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[Slader16]

Thread resurrection ftw 

[Glyph]

Now that it's 2014 I can think of exactly ONE successful icebergvania since 2009: FEZ.

Frog Fractions.

[Whiteclaws]

wts (that's sunnyshorebeachclubco for you) is happening here
when did this thread die?

[s0]

Now that it's 2014 I can think of exactly ONE successful icebergvania since 2009: FEZ.

it's because there are too many co2vanias flooding the market

[SirNiko]

Frog Fractions 2 will come someday soon and we have that to look forward to. I really like the idea of everyone releasing a bunch of iceburgvanias in that time period (even if they're rather small ones, such as single-screen arcade games with a secret second screen) since people will be in a secret-content finding mood while searching for Frog Fractions 2.

[melos]

la mulana remake. FEZ was a bit too straightforward for the most part after the single alphabet cipher and directions? only the heart pieces were super hidden. icebergvania seems to belike really really hidden stuff. so if fez was entirely heart piece things, maybe.

[SirNiko]

It's pretty easy to argue that no iceburgvanias actually exist; even Symphony of the Night gave a lot of clues that there was more to the game, and you only really failed to discover the second castle if you stopped playing upon killing Richter. Even Frog Fractions is pretty open about its secrets, since the powerup menu spoils that there is a great deal of extra things to find.

I think it's fair to scale back the definition of Iceburgvania to include lesser stuff like Fez's hearts. It's a relatively unexplored genre (although for good reasons) and it helps to not set the bar too high right now.

[unsilentwill]

There's a tension there, where you don't want to let people in on the secret like 100% games do, the "secret temeple" is out in the middle of the town. At the same time if you as a developer invest so much time and content into something 5% max people will see, you may start to want to open that up to more players, which I think devalues the secret. You have to rely on the player's intelligence to follow the lore or think about the game in a different way that again nearly all games don't ask of you.

It will be very interesting to see if Frog Fractions 2 can pull of the secret game thing, if it will be obvious, or too obscure than no one will even notice. That takes a lot of skill, and I'd love for more games to not worry so much about completions compulsives and let secret things be secret(and powerful things actually be powerful rather than a brighter color) in modern linear games.

[baconman]

The fact that it's already expected of Frog Fractions 2 kind of kills it to begin with.

[jeffgmelton]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding but wouldn't any of the Elder Scrolls games qualify as this?