Please, play Poinpy

The past, present, and (hopefully) future of mobile games

You will never know joy without Poinpy. That might sound hyperbolic; if anything I’m underselling it. There’s just something special about helping a little dinosaur fella bounce his way up your phone screen, collecting fruit and trampolining off enemies, that will turn the saturation up on your soul.

How did we get to this poinp? I mean, point. I mean, how did we poinp to this poinp.

The following is a post on r/gaming that, in a day, has racked up 10k upvotes.

I upvoted and moved on, as one does when the next post on the feed is so special that it demands immediate attention. But it got me thinking – I should spend less time on Reddit. And, as an afterthought, about how my relationship with mobile gaming has changed over the years.

Doodle Jump sold me on the promise of the smartphone. It was built specifically for a mobile platform, a quick in-and-out experience that made the most of the features of the iPhone and iPod. Then, oh so shortly afterwards, Infinity Blade demonstrated it wasn’t a fluke, that games built specifically for smartphones could be involving experiences that persisted across sessions. Good times! Good times.

Something changed afterwards, though, although it’s only in retrospect that I’ve noticed it.

I started gravitating towards ports of games built for other platforms, even where a lack of physical buttons made them objectively poorer experiences on mobile. I wasn’t playing mobile games any more, I was playing games on mobile.

Return of the king

Since then I’ve played games built for both PC and mobile – sometimes to the extent I burned out on them.

I’ve played games that feel like they should work on mobile but don’t exist there yet.

But it’s been a long old time since I played a game built specifically to live on a smartphone. Maybe the last time was the halcyon summer of Pokémon GO, even.

I don’t necessarily agree with the poster on Reddit that microtransactions alone are to blame for a shift in the perceived quality of mobile games, although it’s undeniable that they can turn people off when implemented poorly. It’s also just a fact that dedicated mobile games still do insane numbers, and that a ton of work goes into them. I interviewed the teams at King behind the narrative design and music for Candy Crush, for example, and they expend serious effort to keep the players engaged and happy.

I’m not making excuses for the really predatory microtransaction pushers, mind; they can get caught in a wildfire and pay for each and every drop from a firefighter’s hose for all I care.

No, I think it’s just that, in part, we got used to smartphones’ capabilities to the point that mobile-first games feel less special or even necessary. You can play yer Grand Theft Autos on ‘em, after all. Developers also understandably want to maximise their return, so if they can release for multiple platforms they will – even if it makes the smartphone version less specialised for those devices.

All of which is to say there’s only been one or two games that have come in and taken over my attention on mobile over the past decade, drawn me away from r/CryptidDogs. And, in answer to an unvoiced prayer, one of them, Poinpy, from Downwell’s Ojiro Fumoto and Devolver Digital, has just been reborn in a time we need it most. Truly, it is the King Arthur of the mobile game world — the Once and Future King.

‘Cos Poinpy’s a dinosaur, you get it? Like T. Rex, like ‘king’? You get it. You get it.

Poinp as verb

In between cancelling your favourite shows before they could have a satisfying conclusion and diving into the slop bucket, Netflix has spent some time building out a respectable catalogue of games available through its subscription service.

Many are simply ports — but some were entirely new. To that end, some miracle confluence of events led them to Devolver and Fumoto, who developed Poinpy as an original title.

Available through Netflix’s own app, or the App Store for those also signed into Netflix, Poinpy came out in June 2022 for iOS and Android. It grabbed me like a drowning man might a lifevest, which is to say ‘hard and pinchy’. I spent weeks opening the app until muscle memory had my thumb hover over the icon’s location at all times, even if I was just checking if I had a new notification from r/CryptidDogs. You couldn’t stop me poinpin’. I’d poinp morning, noon, and night. “Stop poinpin’”, my girlfriend would say. “Are you prepared to kill me”, I’d ask in return, “because that’s what it will take”. Another Poinpy widow…

And then, a year ago, the game was de-listed. No longer available through Netflix. Gone. Erased, as GLOW was. A jumping dinosaur, that perennial source of joy, was ripped from the world, leaving it bereft and rudderless. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the colour fade from the sunset.

It was a titanic shame, because the game itself is incredible.

Simply, you swiiiiipe on your screen to direct the jump trajectory of your pal Poinpy, helping him poinp his way up procedurally generated levels, pursued by some blue beast. As you bounce your way off the walls and enemies, you’ll have to collect fruit to fulfil a recipe presented at the top of the screen.

Through doing so, and then landing/poinpin’ on one of the platforms, you’ll feed your pursuer (a cat, maybe?) that fruit salad and buy yourself extra time. Is it a metaphor for debt in a capitalist world? I mean, fuck, what isn’t, these days?

The jeopardy comes from the limited number of mid-air leaps you can make, the enemies that populate the levels, and from the need to avoid verboten fruit and veg.

It is – especially early on when you have few jumps – far more difficult than it sounds. In action, though, it’s exhilarating: using your depleting jump orbs carefully to maximise fruit acquisition, strategically aiming to poinp off enemies to replenish them, and keeping an eye open for any environmental detail you can turn to your advantage.

Poinpy as adjective

I recently wrote about roguelites, and how the very best of them manage to mitigate some of the early game issues that pure roguelikes have baked into their design.

Poinpy staggers its persistent upgrades incredibly well, adding new abilities via a gacha-like system that prevents your upgrade path from feeling rote, and empowering your jumping ability until you’ll be able to take a moment to just enjoy Poinpy bouncing his own way up the tube until you need to intervene again. It means that every run feels meaningful: you’ll power your poinpy self up by mastering the controls and by earning currency for the upgrades, each and every time.

It’s also so charming, with music composed by Calum Bowen of Pikuniku fame and clean, colourful art design by Error403.

The playful soundtrack occasionally has a Wind Waker-esque feel to it, bouncy and free, evoking the feeling of playing the game in sonic form. You simply can’t get bored while experiencing it – and it has the immediate replayability of the very best of the old-school mobile-first titles we spoke about above.

It feels impossible that this should have come out of a collab with Netflix. I’ll still never forgive them for cancelling GLOW, though. Betty Gilpin deserved better.

Happily, Poinpy is now free of the giant’s leash. The Netflix timed exclusivity window has closed. As Devolver announced just the other week, it’s now available as a standalone game – for free! That’s as cheap as it comes! It’s as free as the air that you breathe. Oh, you can and should tip the devs through a newly added feature, but there’s absolutely no reason not to try out working with your poinpy pal right now.

It feels like a throwback to the early promise of mobile-first games, with thoroughly modern sensibilities, and – hopefully – a sign that canny developers still recognise that mobile gaming has its own cadence and poinpy appeal.

More Poinpy, please. Poinpy now, Poinpy forever.

Please, play Poinpy.

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