Blue Ice – A Fair & Unhinged Retrospective

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Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
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If you've ever heard of the game Blue Ice, it's certainly not because of its enduring fame for greatness, but rather its much-deserved infamy for being completely bonkers in every respect. The walkthrough alone is surely enough to make anyone's head spin, but even that doesn't do justice to the absolutely insanity of the game itself.

Who better, then, to tackle this bizarre experiment in befuddlement than the Space Quest Historian himself? In his latest video retrospective, SQH offers a fair & balanced exploration of why Blue Ice is – and we quote – "by far the most impenetrable, baffling, bewildering, torturously difficult, batshit insane adventure game ever created."

If that doesn't sound particularly fair & balanced, wait'll you get a load of the trippy art that'll have you wondering if you accidentally dropped acid before playing, or the "gloriously demented" collection of quests and puzzle solutions so obtuse that it's an insult to the moon to call it "moon logic." This is no exaggeration, unless you know of any other games where you can inspire a reluctant princely heir to ascend the throne by collecting farts.

Fortunately the dramatic finale makes all the frustration worthwhile, right? Yeah, no. You're clearly not paying attention. Blue Ice doesn't really even HAVE an ending – or rather, technically it has two, neither of which concludes in any sort of demonstrably climactic fashion. The second allowed the developers to truly let their "freak flag fly," requiring no less than the "ultimate solution" to achieve. The reward for being the first player to do so? A cash prize of £1,000,000! Which sounds cool, right up to the part where the competition never actually happened and no prize money was ever awarded.

Who knows how a reputable company like Psygnosis was ever tricked into publishing the "most audaciously weird adventure game ever made" – except that it was the 90s and trying crazy stuff was still a thing back then – but there's a good reason why Blue Ice was the first and last game ever made by Art of Mind Productions. Plenty of them, in fact. The Space Quest Historian shares lots more in his typically hilarious style, so click, sit back, and be thankful it's him, not you. And if you'd like to see him suffer even more, be sure to check out the first and second parts of his actual plathrough.

The Space Quest Historian is part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network, a collective of talented, dedicated content producers who work entirely independently but have joined forces to promote each other’s efforts. All opinions expressed belong solely to the original creators.