from games.

How else might games depict mental illness, literal or otherwise? Must these games explicitly write mental health into their characters and plot, or can simple design decisions actually bring about a similar, metaphorically resonant opening into the discussion? This discussion of Pony Island is one attempt at asking.

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