Frost 2: Ice (incomplete)

Insert joke here about how you know this is a fantasy game because somebody makes a living writing for a newspaper.

Alas, Penny's spontaneous and uncontrollable usage of magic are still happening, though they've thankfully not been so violent as the furslaughter that caused her exile. Again putting in the extra work, Nadir has the soon to be exploded vegetables move around a bit rather than just pop in place.

100% guarantee Nadir was writing a conlang for Awtis to add authenticity to the world of Frost.

Henna calms herself and decides it's time for a chat. In any other ZZT game this would happen right here with Penny still cowering under the stairs and Henna in the middle of the room, but Nadir has the two walk into the next room, pull out chairs, and sit at the table.

This is the last we'll see of the Power couple. (ha. ha.) Again they're shown to have a pretty comfortable life with Penny being able to easily just run off somewhere and take time off her work.

Between the previous board and this one, the game suddenly dumps a lot of reading on you.

With interior shots on above-ground levels Nadir takes the time to craft some nice scenery in the backgrounds, but locked up in the basement, there's not a lot of options and so the graphical quality suffers. This is an extremely generic looking board, which is by no means a bad thing, it just lacks Nadir's usual flourishes.

The player is held into place against the chair by being surrounded by invisible objects, the only interaction available is to keep touching the chair to try and get to Alfred's pocket knife. Once its been acquired, Jubal cuts the ropes safely and frees himself, getting a chance to explore the room.

Oh right. I was hoping for something more smarmy from Nadir for ignoring Alfred here.

I am very intrigued by Reservoir Dogs not being enough of an animal people name for something.

One free, Alfred follows Jubal around the room, moving with the player as they explore their surroundings.

Going clockwise around the room from the top right we have:

• A water boiler
• A broom with an aluminum handle (taken as a weapon)
• A sealed paint can
• A locked door
• A fuse box
• A wine rack with a single bottle of wine

The wine can be interacted with first to get a cork, but then after making a big mess, Jubal can smash the bottle to get some glass.

Alfred (correctly) wants to know what the heck is going on and apparently the plan is to turn wine into a lockpick.

Except the glass can't be picked up yet because it's sharp! This necessitates cutting off some of the insulation from the boiler.

And with that the two are free to explore the building once more. When the door opens, it even plays the ZZT door opening sound. Triumph.

Things get a little weird, going from organized crime to cults. The altar is surrounded by sigils, some of which have been painted green. The altar itself has a brass plate with the number 7 on it. What does this mean? Who knows!

With the northern portcullis leading to more of the underground, the only way out is up the stairs, but it doesn't take long to be stopped.

By a tiny bunny!

Despite his size, Tulili is implied to be the biggest threat yet encountered. Being forced to serve against his will however leads to him being more than happy to offer up a loophole to let him fulfill his duties while pissing off his summoner.

This still comes at the cost of finding something to offer Tulili however, and so the duo have to continue exploring the underground here.

The northern path leads to a collapsed passage with some rubble that needs to be cleared away before the player can proceed.There are barely any moves that can be made and yet it still took me a few tries because I kept assuming such a tiny slider puzzle would be easy.

The visuals of this board are nice! I think this abstract background works a lot nicer than the purple mess of the broom closet. It also has some other oddities like the vertical white pattern running down through one of the rooms.

And that room is pretty suspicious looking with the way its been shaded. The center being solidly colored implies that there may be something there that's currently invisible and blending with the floor by matching its background.

Jubal goes as far as to call it out as looking strange.

Sure enough, after taking a few steps into the tiled room the floor gives way and Jubal falls into the darkness below... (read: steps into a passage that was blending into the floor tiles)

The passage takes the player to the middle of Jubal's fall where an invisible object pushes the player downward and into the waters below.

The landing is painful and the player does lose 20 health! The first time health has been used so far, and marking the beginning of it being something to pay attention to.

Some caps lock shouting ensues as the two are relieved for Jubal to be more or less fine after his fall. Plot point: Alfred can't swim. Also he's revealed to be a beaver, which isn't readily apparent from the single art board with him in it.

The player gets to watch an Alfred object leap over the fallen floor safely to the other side and then the party is separated.

There's then some _more_ text explaining just where Jubal is. It's not the sewers! There are a few paragraphs of Ilititoa lore explaining this to be an underground reservoir and Jubal having landed in one of the emergency tanks below each building to use in the event of a drought. More names of nations are dropped, and it's not really relevant to the situation at all.

Speaking of not relevant to anything, there's a peculiar graphical glitch here. An object uses some code to basically character cycle some waterfalls via the #change command (including a temporary change to purple water), but frequently you'll wind up seeing the purple water in what should be mid-cycle. I thought it was an odd bug to not notice in a game that while incomplete, hasn't had any code issues so far.

