KickStarter ICY: Frostbite Edition

[OwNathan]

The actual (bland) name is quite useful to get traffic from people randomly searching for "Restaurant", "Chef" or "Tycoon" on Steam.

I swear, I jokingly thought was the rationale behind the name. Turns out that really is the case.

That and the fact that tycoon games sort of need bland names, it is helpful for small companies to let people immediately identify what's the game about. Buzzwords like Tycoon and Simulator can get sales on their own.

 

[JarlFrank]

So this has been on my wishlist for a long time, got it for a cheap as fuck price on the recent sale, and played through it.

Decent game, especially the beginning when survival is actually a challenge. Becomes easier later on when you have maxed out a few skills and got great weapons, and you're rich enough in bullets that food isn't a problem anymore. Once you're at that point, though, the game is over quickly enough to not drag on so that's ok.

It's a pretty short game that doesn't have all that much to offer but it's decent enough and I enjoyed my playthrough. Definitely got my money's worth out of it. Might replay it one day to get the other endings.

Looking forward to more from the developer

 

[OwNathan]

So this has been on my wishlist for a long time, got it for a cheap as fuck price on the recent sale, and played through it.

Decent game, especially the beginning when survival is actually a challenge. Becomes easier later on when you have maxed out a few skills and got great weapons, and you're rich enough in bullets that food isn't a problem anymore. Once you're at that point, though, the game is over quickly enough to not drag on so that's ok.

It's a pretty short game that doesn't have all that much to offer but it's decent enough and I enjoyed my playthrough. Definitely got my money's worth out of it. Might replay it one day to get the other endings.

Looking forward to more from the developer

I'm glad to hear it!

ICY was our first fully delivered game and we were quite unexperienced, but it's nice to see that many people saw some potential and quality in it. While we are now developing a tycoon game, our intention is to go back to RPGs sooner or later, being the genre our favorite. We actually developed most of the structure of our tycoon game keeping in mind that in the future it could be adapted to support a RPG, and if it manages to sell decently we will start pre-producing a RPG while we'll deliver the final version of Chef.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm glad to hear it!

ICY was our first fully delivered game and we were quite unexperienced, but it's nice to see that many people saw some potential and quality in it. While we are now developing a tycoon game, our intention is to go back to RPGs sooner or later, being the genre our favorite. We actually developed most of the structure of our tycoon game keeping in mind that in the future it could be adapted to support a RPG, and if it manages to sell decently we will start pre-producing a RPG while we'll deliver the final version of Chef.

This being your first project and having had a low budget does explain its shortcomings.

What I found a little lacking considering the setting was any kind of climatic effects. You only had to make sure you had enough food, the cold was never an issue outside of one event near the beginning where you got into a snowstorm. If there's one thing I felt the game was lacking, it was that - it didn't really give you the feeling of having to survive in the cold through its gameplay.

 

[Zombra]

While we are now developing a tycoon game, our intention is to go back to RPGs sooner or later, being the genre our favorite. We actually developed most of the structure of our tycoon game keeping in mind that in the future it could be adapted to support a RPG, and if it manages to sell decently we will start pre-producing a RPG while we'll deliver the final version of Chef.

I love games that combine base building/economics with RPG elements, e.g. Rimworld. Very curious to see what you come up with for the next project.

 

[OwNathan]

I'm glad to hear it!

ICY was our first fully delivered game and we were quite unexperienced, but it's nice to see that many people saw some potential and quality in it. While we are now developing a tycoon game, our intention is to go back to RPGs sooner or later, being the genre our favorite. We actually developed most of the structure of our tycoon game keeping in mind that in the future it could be adapted to support a RPG, and if it manages to sell decently we will start pre-producing a RPG while we'll deliver the final version of Chef.

This being your first project and having had a low budget does explain its shortcomings.

What I found a little lacking considering the setting was any kind of climatic effects. You only had to make sure you had enough food, the cold was never an issue outside of one event near the beginning where you got into a snowstorm. If there's one thing I felt the game was lacking, it was that - it didn't really give you the feeling of having to survive in the cold through its gameplay.

Yep, with the first ICY we were drastically limited by our lack of experience and the small budget. This frostbite edition was recoded from scratch, but we had even less money to do a proper job, so we focused on creating more gameplay like a decent crafting system and an actual combat system (which was really really crappy in the original ICY).
Hopefully in the future we'll have the chance of developing a longer RPG, with much more stuff emerging from the actual gameplay instead of being delivered only using linear, narrative events.

I love games that combine base building/economics with RPG elements, e.g. Rimworld. Very curious to see what you come up with for the next project.

Ideally we wanted to create a hybrid between tycoon and RPG, in practice the project was a little too ambitious for our budget so we have now to release it in Early Access. But we are really happy about its foundations, we took direct inspiration from Paradox's Grand Strategy games which use tons of stats and entities to simulate complex contexts.

 

[Modron]

This available for peanuts at the moment on steam give it a shot.

 

[vazha]

I'm glad to hear it!

ICY was our first fully delivered game and we were quite unexperienced, but it's nice to see that many people saw some potential and quality in it. While we are now developing a tycoon game, our intention is to go back to RPGs sooner or later, being the genre our favorite. We actually developed most of the structure of our tycoon game keeping in mind that in the future it could be adapted to support a RPG, and if it manages to sell decently we will start pre-producing a RPG while we'll deliver the final version of Chef.

This being your first project and having had a low budget does explain its shortcomings.

What I found a little lacking considering the setting was any kind of climatic effects. You only had to make sure you had enough food, the cold was never an issue outside of one event near the beginning where you got into a snowstorm. If there's one thing I felt the game was lacking, it was that - it didn't really give you the feeling of having to survive in the cold through its gameplay.

Yep, with the first ICY we were drastically limited by our lack of experience and the small budget. This frostbite edition was recoded from scratch, but we had even less money to do a proper job, so we focused on creating more gameplay like a decent crafting system and an actual combat system (which was really really crappy in the original ICY).
Hopefully in the future we'll have the chance of developing a longer RPG, with much more stuff emerging from the actual gameplay instead of being delivered only using linear, narrative events.

I love games that combine base building/economics with RPG elements, e.g. Rimworld. Very curious to see what you come up with for the next project.

Ideally we wanted to create a hybrid between tycoon and RPG, in practice the project was a little too ambitious for our budget so we have now to release it in Early Access. But we are really happy about its foundations, we took direct inspiration from Paradox's Grand Strategy games which use tons of stats and entities to simulate complex contexts.

So how's that tycoon game coming along? And what happened to that Middle-Eastern & Medieval RPG you were planning to make? I remember being impressed with the combat demo.