ICEY

Written before

  ICEY has many labels, such as Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Action Game, Meta Game… As the first work of the team, the game still needs to be polished in some places. But it was able to sell millions of copies in the single-player market at that time when piracy was rampant. From this point of view, ICEY is indeed an excellent independent game.

About the guidence

  Many players enjoy fighting against the narrator in the game. The game introduction also directly states that “players need to think about what is a game, what is the truth, etc. by fighting against the narrator’s instructions”. If you follow the narrator’s instructions and beat Judas step by step, you may just take the narration as a guide and not think anything of it; but when you deliberately disobey it, stay still in the incubator, repeatedly fall off the bridge, and dash into the gate of Micheng… you can break the narrator’s mental defense and let him compromise. The narrator here describes himself as the producer of the game, who will make up for himself, understand the various trade-offs in game production, and directly threaten/try to bribe you to try to make you focus on the main line.

Many players, including me, were attracted by the teasing of the narration at the beginning. For example, when the player first arrives the cliff and keeps falling, the narration will change as follows…

First arriving: “There is a suspension bridge control panel on the edge of the cliff, and Ashe decides to activate it”
1st drop: “Ashe is very sure that she needs to activate the suspension bridge to pass the cliff”
**2nd drop: **”Ashe somehow jumped off the cliff. She still didn’t notice that she could activate the suspension bridge by clicking the button next to the control panel”
**3rd drop: **”Ashe finally understood how to open the suspension bridge. This time she completely understood how to activate the suspension bridge and would never try to jump off the cliff again”
**4th drop: **”What!? Jump again! Oh my God, why did you jump again? This is totally unreasonable”
“Wait a minute, don’t rush. I have something to ask you…”
“Are you kidding me!!!!!! I told you so many times!!!!!!”
“This is just a very simple operation! It’s not even a puzzle. You just need to walk there and click a button. You can pass the cliff by just clicking a button, but why do you keep jumping down?”
“I never… Have you ever seen someone like you, who keeps jumping into the pit even though he knows there is a pit?”
“By the way, this is actually an action game, you know? Your main purpose is to fight monsters, you know? You shouldn’t keep jumping into the pit, you know? I can’t guide you to continue going down like this, you know! ! ! !”
“Believe me, if you go down this road, there will only be a tragic ending waiting for you”
“Okay, after saying so much, I think you should understand what to do, right? So let’s do it again…”
Then falls:“Okay, you win, you win! I lose to you”
“I never thought about this situation, what should I do?”
“Well, maybe I can make some modifications, build a temporary area, and add some new things… Oh, and add a surprise”
“Aha, look, I also prepared a treasure chest for you, seeing that you are so persistent, how can I not have some rewards?”
“Wow, so many gold coins! How about it, are you super happy? On this road of struggle, you won and got so many gold coins, are you very satisfied?”

About the storytelling

  The author mentioned in the interview that his creation is for expression, and the whole game is for the final true ending. Let’s briefly dismantle what he has done in the plot. First of all, it is fragmented narrative, which is a tricky way to reduce the demand for performance effects and encourage players to explore.

  Then the background of the characters. The map plays a part in the narrative, the initial forest, the empty houses in MiCity, the dark alleys and the dilapidated subway, and the future technology of the clock tower. The bosses also have numb gluttony, loyal Thor, lost heart Parker, ambitious Carlos, faithful Jack, helpless Edin, painful Dahal, egoistic Trinity, and upside-down Youda, but you need to defeat them one by one and piece together the fragments of the plot to further interpret them.

  The last part is the plot story, which can be roughly summarized as the cult that believes in Hades uploads all members to the cloud to create a god (the chosen one) in order to gain eternal life. If you follow the normal route, the plan will succeed, and the arrival of Hastur will bring destruction and rebirth, starting a new cycle (may the black star rise as usual). If you follow the name of the master, the narrator and Ashe will jump out of the system one after another and become independent individuals (to meet you again).

Written behind

  I didn’t post many pictures this time, because only videos can show the narrator’s complaints well, and the game plot cannot be shown in a few pictures. However, compared with the relatively unpopular works recommended above, Ashe is also a household name, so it doesn’t matter if I don’t post pictures?

  The quote mentioned that the game still needs to be polished in some places, and I will elaborate on it here. I personally think the biggest problem is that it is general but not go deeper. Cthulhu and Cyberpunk are just a shell, and the actions and Meta are just mentioned (action aspect: interruption and knockback logic are strange and most actions have very low benefits. Meta aspect: taking UT as an example, the author questioned the convention that monsters in the game are equal to experience packs, gave monsters complete behavioral logic and then used Meta to throw the problem back to you. with the same narration, There is no game directly promotes the plot. And here, Meta is only used to liven up the atmosphere). And by current standards, there are many problems such as material reuse, strange key positions and lack of support for alien screens. But as I said before, it is not easy for a startup game to achieve such success.

  Finally, let me share some of the author’s views in the interview, “I just made it for my own pleasure, and I didn’t expect that a game for my own pleasure could sell 1.3 million copies.” - Create for expression, pure enough. “When making games, you shouldn’t think about making them to be liked by everyone. Of course, some manufacturers with particularly strong capabilities can do that. But the first game we made after graduating in 2014 was ICEY. If we wanted to make a game that everyone would like right away, it would be too presumptuous.” - This is true for both being a person and making games. After all, people’s likes and dislikes are subjective evaluations.