Cargo! The Quest for Gravity

Perhaps the most spiteful game ever made. Ice-Pick Lodge is a Russian game studio famous for making punishing artistic experiences that demand a lot from their audience through intense difficulty in terms of game mechanics, difficulty matched only by their challenging esoteric narratives. So infamous are they, that many online have taken to describing Ice-Pick Lodge games as hating their audience. Now, as a joke, that's hilarious, but as an earnest critique, I personally don't believe it, as while their games are nearly all defined by their adversarial relationship with the player, it is all to serve the greater purpose of empowering through disempowerment. The feeling of success made all the sweeter by the intensity of the struggle against an oppressive atmosphere of nigh guaranteed failure. In the words of Pathologic 2’s philosophical mouthpiece: “How can anyone be made to feel the heroic torment of Sisyphus if they're given a paper boulder to roll?” And so I don't put much stock into the idea that Ice-Pick Lodge hates their audience. Except this game. This game hates its audience. Cargo! The Quest for Gravity is a game made sarcastically. It is very obviously a reaction to …

Ice-Pick Lodge have another winner on their hands - bizarre world, simple but deep gameplay mechanics, and a deconstruction of 'what 'fun' is.

I bought a lot of ♥♥♥♥ during the Steam Christmas events but this one takes the ♥♥♥♥ crown. You have to kick man babies dotted around an empty island to generate happiness to spend on boat parts. The game makes no effort on guiding you in the right direction and if you don't swiftly work it out then the man babies end up dying as if to punish you for the bewilderment it had caused.

Glad to see they were never normal

It definitely has flaws, but I feel like they only add to the appeal. Playing this gives me a similar feeling to playing a game as a child and having no idea what is going on or why, but just having fun with it. You will find bugs, and I have to assume the translation is far from perfect. Things won't make sense, and you won't always know what's going on, but there is something very special about it. It is wholly unique, I have never found another game remotely similar. I have to expect the developers were on cocaine extensively throughout development, but it is incredibly creative, enthrawling and fun! (Sidenote example- reading the manual for this game I found they included the option to include your own audio files as the in-game music the buddies dance to, and you can even coreograph how the buddies should dance as it plays... why? Because that's epic I guess?) I love these developers very much.

So FUN, it rocks. Ice-Pick Lodge makes the best games, and the weirdest.