Something's EVIL with the PONIES...
The Pony Factory is a FPS Horror Game by David Szymanski. Originally a part of the original Dread X Collection, an expanded version with more plot and levels was released on January 18, 2024. The full version of the game can be purchased through Steam here
.In order to combat what he perceived as moral decay and hatemongers in his town, a man named Winston made a prayer, and it was answered...but not by heaven. Winston was taught by the forces of Hell how to use machinery in order to convert the human form into a more equine shape, with the belief that their new forms would have natural beauty and goodness. He was wrong, and now it's time to clean up after his mistake.
This game, and its original Dread X prototype, use the following Tropes:
- Backtracking: The second half of the Dread X version of the game has you escaping the factory through previous levels after reaching its core to shut it down.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: The final, and only, boss is a gigantic pony skull on legs that can take in a huge ton of bolts from your gun. Ammo packs are scattered around the arena in huge quantities.
- Dead Guy Junior: You're actually the son of Winston, the man who created the Pony Factory, rather than Winston himself.
- Deal with the Devil: Winston made a pact with Hell in order to "fix" the sinners in his community, somehow not realising that Hell had other plans.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The environments are predominantly black and white, with exploding enemies, some lights, and burning fire providing occasional splashes of color. The notes from the later part of the game reveal that the universe you're in is actually monochrome and the color comes from the energy of Hell itself, which is unnatural for this universe.
- Dem Bones: The main obstacle is a legion of what appear to be unicorn skeletons.
- Forced Transformation: The skeletal ponies encountered throughout the game were all once sinful humans that were forced through Winston's factory.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: As the game's official description indicates, Winston didn't realise that a machine that could turn bad people into magical ponies could go badly until the factory was already running and the ponies turned out to be bad and magical.
- Manchild: Winston genuinely believed that the best way to deal with hate in his community was to transform bad people into magical ponies like the ones in children's cartoons.
- Nail 'Em: The only weapon you have is a Bolt Gun, originally used to harvest pony parts.
- Twist Ending: You are not actually Winston, the CEO of the company who came back. Rather, the CEO was killed by the ponies and presumably converted into the gigantic head you fight as the Final Boss. You are the estranged son of the CEO previously sent to investigate the sin increase in nearby forest. The reason you came is to seek out the heart of the machine that allows the creation of ponies, so that you could create your own army elsewhere. Not only that, but you were manipulated by Hell itself to do this, now sure to instigate more suffering and misery.
- Villain Protagonist: In the original Dread X version, the ending text reveals you as this. The same applies to the full version.
- Visual Pun: Possibly. The final boss is not a full pony, but rather a gigantic pony skull on six legs, so essentially a gigantic head. The CEO is a head of the organization and is implied to have been killed or converted into a pony himself, perhaps this monstrosity. So he's the head of the company, the head of the pony legion and just the head.
