Indie Impression - Black Ice

Black Ice

Get It Now on Steam Early Access

Developed by superdupergc

 

Black Ice is a colorful, eye-catching FPS where players will jack into cyberspace and experience it's wide and open world.

The game boasts a combination of Borderlands-like loot addiction, with the retro-future aesthetics of the TRON world or the computer science concepts of Snow Crash. I had to check it out and see if it lived up to these claims and came away more than impressed.

Leveling and powerful loot are vital to not being overwhelmed early on.

Vibrant and neon minimalist structures sprawled out before you, seemingly endless. The expansive and cluttered glitchy landscapes of Black Ice call for some serious exploration with the promise of great discovery and rewards.

The more you hack, the deeper into the thick of the mainframe you get and the more colorful buildings of various size and level will be found.

You'll start off fighting the smaller buildings you find in order not to overwhelm yourself with hordes of high leveled enemies and your puny starting weapons. As you fight, you'll level. As you level you'll find better loot, and damn does it feel good when you locate that one super rare rainbow rifle with insane DPS.

The amount of randomized loot is massive with stat modifications to each one creating a near infinite array. It seems to scale with your level making the progression feel great, keeping you constantly hunting for that next sweet piece of destruction.

A powerful weapon makes taking on the hordes much easier.

The music from artist V-Axys is rad and it befits the cybernetic nature of the atmosphere perfectly. There's a really good variety of tracks already with some serious quality and you'll come across different pulse-pounding rhythms with each new structure you hack and battle your way into, keeping the encounters fresh and intense each time.

The addition of these new tracks is one that wasn't in the game last I played and just shows the dedication that will be going into making the game into the most engrossing experience possible, it's already looking fantastic.

Exploration of the map is impossible to resist.

Black Ice is just a hell of a lot of fun, especially with a friend. With the amount of procedurally generated cyber-land to scour and the increasingly awesome and empowering loot held within the hackable towers players just won't want to stop playing.

You'll always spot something in the distance to check out, some new piece of equipment you'll want to keep leveling a bit more just to try out, and every time you feel like you're about to stop playing you'll get just one more reason to keep going. It's very hard to put down.

Hacker extraordinaire, Zingrook, lazers a spider in the face.

Due to the quick, addictive pacing and progressive nature of the game it's the perfect title to pick up for quick hacking sessions as well as to get immersed in the deep leveling and loot system for hours with a friend.

Black Ice comes highly recommended to anyone who's a fan of Shooters, Co-op, craploads of meaningful loot, or retro and cyberpunk aesthetics in general.