icosi-do Review

Game: icosi-do
Genre: Casual, Indie, Puzzle, Strategy
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer | Publisher: Martin Kraus
Controller Support: Partial
Price: US $8.99 | UK £7.49 | EU € 8,79
Release Date: November 11th, 2022

Review code used, with many thanks to Martin Kraus.

I look for a decent challenge and a satisfying game loop when playing puzzle games. Which icosi-do does easily with is simple to learn complex to master minimalist mechanics. I honestly wish I had more time to spend with this title, but the holidays ate into what little free time I managed to find. So I found myself doing a puzzle daily, which worked great for that.

icosi-do LadiesGamers.com Gameplay
Simple to learn, Hard to master.

Minimalistic Is The Theme

Normally I like to review the art of games, but this game is a bit harder to do that with. It just has rods, but it does have an artistic design. Icosi-do’s menu is made out of the rods used to make the playable game. The music is procedurally modified, so it never feels obtrusive or old, but it could use some more variation.

icosi-do LadiesGamers.com Multiplayer
Local Multiplayer is better than no multiplayer!

Minimalistic Is Also The Game

The gameplay is simple: there are 30 corners, and you need to get one of each of the four colors to connect to those corners. This is accomplished by swapping rods one at a time, but you have limited moves. Honestly, having 30 corners to compare can feel overwhelming at first, but I got into a flow once I took a step back and just looked for corners without all four colors. The game also helps with this by greying out the rods you should not have to worry about in most levels. The colors of these grayed-out rods can be revealed by hovering over them.

icosi-do LadiesGamers.com Turtorial
The tutorial is fast but useful.

Controls and the Tutorial

The controls in the game are simple but give you multiple options. Utilizing clicking to select a rod and dragging to rotate the puzzle if you use a mouse, the arrow keys and the enter key if you use a keyboard and the left thumb stick of a controller and the ‘a’ button or trigger button if you use a controller.

To be honest the keyboard and controller controls feel a bit clunky compared to the mouse controls. The tutorial itself is short and sweet. The tutorial goes through the controls and lets you try them out. It has you try out swapping rods and solve two tutorial puzzles. One where the solution is shown and another where you have to find the solution yourself.

icosi-do LadiesGamers
connect the colored rods

Conclusion

Icosi-do is in an interesting place. The price seems a bit high initially for how minimalistic it is, but the puzzles are really good and get far more challenging as you progress. It also has a co-op and versus mode, although those seemed to be for more in-person or over steam streaming as the game has no net code for multiplayer. But even without online play, those modes give it a lot of value. If you like logic puzzles and games that can get hard without being frustrating, then I highly recommend icosi-do. So with no hesitation at all, I can say:

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. I like it a lot

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