ICEY

I'll just say this right now: This is one of those games where it's best to go in as blind as possible. Yeah, I know that some people hate it when that's said, and I get why since a good deal of the people who say this literally don't mention anything about the games in question, but if you want some kind of selling point: This is an incredibly solid 2D sidescrolling action game. Don't look at the Steam description for this (and, honestly, the way it's written kind of turned me off originally), but check out some gameplay videos!

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You're still reading this? OK, time for an actual review.

I love metafiction. When it's done right, that is. With metafiction, games tend to fall into two camps: They're either incredibly clever with the way it handles said metafiction, such as Undertale, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and pretty much anything that the former members of Galactic Cafe worked on (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist), or they decide that "HEY GUIZ WE'RE A VIDEO GAME!!!1!! OH LOOK ITS A BOSS FIGHT* LOOK AT HOW CLEVER WE ARE FOR POINTING IT OUT!!!!!1!!!XDXDXDXDZDXD" is somehow a good way at being meta. Unfortunately, I feel like more often than not, games tend to go for the latter route (which is baffling to me since things like film, television, and literature almost never do this outside of, I dunno, Animaniacs, I guess. I bring that up since I feel like it might be responsible for this line of thinking due to how young video game developers that do this tend to be, though if it is people forgot that it was at least kind of clever with the way it did things most of the time), though thankfully a good deal of them don't go too overboard with it.