10 Video Games That Aren't What You Think

9. Pony Island

Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island is a delightful and simplistic game about a horse, except that it’s not of course. It’s a disturbing fever dream where you’re trapped in a malevolent arcade machine.

You’ll begin the game helping a pony jump over hurdles until you arrive at a Mario-esque flag and then be showered in level ups until the game prompts you to insert your soul to continue. You then uncover a selection of .exe files located underneath the floating game window and start to learn more about the game you’re actually playing.

Spoiler alert, it’s a little more complicated and sinister than helping a pony jump over pixel obstacles.

You’ll be messing with the machine to try and escape, and you’ll rarely be able to predict where the game is going next.

While there is gate jumping, you’ll actually spend most of your time hacking, puzzling, and playing around with the wildly unique gameplay systems to unravel the game’s secrets and defeat its evil overlord.