The Ice-Bound Concordance

About

The Ice-Bound Concordance is a narrative puzzle game where you help an artificial intelligence complete a mysterious novel set in a decaying polar research base. As a player, you navigate fragmented stories and rearrange their pieces to shape the ending. The base itself is a labyrinth sinking into ice, each layer revealing older research outposts and buried secrets. Conversations with the AI writer add depth, as his doubts about his own legitimacy and hidden truths from his past influence the plot. The game stands out for blending physical and digital storytelling. A 80-page printed art book unlocks AR sequences when viewed through a webcam or tablet camera, revealing extra layers of the narrative. Inspired by literary surrealism, its branching structure and philosophical undertones have earned it indie award recognition. The interplay between tactile book elements and digital exploration creates a layered experience that feels both nostalgic and forward-thinking.

Storyline

Ice-Bound begins with Carina Station: a remote, abandoned polar base. Under the weight of passing decades it's sunk into the ice, with each successive owner building new levels on top. Now the station is an unmapped labyrinth of history, littered with relics left by researchers and explorers stretching back in time the deeper one descends. When the writer Kristopher Holmquist chose Carina Station as the setting for his new novel, he was struggling in obscurity, working in a tiny unheated New York apartment. After his death from a rare neurological disorder, the unfinished fragments were published on a whim... and became incredibly popular, with thousands, then millions of fans wanting to know how the story was meant to end, and what lay at the bottom, the lowest level, of the mysterious polar station. Thirty years into the future, a clever publisher, Tethys House, commissions an artificial intelligence "simulacrum" of Kristopher Holmquist, called KRIS. Charged with finishing the now-legendary novel, KRIS wrestles with self-doubt. Is he as good as his original? What has Tethys kept from him about his life, and death? And how was the unfinished story ever meant to end?