Developer: Inner Void
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platform: PC, Mac
Tested on: PC
ICY – Review
Since the DayZ mod and stand-alone version, the survival genre has known a great influx on the gaming market. A lot of horrible rip-offs and unoriginal titles didn’t do the genre a lot of good and one of the consequences is that people are very wary when they hear about yet another game with survival elements. ICY describes itself as a post-apocalyptic survival RPG and right of the bat, you can see ICY wants to do something completely different.
Story
You wake up in a barren landscape. Jerome, one of your best pals, urges you to snap back to consciousness as a grand deer is standing right in front of the two of you. At this point, you can already make a choice: will you kill the deer or will you let Jerome take the shot? Starting off with such a rather simple question, the game keeps throwing things like that for you to decide upon. A lot of dialogue options are open to you and like that, you can really shape your own story. Besides the general storyline of you and your group doing everything they can to survive the harsh conditions, your character also suffers from amnesia. Soon enough, memories start to come back and then you notice there’s a lot more to ICY than you initially might’ve thought.
The only downside in this department is that some of the dialogues look rather simple and not very adult like. Some sentences are just written too ‘lightly’ that it’s hard to believe that some die-hards survivalists would speak the words like that.
Graphics
Graphically, ICY won’t really impress in terms of epicness. As the game isn’t a 3D adventure with a beautiful post-apocalyptic world to roam in, you won’t find any breathtaking panoramas here. However, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with another kind of visual representation instead of grand gameworlds. ICY offers detailed and hand-drawn pictures which greatly add to the storytelling.
The world map itself however looks a bit bland compared to the beautiful, raw images as previously mentioned. You’re basically looking at a landscape of snow with a forest here and there and buildings scattered around. Nothing to get excited about here.
Sound
The sounds and music in ICY are a lot more subtle and on the background than in most games. The boxes of text which tell you more about the storyline are accompanied by realistic sound effects (like a door creaking open when someone steps out of a house) and the music tries to enhance certain parts of the story even more. While traversing the map, you’ll almost feel the cold wind freezing your cheeks as the sound effects are really quite well executed.
Gameplay
ICY is a mixture of a visual novel and a RPG, accompanied with some choice making and strategic elements. While the story rolls out, you’ll mostly be able to choose a dialogue option for your character, which not only greatly enhances the immersion and connectivity with the character, it’s also just plain fun to behave as a grumpy, egoistic and intimidating prick sometimes (while the opposite is also possible, don’t worry). The choices you make will have an influence on the ending as there’s more than one to ‘unlock’. Although not all options feel like they really add anything to the general storyline except for a different kind of reaction coming from the group, it’s still very fun to being able to shape the main character how you like it.
Aside from clicking the text boxes to progress the story (this is kind of the majority of what you’ll be doing in ICY), the game offers some survival/RPG elements too. If the story is on hold for a minute, you can choose to go scavenging or hunting in the neighborhood so your supplies never get depleted. Traveling from one place to another to complete quests require things like fuel and food and if you don’t watch out, you’ll get greeted by a ‘You died of starvation’ screen. When arriving at a point of interest, you usually have three choices to opt for. The first one will let you do a quick sweep of the place but this method comes with a lot of risk of getting hurt in the process. The other two options respectively take longer but are less riskier. Again, like it suits a good leader, you’ll have to make the most effective choice but luck certainly plays a part as well.
In most of the towns you visit for quests or just when passing through, there’s a trader who will provide you with enough useable objects for a fee. Luckily, the surviving aspect never gets too easy as finding medicine (which is one of the most important items in the game) are quite expensive and not easily to come by. Like this, the survival part of ICY makes the game something more than just following a story and there’s actually a real challenge involved in managing your supplies.
Conclusion
ICY is a refreshing take on the survival genre and adds a more than decent story to keep you busy for a while. The dialogues sometimes fail to convince as they aren’t really written like you’d expect but luckily, that’s not the case for all dialogues within the game. The survival aspect is worked out in a way where you’ll always have to keep an eye out for supplies. Graphically, the hand-drawn pictures are pleasant to look upon, although the world map misses a lot of that ‘magic’ as it looks rather bland and boring. Making choices has always been fun in games and here, that’s no different although some options really don’t feel like they impact the plot a lot. Overall though, if you want a new experience in the survival genre, ICY is definitely the way to go.
ICY - Review,
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