Icycle: On Thin Ice (v403.1)

A naked cyclist crossing a ruined, ice-bound planet is the strange and instantly memorable image at the heart of Icycle: On Thin Ice. Dennis is apparently the last person alive, pedalling through a surreal apocalypse filled with collapsing hazards, absurd props, and flashes of melancholy beneath its cartoon lunacy. The mood constantly shifts between playful gross-out humour and lonely, dreamlike sadness, with fish kissing and embarrassing outfits sitting beside the remains of a world that has quietly ended. It is a side-scrolling platform adventure that deliberately makes failure funny, even when the next obstacle is trying to launch Dennis into a frozen abyss.

Each stage asks you to guide Dennis and his bicycle through traps, timed jumps, unstable surfaces, switches, and environmental puzzles. Momentum matters, so successful runs depend on judging slopes and airborne movement while reacting to sudden dangers; levels are compact, but often hide collectibles behind riskier routes. Vacuum cleaners and umbrellas receive upgrades that open access to previously unreachable secrets, giving the campaign a modest sense of progression beyond simply reaching the finish line. Eighty optional missions encourage replaying locations, while five bonus dream stages take the visual weirdness even further; completing enough objectives also unlocks the original Icycle browser adventure.

What makes On Thin Ice stand out is its hand-drawn storybook presentation, which turns every location into a different grotesque little painting rather than another generic frozen wasteland. Dennis’s unlockable wardrobe is more than a cosmetic joke: dressing the permanently exposed hero in increasingly pathetic costumes fits the game’s offbeat sense of humour perfectly. The controls and physics can be demanding enough to frustrate players expecting a relaxed stroll, but checkpoints keep experimentation manageable. Fans of surreal indie platformers such as Limbo or the more absurd corners of Rayman will find plenty to enjoy, especially if they value strange art, collectible hunting, and a platformer willing to be sincerely sad and completely ridiculous at once.