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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ignas Vieversys

Pony Island 2 Panda Circus: gallop out of hell in this phantasmagorical follow-up to 2016’s indie hit

Daniel Mullins
A rudimentary Windows-like interface is seen over the top of an 8-bit style video game that's mostly drawn with white lines.
Bamboozling … Pony Island 2: Panda Circus. Illustration: Daniel Mullins Games

Glitchy aesthetics. Literally collapsing menu boxes. The game taunting you by “possessing” your Steam friends. Technical tricks of this nature may sound gimmicky in 2026, but they felt excitingly unorthodox a decade ago, when Pony Island came out to critical acclaim.

Fans of Daniel Mullins, the celebrated indie developer of Inscryption, will be forgiven for forgetting that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus is in active development. After all, it’s been almost three years since the announcement – and a full decade since it was first teased as an Easter egg in Pony Island’s ARG (Alternate Reality Game) – with only a single trailer and a bunch of tunes from the soundtrack released to the public.

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