ICEY Review for Nintendo Switch

–Stanley Parable-esque reward for going off beaten path and ignoring insturctions from narrator.

-Nier and The Fall like terminal interface

-Metanarrative underlying the otherwise straight forward side-scrolling hack n slash

-Blue anime girl fights robots

-New abilities can be bought like new combos and less cooldown on air dash

ICEY first came around on PC in 2016 and the plucky indie title made an impression on folks who played it with great feeling combat and interesting lore.  The game recently released on the Nintendo Switch platform so I got to experience this Chinese indie title in all its glory.

The game starts out with a fairly simple premise:  You are ICEY, an android created to kill a man named Judas. This is ICEY’s singular mission and you are told how to play the game and where to go by a constantly present narrator.  If you follow the narrator completely, you get a fairly standard 2D character action game with boss bottles and upgrades stringing you along for the ride.  The REAL appeal of this game, however, comes when you disobey the narrator and don’t follow the guiding arrows to your next destination.

If this sounds like The Stanley Parable then you get the idea.  The narrator will discourage ICEY from moving forward unto the path they did not want you to go down.  These alternate pathways all have their own alternate endings, but the game cleverly checkpoints at these forks in the road so the player can always go back to the standard path later if they want to see some of these endings.  These alternate endings add some much needed narrative depth to the game and give context as to why ICEY is programmed to kill only one man and his army of robots.  Odd mythological ideas are borrowed from, of all things, Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow.

In fact, the game’s narrative basically is an adaption of the novel but with robots instead of 1800’s monarchs.  The game retains the same supernatural mythos of the book, but this isn’t really delved into unless the player experiences one of the alternate endings available.  Even then, it will really take the player seeing all of the endings in order to fully understand what’s going on in this weird game.  That may steer some players away if they don’t already enjoy actually playing the game in the first place, luckily ICEY plays very well.

ICEY mainly consists of combat scenarios against enemies of varying health and stature.  Enemies all vary in where they attack on screen and how much of the screen those attacks cover.  You’ll have small flying enemies who attack at angles from above, small grunts who run back and forth on the bottom of he screen, or large ones that cover the middle and low so jumping and dashing will be necessary.

Your android anime girl has the ability to air dash multiple times in different directions with a VERY low cooldown and in-air variations of the various combos available to purchase.  Air dashing and following that up with a long air combo is very necessary to retain control over each scenario.

The game will throw more enemies at you relatively quicly, so it’s imperative to purchase all of the Level 1 combos as soon as possible.  DO however avoid the ones that sacrifice health to do damage, I needed every last pixel of my health bar in some encounters.

Boss fights are all very satisfying affairs and have that distinct pleasure of wearing down a giant monster until you see it explode.  You’ll dodge giant mouths, spider legs, and massive robots while unloading fast sword attacks on weak points. This all sounds like a fairly simple affair, but it is much more fun than can be explained.  You will really have to see the game in motion before you are able to grasp how great the combos and air dashing feels when used in tandem.  It’s a delicate balance that takes only a little bit of time to understand, but a couple hours to master.

ICEY is a really fun experience that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys 3D character action games like Bayonetta or DMC, but might be looking for that same experience in a 2D game.  The meta-narrative is also fun to try and deconstruct so there’s definitely a lot to enjoy here!

8/10

Check Out the ICEY Nintendo Switch Version Launch Trailer:

You can find out more information about ICEY on the official website.