Ico, magic, puzzles and poetry for an ico-nic adventure!

Vale for people, we know it well, but when entering the videogame realm, things get even more complicated. Ico, the adventure masterpiece released in 2001 for PlayStation 2, is one of those titles on which we are all in agreement.

Ico belongs to a series of dynamic adventures created by Team Ico, the creative studio led by the brilliant Fumito Ueda, the mind behind true video game art works such as Shadow of the Colossus and the no longer so recent Last Guardian.

Connected to each other not so much by recurring narrative elements, but by themes, atmospheres and emotional vibes, these games share with Ico the use of light and shadow as cornerstones on which to build many of the numerous environmental puzzles present, along with a plot that has an epic flavor and at the same time is deeply intimate: with Ico, in particular, Ueta managed to dig into the psyche of the two protagonists with a delicacy and depth that we would rarely see again in later games on the international scene.

A fully embracing the narrative trope that in fantasy can be translated as “From Zero to Hero” (From Zero to Hero, which sounds better), we find ourselves in the shoes of a horned boy, Ico, harassed by the very inhabitants of the village where he was born: ostracized for the protrusions on his head, he is locked away inside a distant fortress and condemned to die of starvation, wandering to his death through gloomy corridors, colossal towers, and mysteries lurking around every corner.

And it is here that he meets a splendid yet enigmatic girl shrouded in light, dressed in white and as pure as her soul: Yorda, that is her name, and from that moment on the two will forge a friendship destined to grow as the game progresses, revealing truths that are not always pleasant while they try with all their might to regain a freedom that, apparently, everyone seems determined to deny them.

What immediately takes hold in the hearts of players who venture into exploring the labyrinthine castle is the sense of physical and emotional confinement that the two experience firsthand: the gameplay is based on moving Ico and, at the same time, taking care of the fragile Yorda. In fact, we will have to defend her from the numerous dark creatures, born of shadow and shadow’s faithful, deadly soldiers, while tackling puzzles that will make us rack our brains, but what satisfaction when we solve them!

Per fortuna, the programmers implemented a sort of hint mode through Yorda and her gestures: she will herself indicate to us the area or the objects with which to interact in the game areas where it will be necessary to solve puzzles in order to proceed. From the very beginning of the game, Yorda will communicate with us in an unknown language that neither we nor Ico will be able to understand, a language lost in the mists of time and that will make the hypotheses about her mysterious origins fascinate us throughout the course of the game, exactly like the dynamics between her and Ico.

Sublime silences broken by the sighs of the wind that lift the sand of the desert dunes, the warmth of the hands of the young outcasts that intertwine and burn with that desire for freedom they can only yearn for, the cyclopean granite boulders that make up the walls of the Shadow Castle, as I called it when I devoted the first months of my twenties to enjoying this extraordinary adventure: everything is poetry in motion in Ico, a wonderful game that will often caress your face, and many other times will strike you with a punch to the stomach that takes your breath away.