Crying Pony Reviews

Really cool side scrolling survival horror that knows its limitations and plays within its own boundaries with great care. Crying Pony pulls most of its fundamental game design from classic survival horror, but greatly limits the scope in a surprisingly smart but simple way. The game is a whole lot more forgiving than your average survival horror, with frequent checkpoints rather than a manual save system, which actually works well given the design of the game, (normally I prefer manual save systems in survival horror, but since Crying Pony is fairly linear and has a fair number of cheap deaths baked in, I found the checkpoints worked pretty well overall.) Combat is also simple but effective, applying tried and true supply management and spacing to a sort of old school beat-em up approach. Overall, I thought the game was fantastic - the art direction and animations were gorgeous, and there is some surprisingly scary music in here too. Although I loved it for working within its boundaries and not biting off more than it could chew and damaging the experience, I couldn't help wondering what the game would have felt like if it had been a little more ambitious and stuck a little more closely to the survival horror fundamentals (less linear/more puzzle box style level design with a map system, some puzzles and manual saves). Would love to see more games in this style by this developer building on the foundations set here in Crying Pony. Highly recommend this game to anyone interested in survival horror games.