Ice-Pick Lodge

Ice-Pick Lodge is a Kazakh video game developer based in Almaty, founded in 2002 by Nikolay Dybowski and Ayrat Zakirov. Originally found in Russia, the company is known for its unconventional approach to game design, questioning the concept of fun in video games and emphasizing shock, ambiguity, and discomfort. In 2002, Ice-Pick Lodge laid out their core artistic principles in the Deep Game Manifesto. The studio's first game, which became the practical embodiment of the manifesto, was Pathologic. The studio also released games such as The Void, Cargo! The Quest for Gravity, Knock-Knock, Pathologic 2, Know by Heart and Franz.