Ice-Pick Lodge

Ice-Pick Lodge is a Russian game development studio based in Moscow and founded in 2002 by Nikolay Dybowski.

"We wouldn’t go as far as call ourselves artists, but our general philosophy is that games should give players food for thought, not just fun. We’ve been making survival games before it was mainstream. Pathologic (2005) was novel for its time. We’re glad that nowadays gaming has embraced survival—a genre that allows us to put the player in a really uncomfortable situation, not hold their hand on a walk through a theme park. So now we want to help the gaming industry make the next step, fully exploring the potential of survival."

- From Pathologic 2 website

"Video games come in such a variety of forms that it is almost impossible to perceive them as a single phenomenon. We are fascinated by games that not only entertain, but also provide food for thought and encourage the player to change for the better.

That is why our favorite genre is survival, and our method of choice is a challenge.

Perception is on its peak when the situation is critical, it is most acute on the edge. That is why we put the players in the dire circumstances and allow them to find the solution themselves.

We don’t like preaching. We’d rather ask questions than give answers.

To us, a game as a dialogue between its developers and the players, and a player is a co-author.

Our job is to set the stage, redefine the laws of the world, introduce the problem, and point out how its core connects with everyday reality. The players do the rest, completing the act by virtue of their unique interpretations.

''Each game of ours is an experiment. In most cases they lead to unexpected results — meaning they’re successful."

- From the Ice-Pick Lodge website.''

Games
2005: Pathologic — a story of survival in a self-conscious city struck with an unknown disease. It required a lot of wandering, a great deal of reading and a fluid perspective of events.

2008-2009: The Void (also known as Tension, Russian: Тургор/Turgor'') — a story of survival in a monochrome world of the Void where every living thing depends on Color. Every action there was done by drawing, and the hero was represented as a transparent human-shaped vessel.

'2011: [http://ice-pick.com/en/cargo-the-quest-for-gravity/ Cargo! The Quest for Gravity]' — too crazy even for its creators, this story is set in a word that faced its apocalypse because of the loss of gravity. There you had to drop the flying islands back into the ocean and to convert the submersibles into the aircrafts.

2013: Knock-Knock — a story of a lonely forester haunted by strange nighttime visitors. There you had to analyze the causes of insanity, gradually getting to the understanding of being played with by the rules that differ from the initial conventions.

2015: Pathologic Classic HD — a remaster of the 2005 cult classic. Updated textures, higher resolutions support, new visual effects, brand new in-house English translation, and many other improvements.

2019: Pathologic 2 — a reimagining and modern take of the 2005 cult classic