r/Keplerians

Yeah I’m gonna make that claim, ice scream is the best mobile horror series.

It’s not the scariest one obviously, but its main appeal is that it’s mild horror that heavily focuses on story telling, and it’s done so well even for mobile horror standards.

Gameplay:
If you said it’s like granny and other games like that where you solve puzzles while running from an entity you wouldn’t be entirely wrong but it doesn’t stop their, it has unique gameplay mechanic that make each chapter or set of chapters stand out 1-3 have the iconic travling, 4 has nothing LMAO, 5-6 have the character swapping 7 had a different character swapping mechanic and bought back the travling for 1 section of gameplay and 8 was more mission based with its puzzles they even had some fun,unique mini games in between puzzles to further give each game its own thing all the chapters weren’t repetitive clones of each other in a different setting like how some people claim besides each game minus 8 was short so it was closer to playing a 3 hour long game rather then 8 full games that are all the same

Characters:
Ohhhh boy the characters in this series are so well written first off let’s talk about J the main character out of the 4 kids he has the most character development, in the 1st 3 games he was so scared to get people in danger he kept to himself about rod kidnapping his friends like how in IS2 where he’s able to tell Mike and Charlie about rod kidnapping Liz but chooses not to because he didn’t want them to panic but in IS3 Charlie questions why he didn’t tell him about Liz’s kidnapping and even questioned if he safe even still being friends with him after J’s friends get taken to rod’s factory J realizes that he shouldn’t have kept secret from the people he can trust so in 4-8 he becomes a leader who heavily helped solving his and his friend’s problems, Mike also has a very good arch where he goes from someone who dose dose stuff without thinking just to try to save Liz without even thinking about himself and then in 5-8 he becomes a brave warrior who determined by his love for Liz to look out for his friends and Liz she’s has a very girly personality, a couple small character traits but the reason she is important to the friend group is for her presence because as I said Mike is driven by his love for Liz and Charlie a pretty fun character to he’s basically depicted as some one who wants to be a hero, is capable but is scared or plays it safe most of the time and has a little development where he becomes more brave by the end of IS8 but he’s mostly the comic relief. And rod, OMG he’s so well written as a villain he’s a balance between threatening, evil, darkly comedic and also sympathetic on a more twisted perspective, at first he comes off as a creepy ice cream man that’s a cereal killer but they go beyond that concept, they go out of their way to show every side of him, they show his coping skills, his ptsd, his childhood the way he sees the world, in retrospect he’s someone who was neglected and put down and never had the guidance needed to fit in with society, he spent his whole adult hood running away from his past because he thought it would make his life better which is what he always chose to believe until his last straw broke in the final boss of IS8 where he realized his crimes only created more victims and hated the monster he became then questioned himself and had no reason to keep going then killed himself, and while we’re talking about villans I might as well bring up sister Madeline “assuming she counts” yes she’s evil nun but evil nun lore is basically Ice scream lore so she’s here she has a great story about how she lost her daughter and made a deal with nazrat to bring back her daughter under tight conditions she didn’t follow causing her to become evil due to her curse and some people may think “oh cmon this is just fan service” but it’s not the backstory is done so well in a way that makes sence in both ice scream and evil nun combined and and the ending where rod dies in sister Madeline’s arms hits even harder because of the context, so yeah that’s it for the characters over all great characters.

Story:
There was no way I would make an ice scream review without talking about its story, its builds itself In a way where it just works the structure hose from seeing rod do dirty work in the neighborhood to every piece of lore being progressively unfolded in such an amazing way, the games focus on both J and his friend’s story line and rod’s story line, J and his friend’s story line being the primary story line where we see them go from kids who do what they can to save each other to badasses that are never scared of rod and we see rod as an adult ice cream man who ruthlessly kidnaps children and the series gradually provides more and more about rod’s past that leaves you thinking “OMG this is so dark and sad” when you look at rod’s backstory in retrospect one thing I always like is that ice scream didn’t focus on one story line over the other it focused on both rod and J’s story and by the end of IS8 J and his friends are a direct parallel to rod because they spend the entire series fighting for their lives but they use their shared trauma to stand against rod meanwhile rod spent his whole life running away from his trauma making him who he is in the series

Horror:

While limited it’s actually done pretty well IS3 give off a sorta mysterious/ suspicious style of horror and 4-8 give a more intence RPG style of horror, being mild horror tho the perspectives made a lot of sence 1-3’s main question was “who is rod” 4-8’s was “how can rod be defeated” I think both styles work for their perspective chapters and even the factory itself was able to have interesting locations that feel run down and facinating

Overall ice scream is absolutely peak mobile horror and doesn’t get enough appreciation for how well written it is IMO anyways if you made it this far thx for reading

Oh how I miss the good old days...