Slime in the Ice Machine

Aconite

• Factsheet
• Short Description
• Long Description
• Streaming the Game
• Projects
• Videos
• Images
• Press
• Developer Statement
• Music
• Logo & Icon
• Additional Links
• About Aconite
• Team
• Contact

---

Videos

Reveal Trailer YouTube

---

Key Art

GIFs

Houston Strip Mall

Bars

Puzzles

---

Press

Houston Public Media (NPR, Houston)
Interview segment — begins at 51:07

Developer Statement

We’re trying to do three specific things here:

1. We want the puzzles to be narrative puzzles, which means we want to give players the feeling of doing actual journalism. The main character is a journalist who is learning new disciplines: seduction, bartending, gaming, vandalism, but her primary vocation is journalism. She moves through the world asking questions and trying to put together a story.

This is a narrative-focused game but it is also fairly rigorous and challenging with respect to the two types of puzzles we’re deploying. We have deductive reasoning puzzles ala Curse of the Golden Idol and Return of the Obra Dinn, but these are also situated inside a world that must be manipulated and interrogated, meaning we also have environmental puzzles that require a total understanding of what is going on in a level in order to proceed.

We think journalism IS democracy and we want to show people how thrilling and weird journalism can be: how it cracks people open and shows the messy, maladapted, incongruous person inside who is valiantly or ignominiously trying to wield power, make something new, or just live a life with dignity. The best way to teach critical thinking is to tutorialize it using exciting extremes. We’ve therefore crafted journalism problems that we think will titillate, engage, frustrate, mystify, and enrapture.

2. Though our studio is based in NYC and though our team is all over the world, we want to tell a story about Houston, TX. Houston is one of the largest cities in the US but people barely know anything about it. To the extent that they care about Houston at all, most people have the exact wrong idea.

Houston is the most diverse city in the US with demographics very similar to Queens, NYC or coastal New Jersey. It is a sprawling and glorious diverse immigrant paella of identities, religions, and fictions. The cathedral or skyscraper of Houston is the zoning-free strip mall, where a coffee shop might be nestled between a funeral parlor and a gun store. It’s a city that seems to reconcile all the contradictions and potential of modern America and we think taking it seriously and celebrating it is a way to help people live in the future.

3. We’re trying to make a game for actual adults that has actual adult themes. Our game is messy, strange, and complicated. There aren’t clear heroes or clear villains and you aren’t trying to save the world, solve a murder, escape a room, or save a princess. You’re trying to pay the rents on a bunch of probably doomed strip mall businesses. The game also isn’t particularly cozy or safe: the world is dark and disgusting and the characters have strange appetites and unpleasant histories.

Music by Buzz McCoy of My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Music for Slime in the Ice Machine is by Buzz McCoy of My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (TKK to fans) is an industrial band that formed in 1989 on Chicago’s Wax Trax label. They have many albums, still tour, and have a very active and devoted fan base. Their themes intersect with Slime in many different ways. Topically, their music traffics in sex, horror, camp, Satanic Panic, tabloid trash, psychedelia, and America. They are a John Waters-inspired band with a phenomenal sense of humor. Despite being traditionally categorized as industrial, their canon is remarkably diverse, ranging through funk, soul, disco, and surf rock. But their take on it is distinctly their own: a dark sludge, a cabaret show from hell.

Bars were always a core part of the band’s identity: performers were bartenders or friends met in bars, and much of the band’s early work was conceived over drinks in Chicago’s iconic queer-friendly nightclubs—Berlin, Neo, Exit, Dreamers, and others. The Sexplosion! tour featured a fully stocked bar and a bartender wearing a devil mask, serving musicians and dancers during the performance.

This is TKK’s first venture into video games, following decades of work across film and music. Buzz worked directly with Paul Verhoeven on Showgirls, writing a song for the infamous three-minute lap-dance scene. Their music has also appeared in numerous Gregg Araki films—including his latest, I Want Your Sex, now in theaters—Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World with Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s BASEketball, Sliver with Sharon Stone, and, memorably, The Crow, where the band had a one-minute cameo onscreen in a dingy nightclub.

---

Logo & Icon

---

---

Praise

• "Sharp, flavorful writing."
  - Tanya X. Short, designer/director of Moon Hunters and Boyfriend Dungeon
• "For fans of Disco Elysium, Planescape, Grant Morrison, Weird LucasArts. Run don't walk!"
  - Jeanne Thornton, author of A/S/L and publisher of Videogames for Humans
• "It's like someone put a bunch of psychedelic comic artists from the 70s on ice then defrosted them today and fed them a diet of adventure games and strong drinks. Fearless and untethered stuff!"
  - Sam Barlow, designer/director of Her Story, Telling Lies, and Immortality

---

Additional Links

Indie Fund backs Slime in the Ice Machine
Indie Fund announces its backing of Slime in the Ice Machine. https://indie-fund.com/articles/indie-fund-backs-slime-in-the-ice-machine.

---

About Aconite

Aconite is an NYC-based indie game studio specializing in sumptuous games for the creative masses hungry for stories, transformation, and surprise. Aconite is best known for the sci-fi thriller HoloVista.

---

---

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks