Yes, it’s somewhat ancient for a RPG Maker game, but Lys86’s brilliant The Frozen World is still one of my all-time favorites made with the 2000 version of the popular game creation software. While fairly short (you can complete it in under ten hours), the combination of a unique battle system, memorable plot and some great use of music helps lift this one into the heights of great fan games. In fact, the game feels like something you’d have played back on the SNES or Genesis, but the combat has a nice and rewarding Nintendo DS/3DS “touch screen” experience I’ll get to in a bit.

You play as Lutine, a heroine brought back from the dead after her attempts at defeating a pretty evil dark wizard fail. After taking over the world at the beginning of the game, killing off countless numbers of people and defeating Lutine, the wizard decides to preserve his “trophy” by freezing everything in place on the planet. It’s here that Lutine reenters the scene, not quite knowing where she is at first and a bit dazed at that. As you make your way around, you’ll discover a few people and a great deal of monsters who’ve managed to avoid being frozen.

Par for the course (and save for a few obvious evildoers), the people you meet along the way are primarily helpful in your quest while the monsters are not. Lutine basically needs to make it back to the wizard’s tower and finish the job with the new bits of information she picks up on the journey on how to defeat him for good. he’ll have company this time out, as you need to track down a few traveling companions in order to help whittle down the monster population that’s keeping you from your sweet revenge. Naturally, there are baddies who want to make the world Lutine-free (pun intended), so you’ll need to be stronger than they are (or at least more persistent and good about saving your game before tough battles).

The element of time is used quite well throughout, as you’ll encounter frozen villagers in the midst of all sorts of deeds from strolling to the market, robbing a house or visiting a secret lover. These trapped citizens and Lys’ descriptions are quite compelling and humorous in spots, as usually NPCs in these games aren’t all that interesting to talk to.  Here, silence is golden, but actions speak louder than words in those places where you’re getting a deeper look at someone’s mundane existence. Even though there’s not a great amount of text in these slices of life, you can almost see things playing out before time stopped and you’ll wish you could be a fly on the wall in some of the encounters.

Unlike many traditional JRPGs, there are no random battles here, but until you get the hang of the unique combat, it’s entirely possible to get killed before you get out of the first room of the first dungeon. Instead of buying/finding/equipping new gear and upgrading every chance you get, the game uses a system where you use “plates” placed into a five-row grid and activate them based on your stamina level. It’s hard to explain without actually playing the game, but it’s almost like a card battle game. If you want to attack, you need a Fight plate. Defending, requires a Defend plate, spells require spell plates and so forth and so on. Plate management needs to be done outside combat, so making sure everyone has the proper plates in the right spaces is a huge key to victory.

The trick is WHERE you place the plates in the grid, as placing them higher up means attacks, defense, spells and boosts become more powerful. For a long time, you’ll only have enough stamina to carry out a Level I action, but as you get more powerful, you can assign plates to higher levels for greater effect. To keep you on your toes, you’ll come across creatures that can knock plates from your grid, steal them and use them against you and find a few too many other ways to slap your battle plans in the face hard. Identifying and eliminating these enemies becomes crucial when they’re teamed up with other enemies that can take advantage of your suddenly not having any attack power for the duration of the fight.

On the other hand, the game offers an interesting “out” where taking damage builds up a meter that as it passes each plate level, allows you to use any plat equipped at a that level. So, if your attack plate was knocked away on an earlier turn and you have another in Level IV or V, you can unleash a devastating attack on your enemies (provided your HP holds out). You may get a Game Over or three in areas where you get rushed or surprised by a strong pack of enemies or you forget to heal up before engaging some foes, but it’s great that the game makes you work hard nearly every step of the way.

As I said above, it’s initially daunting and if you’re careless, you’ll be cursing at the monitor and shutting the game down to play something easier. On the other hand, once you realize you can avoid some battles by dashing past enemies you’re not prepared for, you heal outside combat using items (or even better, at an Inn or other rest point) and use save spots wisely, the game opens up considerably. Creatures that were killing you before start falling away like brittle branches on a dead tree, you gain new teammates and start having a blast as you explore the game world and get more into the story. Lys made the combat inside a smaller that normal window (another nice touch that breaks convention) and with the two screens you need to navigate in fights, it feels like you’re playing a really cool DS or 3DS game at times. Hell, I’d actually pay for a game this if it were a portable game just for the level of challenge alone.

There are also some well thought out and fun puzzles to solve, none of which are explained, but all of which can be solved by anyone with good observation skills. Good listening skills on your part will reveal the soundtrack just plain rocks. Not just the wildly creative use of MIDI versions of familiar game music with certain songs I grew up listening to on the radio, but the use of original tunes all make this game a blast to play because you don’t expect a lot of this stuff in a game like this.  Overall, there’s a lot to love here, but if you’re going to download the game, you’ll want to definitely seek out and download the RPG Maker 2000 RTP (Run Time Package) which will hopefully have the harmony.dll file inside. The RPG Maker.net file is missing that and a bunch of stuff (as are all five of Lys’s games on the site), so a straight download from there will result in the game crashing to the desktop until you drop in the needed files (some character sprites, spell effects and a Game Over screen). Once you take care of that, get ready for an experience you won’t forget.