Cargo! FUN from Icepick Lodge!

You may not remember Icepick Lodge, so allow me to refresh your memory: the last two games they made were The Void and Pathologic. Their remit tends to be “horrific journey into strange hellscape lacking explanation or true escape”.

In what has to be a tounge-in-cheek response to their previous games being heralded as great but excessively dark and incomprehensible, their new game Cargo! is all about FUN!

From their site:

When things didn’t quite work out last time after The Flood, with this end of the world, the Gods have stopped the Earth, removed gravity and, to replace man, have created the “Brats”, who are independent of gravity.

But Phlox, one of the last survivors, discovers the Brats’ secret: fun! This is why they don’t need gravity. He then creates the curious element, F.U.N., and this generates gravity. So Phlox sets out to provide the Brats with as much fun as possible. As F.U.N. will still be turning when the world comes to an end, the seasons and gravity return, and the Gods realize that humanity is a force you just can’t reckon with.

Phlox is controled by the player in the 3rd person and provides the Brats with lots of opportunities to have fun: they love a hefty kick up the behind, any kind of danger, music, car racing and breakneck trips in all sorts of vehicles.

The gameplay seems to consist of grabbing various random junkyard parts and slapping them together into different types of vehicles and FUN-generating devices, and if their previous games are any indication it should be… well actually if previous games are any indication it should all be a smokescreen for the terrifying incomprehensible psychological hellscape hiding underneath the bright colors. So far though, Icepick has only ever made games that are worth your time. I look forward to seeing how they approach this strange new plan to make a game that is fun.