Curiosity got the better of me and while the visual issues happen on DOSBox, trying the same board out on an old computer that can run ZZT natively did not render the purple water. Mysterious!

Jubal doesn't really have any options but forward through a grate. It's a good thing he's tiny.

Despite swimming just fine, following the path Jubal refuses to enter the water again. Maybe he doesn't want his jacket to get any more ruined than it already has, or maybe there's supposed to be a strong current running through the underground canals. On entering the board he announces his intent to try and cross that bridge.

Visually the game suffers here as a large portion of the game remaining takes place underground where Nadir doesn't get the opportunity to stuff his backgrounds full of details like he does on the surface. Like the broom closet, the canals feel no different than any other ZZT World.

Up ahead is what seems like it should be a cutscene, but the player isn't restricted at all. Jubal's not exactly keeping a low profile here as he walks right up to some frogs.

Worldbuilding? Some frogs are on a mission and worried about running into some weird creature that I'm sure won't be relevant. I'm sure "clogar herb" won't be relevant either.

Twist: One of these things is relevant.

Towards the end of the conversation these objects in the top left slowly reveal a message leading me to believe this area was originally meant to be dark. The game quietly gives you 20 torches once you wake up after being put to sleep by Xx and Xy.

Jubal follows at a distance (not that there's any other way to go), but there's no way to be spotted by the frogs anyway. The path finally splits in two, with other obvious exits being blocked off.

I don't want to complain about the graphics suffering when the player is in an enclosed space, but Nadir clearly is capable of still livening up these boards in ways that the previous ones were definitely not. The waterfalls all animate splashing water and this board is by far as pretty as the underground will get.

Alas it's blocked off as well with a large door and a small card reader nearby.

The alternative, is the actual sewers which are actually dark.

It's actually a really difficult board. The layout is a pretty simple maze, but there are a ton of fast moving "Rootils" as Jubal calls them which like to bite. All those brown circles are enemies that will pretty quickly swarm the player.

You can also see the far rarer "Trollops" in green here. They don't feel all that different really but take two hits to kill.

The Rootils can be killed with a single touch, but their movement is so erratic that it's difficult to land the blow in the first place.

Jubal can thankfully find some much needed healing via delicious sewer food.

Something about the balance is definitely off though. By the time I escaped the sewers I was down to less than ten health. The Rootils are just a little too much to deal with comfortably.

There are also gold coins to collect which give gems. These do literally nothing. I would assume there was something planned for later on that just never got implemented as Nadir would definitely know better than to have these lying around for no purpose whatsoever.

It's not really clear what the goal of the sewers is (I mean, it's to find the card to access that locked door, but there's no indication it would be in here). It's easy to see this dead body and think you've found what you were looking for.

Looting the corpse procures some gems, and a single torch. The hunt for the keycard continues.

Surprising nobody, it's at basically the very end.

This is the only "action" board in the entirety of Ice, which is a large departure from Power where the majority of the game's second half involved fighting zombies and swamp creatures. Power's core sword fighting gameplay was its weakest part, so while it makes sense for Nadir to scale it back quite a bit for Ice, the fact is that the gameplay, despite being constrained to just a single board, is significantly more annoying here than in its predecessor.

The keycard can be inserted, opening the door and letting Jubal into what I thought was supposed to be something like "Area 7" of the underground.

However, the marking on the wall isn't a part of urban planning, but a guide for the cult.

The path leads to more canals, and a rather peculiar item just lying on the ground.

One of those infamous paddle balls found in most plumbing systems of Ilititoa

A massive and creepy chamber belonging to the cult!

Also Alfred.

It's a lonnnng reunion. Alfred reveals he's found some fancy treasure, and we learn the name of the mysterious sewer monster, the Ulgarant.

Nadir is willing to tell us all about backwater societies, drainage systems, time travel, but he'll never tell me about the these turtle farms that I am extremely interested in learning more about.

It's easy to get distracted by running into Alfred again, but this is meant to be a really messed up place, and there's plenty to check out. Each of the sarcophagi has plaque with a name and dates of birth/death plus an orb of a different color for each one.

Some have the characters comment, some may be recognized by the player having knowledge of the Frost series, and some are just a mystery to everyone that isn't Nadir.

Delta Moon isn't exactly a known character, but the name has been said several times through the series in the way somebody might say "Jesus Christ". The death date being the start of a new era. So perhaps we're dealing with religious figures here?

His orb is a dull red.

Ocean Mellinia has gone unmentioned, and would almost be a total unknown were it not for an art board later on showing a depiction of her.

Born more than a million years ago and still alive?

Her orb is almost black, but red tinted.

