now playing: "Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure"

 

Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure

Genre(s): Puzzle, art/abstract

Credits: Untold Entertainment, 2011 (IndieCade 2011 Festival Finalist)

 

Thanks to my own mother who persuaded me that there are things you never outgrow. Like creativity.

 

Upon discovering the IndieCade finalist list (code: some of the best internationally-recognized casual games out there), I commenced a weekend playing spree of all the games I could explore without having to download a processor-intensive application, fork over a card number, or fly to California to play the hard copy on some wacky specialized hardware made exclusively for the game. This actually made the list much sorter than I would have liked (but the ones that I was able to access, rest assured you'll be hearing about over the next several weeks, so stay posted on your RSS feed).

 

And every time I scrolled down that page of winners, this annoying graphic stared me down in the face:

 

Okay, so this wasn't the actual screenshot I saw at first. But, something like that.

Pleasenonotanotherkidwonder"genius."

 

The fact that a five-year-old kid and her dad put it together didn't tug my heartstrings. Rather, I questioned their mutual audacity in advancing as far as they did in IndieCade's rankings at all. It was probably one of those dumb "interactive" storybooks where the little five-year-old yard monkey reads it aloud to you when you're not "turning" pages. The scribbles I saw were screaming "SAVE US FROM THE INFANTILE INSANITY OF THE FIVE-YEAR-OLD." But after having spent an hour and a half on another finalist game, enjoying it and yet cluelessly stuck (shh, you don't know about that one yet), Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure was looking pretty promising. For a five-year-old's game. (Can you tell that I have experience with five-year-olds?)

 

But the intro title sequence of uneven childish font scribbled on index cards grabbed me instantly. This wasn't wonderfully simulated Adobe Illustrator art; these were legitimate scribbles and scratches from a real little person named Cassie who had thrown her heart into something she loved. As she narrated the game's title and acted as Sissy's voice, I heard charisma and professional enthusiasm. And while I'm sure her developer dad led a guiding hand in the design evolution, no grown-up could conjure up, of their own accord, a story about a girl and her jar collection of "ponycorns" and the bizarre, through-the-looking-glass creatures she encounters on her quest. (You can read the entire "making-of" inspirational fairytale here. Seriously, if she keeps this up she'll get a job offer from Valve in ten years.)

 

Not blue and orange portals—RAINBOWS!

Upon freeing the purple ponycorn by shapeshifting the hideous dragon: "You're a mouse now! How do you like THEM apples?"

Speaking from my own experience, I know that us writers spend hours and hours germinating ideas, inspired yet clueless about where to take a story from a certain point. We're constantly pursuing that utopia, Originality. But little Cassie doesn't know what originality is yet. As long as it's funny, or exciting, or happy in the end, it's a good story. So it's predictable. What's wrong with actually having a happy ending sometime in life? So it's goofy. What's wrong with a little light-heartedness amidst the zombie groans and conspiracy theories in the rest of the (game) world?

 

"That's not a ponycorn—it's a goat on a pole. That's weird." Oh you're telling me now?

The timelessness of Ponycorns is its obvious, instant appeal. I understand why, from hundreds of other competitors, the IndieCade folks assigned Ponycorns to one of thirty-six finalists. It's a time machine, taking me back to the days of the elaborate stories I created, either via my own feeble chicken scrawls in a notebook or with my first-grade playmates; to the times of all those make-believe adventures and sagas we'd enact, completely absorbed in another dimension and completely unashamed of our imaginations and completely open to all the possibilities and beauty out there. We took our nonsensicality quite seriously then. When (and why) did we learn to dismiss it? It's certainly not making us any better game designers than otherwise, as Cassie clearly demonstrates to the grown-up world.

 

I didn't review this game because it's genius for a five-year-old. I reviewed it because it's genius.

 

 

 

Monday preview: Some music is "catchier" than others.