What's the bare minimum you need for a game? How little do you truly need to be engaging? How much do you really have to put in front of a player? ICO is a 2001 adventure game that is an exercise in minimalist game design: a game designed around weaving a tale of romance and trust whilst having as little as possible interrupt your experience.
It's a tale as old as time immemorial: boy meets girl. Our lead Ico and the girl he's escorting, Yorda, are trapped in a massive citadel, and cannot communicate with each other due to a language barrier. Despite this, the duo must work together to escape the labyrinthine prison they find themselves in. It's a plot we all know the basic beats to, but what makes it unique is the minimalist way the story is told. On the gameplay front, we play as Ico, who handles the heavy lifting: he climbs chains and cliff-faces, pushes blocks, carries items to-and-fro and engages in combat. While Yorda cannot do any of this, she is needed to help open the magically sealed doors that Ico cannot open by his lonesome. Therefore, each puzzle is designed around creating a path as Ico for Yorda to travel and open the next door up ahead. This gameplay loop builds dependence on Yorda for both Ico and by extension, the player. You will often lead Yorda through each room hand-in-hand, and the little moments and stellar animation work, like Ico helping Yorda climb up tall ledges or extending his hand to catch Yorda as she makes leaps of faith builds trust in both Ico and the player. In turn, Yorda will often wander around environments looking for puzzle solutions, or inviting Ico to rest at a save point. In a game with as sparse a story as Ico's, these little moments do most of the heavy lifting for the player's investment in the plight of the duo.
The atmosphere is the other part of why ICO works so well. Very rarely is any actual music heard, and what little of it there is, it's mostly ambient and drone. Your journey is instead backed by the sounds of howling wind, running water, crackling torches, and Ico and Yorda's footsteps. Lacking a HUD or a UI of any kind outside of the save points and the pause menu, the game is all about the vistas: a camera more interested in big panning shots of the citadel and it's walls, where you are a secondary, if not tertiary concern. You exit the citadel momentarily to see an endless ocean, and the far walls of the rest of the citadel, places you have been and places you will go. It's one big connected odyssey, that fully engrosses you in it's world. When I sat down for my first playthrough, I was so invested I completed the entire game in one sitting.
ICO is a beautiful game that thrives in what it lacks rather that what it has. Its striking minimalism and strong aesthetics tell a story stronger than any normal narrative ever could, purely through it's use of in-game actions and mechanics, and it is an experience you won't regret having.
It's a tale as old as time immemorial: boy meets girl. Our lead Ico and the girl he's escorting, Yorda, are trapped in a massive citadel, and cannot communicate with each other due to a language barrier. Despite this, the duo must work together to escape the labyrinthine prison they find themselves in. It's a plot we all know the basic beats to, but what makes it unique is the minimalist way the story is told. On the gameplay front, we play as Ico, who handles the heavy lifting: he climbs chains and cliff-faces, pushes blocks, carries items to-and-fro and engages in combat. While Yorda cannot do any of this, she is needed to help open the magically sealed doors that Ico cannot open by his lonesome. Therefore, each puzzle is designed around creating a path as Ico for Yorda to travel and open the next door up ahead. This gameplay loop builds dependence on Yorda for both Ico and by extension, the player. You will often lead Yorda through each room hand-in-hand, and the little moments and stellar animation work, like Ico helping Yorda climb up tall ledges or extending his hand to catch Yorda as she makes leaps of faith builds trust in both Ico and the player. In turn, Yorda will often wander around environments looking for puzzle solutions, or inviting Ico to rest at a save point. In a game with as sparse a story as Ico's, these little moments do most of the heavy lifting for the player's investment in the plight of the duo.
The atmosphere is the other part of why ICO works so well. Very rarely is any actual music heard, and what little of it there is, it's mostly ambient and drone. Your journey is instead backed by the sounds of howling wind, running water, crackling torches, and Ico and Yorda's footsteps. Lacking a HUD or a UI of any kind outside of the save points and the pause menu, the game is all about the vistas: a camera more interested in big panning shots of the citadel and it's walls, where you are a secondary, if not tertiary concern. You exit the citadel momentarily to see an endless ocean, and the far walls of the rest of the citadel, places you have been and places you will go. It's one big connected odyssey, that fully engrosses you in it's world. When I sat down for my first playthrough, I was so invested I completed the entire game in one sitting.
ICO is a beautiful game that thrives in what it lacks rather that what it has. Its striking minimalism and strong aesthetics tell a story stronger than any normal narrative ever could, purely through it's use of in-game actions and mechanics, and it is an experience you won't regret having.