Now we're into it. Cedric is the only person who seems to understand what's going on here, and this room is our only hint as to what that could possibly be. Jubal comments on the date, 635 PA. It might help to know what year it is currently, and fortunately, Henna's letter to Cedric at the start of the game reveals it to be 878 which would seem to imply that Cedric is 243 years old.

Also maybe of interest is that Cedric, while still alive has a blank spot for his date of death, but Ocean had no such thing on her plaque.

Cedric's orb is bright blue, and has electricity flashing around inside it like a plasma lamp.

I've got nothing here. I've never heard this name in any piece of Frost media I've seen.

Like Cedric's, their orb is also bright blue, and has electricity flashing around inside it like a plasma lamp.

Another mystery character, with a dull red orb matching Delta's. The date of death is 400 years prior to the date of birth.

Then we have Silver Blood, Henna's mentor from Power, who was killed in one of the many undead attacks. His orb is a crimson red.

Lastly is Seven who is both the seventh name here as well as matching the much less ornate occult looking circle of sigils and an altar from earlier.

It's difficult to really figure out what this means and really, the player's not intended to. These connections are supposed to come into play throughout a lengthy series of games that just never happened.

What we can learn from these plaques is that there's a lot of time shenanigans going on. I mean, October's death date isn't just 400 years before he's born, but also more than 1000 years after present day.

Then we have the orbs. Silver was killed recently and is a bright red. Delta and October have dates of death and dark red orbs. Cedric is alive and has an active blue orb, as does Saturn whose dates are completely unknown. Ocean has a gray orb with the slightest hint of red but nothing to imply her death is even expected to be recorded at some point.

Take a look back at Frost 1's opening scene, where we are introduced to Set (...Seven Sabet?) who arrives in year 878 and immediately realizes that there two or more of his targets in said time period. So, Silver who's been killed, and Cedric, who realizes he's going to be the next target. (And the crackling blue orb of Irham Saturn matching the known living character would to me imply that they're the "or more").

I really want to know what the overarching plot of this series is! Especially since none of these characters would appear to have anything to do with Penny, Jubal, or Martina!

I'm going to end up yelling at Nadir on IRC (yes Nadir is still on IRC I think) to demand he tell me the probably actually bad and convoluted story for some animal people he came up with in his late teen years.

Oh yeah, and I never actually talked about how good this room looks? It's ROUND. It is incredibly round. It is the most round room I've seen in a ZZT game that the player gets to walk around in. It uses over 140 stat elements out of the 151 limit. So round.

Uhhh scene missing this is the first screenshot I took of the next board without a pop up in the way.

Jubal and Alfred head back upstairs and Alfred asks to see where the Jubal found the ankh he stole. He obliges and points the player towards a room where the ankh's pedestal now holds a pocket knife instead.

Not surprisingly, the room is very obviously trapped and that knife isn't going anywhere.

The small room in the corner still has some items to collect. There's a large blue ampersand, probably a reference to Town where a bonus item is just an ampersand, a jar labeled "pickled clogar" which can be taken and sets a flag for doing so that ultimately goes unused. (Clogar was mentioned by the frogs in the sewers as making one safe from the Ulgarant.)

Lastly is just straight up a ZZT energizer, revealed to be a magical item of invincibility (that also is comparable to taking ecstasy).

The door up top is locked, but the bottom path is an easy trip across seeing as how Alfred already set off the arrow trap.

And hey! Everything's gone full circle, after all this time Jubal has made it to the other side of the pit room. It's time to head back to Tulili and present the golden ankh to him.

On the one hand, I'm glad the ankh that the player had nothing to do with getting wasn't accepted, but at the same time you literally just find a paddleball in an underground water system for no rhyme or reason and take it. So it's kind of an unsatisfying solution either way.

Still, by this point you want things to get moving again. Frost is all about its story and beating critters in a sewer and then walking through some pretty empty boards is a bit dull.

Perhaps an alternative would have been to have Jubal pick up all sorts of junk underground, and then have Tulili reject each item, (clearing the flag so it can't be presented again), and then ultimately accept the final item. The task would the be rigged so the player always succeeds (either forcing the player to pick up something down there, or have Alfred offer something as a fail-safe), but done in a way that makes it feel like they've solved the puzzle.

After fulfilling Tulili's request, his bangs are moved a bit making him look far friendlier as well!

He's also a savant at this thing.

The exit's location is implanted in Jubal and Alfred's brains, but not the player's. They'll have to decide to backtrack here and not the broom closet where the exit is now revealed via a flashing object.

The exit is a blocked off dumbwaiter, in this building that shares space with a pizza parlor in a bad neighborhood. Got it.

It's a good thing hamsters and beavers are tiny critters.

The dumbwaiter cutscene is a rather nice looking board. It's very weird. Since the dumbwaiter itself can't go anywhere, movement is simulated with the blue background that animates a fade from top to bottom so approximate the climb upward.