Marcus Estrada writes: "As someone with a taste for video games with heavy narrative focus, such as interactive fiction or even alternate reality games, Ice-Bound is incredibly exciting. This is a game with an interactive story, but to really explain what that means takes a bit of work. First, let's go over the very generalized story concept. In Ice-Bound, there is an abandoned polar base called Carina Station. Over the years new buildings and people have resided there and all of this intrigued author Kristopher Holmquist."
Icebound is a visual graphic novel with an intriguing story and interesting characters, the dialogue at times leaves little to be desired, but wonderful art and the atmospheric soundtrack are its redeeming features. Players who know the genre will enjoy this game, with the puzzle feature adding an extra level of challenge.
Sounds like the puzzles add an interesting break from the story, but it's a shame that there arn't many, and they don't affect the plot at all. Out of curiosity, how long did it take to finish the game?
Chalgyr's Game Room writes:
For whatever reason, it seems as though a large number of visual novels have been getting released lately. The genre is quite popular in some regions, but maybe it is starting to take hold here in North America as well? Icebound does very little to reinvent the visual novel wheel. It tells a decent story in a steampunk/fantasy setting, has enjoyable if inconsistent art, replay value and a very robust world that serves as a backdrop.
Fastermind Games smartly pursued Steam Greenlight and now Icebound is just a few days away from launching onto Steam.
