Ice-Pick Lodge

The Void makes a glorious return to Steam. Now with trading cards, badges and stuff, because nothing screams “gamify me” like an artistic game about exploring your soul and creativity.

If you already own The Void on Steam or GOG, the Russian, German, and Polish versions will unlock for you automatically, and your Steam copy will be updated to make the cards and other shiny stuff available.

Please keep in mind that apart from us giving in to the colorful appeal of collectible Steam items, it’s still very much the same game—no fixes, no updates, nothing remastered. It was still released in 2009. The Sisters are still alluring and the Brothers, still grotesque. You know, the usual.

For those of you who might be curious, The Void was taken off Steam due to legal issues, that have now been resolved (which, as a bonus, allowed us to finally include the original Russian texts).

The Color of the Void is once again in your hands and hearts now.

The one and only patch for The Marble Nest is out. We’re calling it “one and only” because we aren’t planning to release any more fixes to The Marble Nest.

We are aware of the fact that a number of issues with the game remain unresolved. However, since The Marble Nest was just a pre-alpha sort-of-demo created to gauge your kind feedback, it would be ill-advised of us to keep pouring resources into trying to polish it. Instead, we are processing said feedback to improve the main game and will now fully focus on developing Pathologic itself.

Thank you very much for all your kind and critical words! We have studied each piece of feedback very closely. If you have anything else to say about The Marble Nest, please keep in mind that it’s never too late to share your opinion on the forums, social networks, or via e-mail: mail@ice-pick.com.

You can find the patch notes here.

The First Pathologic Playable Thing reached the backers who are eligible for alpha access today. You can download and play it right now.

The First Playable Things even has a separate name now, Pathologic: The Marble Nest. Which may be a bit odd, but this is the best way to highlight the fact that the thing that became available to you today is neither a demo (because it features a very limited number of mechanics), nor an alpha version of the real Pathologic (because it’s a separate story with its own self-contained plot). It’s almost like a small autonomous game that uses the assets, characters, and premise of Pathologic, but works on its own.

Kind of.

Continue reading Pathologic: The Marble Nest (the First Playable) →

And so it is here. Not Pathologic itself, mind you, but the next best thing: its tabletop counterpart. The production is complete; the tabletop game is ready to be shipped.

It has an awful lot of small thingies, see? That explains the production time

Continue reading Top of the Chain →

We have some good news and some news that are less exciting. Would you like to sit down and grab a cup of coffee first?

(This is what PR people tell to the attendees if they can’t show them the game straight away, e.g. if the rig is already occupied. We’ve been told that coffee works wonders.)

The release of Pathologic will be postponed until Autumn, 2017.

Continue reading Moving Forward →

Some part of the Ice-Pick Lodge team is in Cologne right now! You can find us at GDC, Innovate Kiosk, until August, 18. And after August 18 meet us at Gamescom business-zone, Booth C34, Hall 2.1.

If you visit any of these events, you could see a demo-version of our new Pathologic and ask any questions to our developers. Follow us at our newsfeeds! More news about our progress: coming soon!

The new Pathologic will be different from the original one—that much we have already said. But on the scale of “totally new characters” to “just kinda retexturing the Polyhedron a bit”, what scope of changes are we talking about here?

Short answer: …is pointless, is it not? “Well, many things will change, but we’ll preserve the core concepts and, like, characters and stuff” just doesn’t cut it. Not anymore. We feel it’s long past due for us to give you the long answer—which will also inevitably have to be compressed, since the truly detailed explanation takes ~70 hours and demands you play the game itself. Still, we are going to try. We’ve even ordered an additional pack of bullet points to go with the customary verbosity.

First thing first: it’s not final, but it’s a true, real, honest-to-god screenshot

Continue reading Not a Remake →

At the end of October, we are planning to release the original Pathologic on Steam.

Not the Remake. The original game. It will, however, feature a number of enhancements, such as improved graphics and visual effects; cloud saves (and other modern-ish stuff it was deprived of previously); and a completely new translation produced by an in-house team from scratch.

Now may be a good moment to reiterate that this is not the remake, which is still in the works, but rather a thing that we heartily call “Pathologic Classic HD: Now Comprehensible”.

Now, we know it may be a bit confusing—

Continue reading Classic Ice-Picks! (Not Really) →

The long and winding story of Knock Knock PS4 pricing has finally come to a close. It’s been an enlightening experience; we’ve come to realize that it is essential to research anything that seems obscure to you in excruciating detail (unless you’re the Lodger). Also that PSN only has three regions.

The current price is 8,99 EUR, and it’s final. If you’ve been waiting for the pricing situation to resolve, there’s no more need to wait until dawn: now is the perfect moment to finally buy the game. Thank you for your patience—and have a good spook!

Yesterday, Knock Knock arrived on PS4. It’s a very important breakthough for our studio: the first Ice-Pick game on consoles ever!

Please don’t buy it.

Not yet. Not if you live in Europe, anyway.

The thing is, due to certain complications, the current price of the game is thrice as high as we’ve planned. Regional prices are a very important matter—and the current price tag is simply unfair for certain economies. We’ve misjudged the flexibility of the PSN service, and now, as a compromise, we’re working on lowering the PSN price of Knock Knock to €5 across all Europe. It will be updated on September, 18th.

We suggest you refrain from buying the game until then—it wouldn’t make sense to pay more since we’re unlikely to be able to provide you with additional benefits.

If you live in Europe, have already purchased the game, and feel unhappy with the price situation, please contact us at support@ice-pick.com and we will try to figure out something.

The North American price of Knock Knock will remain unchanged, so you’re welcome to try the PS4 Knock Knock experience right away.

Thank you for your attention and for the patience.