Ice-Pick Lodge Game To Feature FUN This Time

Ice-Pick Lodge, developer of magnificently oblique title The Void, has announced Cargo! and released a couple of accompanying concept art pieces.

At present, Cargo! sounds rather like an inverse of The Void. Where colour was scarce in that game, here it seems like it could be all over the place. This is an Ice-Pick Lodge title though, so Cargo! still comes with a suitably odd premise.

“Our world is beginning to drift apart in all directions, like balloons. People, buildings, mountains, trees and entire islands rise into the sky. Items with weight become the most valuable on the planet. But there is hope! “FUN”, the magical extract of concentrated happiness, returns weight to items.”
That sounds like a knowing nod towards the standard charge that Ice-Pick make intriguing, po-faced arty games which aren’t exactly a laugh riot to play.

But wait, there’s more:

“You must invent and build contraptions from the junk yards that litter the land. You must save the world by land, air and sea. By completing engineering tasks, set by a varied cast of pleasant and unpleasant characters, the hero will advance through the storyline.”

Ice-Pick developer, ‘The LxR’ has described the game as “Think Psychonauts * Vangers * GTA on steroids. + a storyline, that’s not as simple as it may seem.” If the team can deliver anything even close to that, it’ll be quite something.

Cargo! is expected on PC towards the end of 2010.