Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane Review – A Gripping Wintry Puzzle Adventure (Switch)

Last year, I played and reviewed a game called Unsolved Case: The Scarlet Hyacinth. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. When I saw this new game, Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane, and saw how similar it was, I knew I had to try it out. I remembered what I enjoyed about Unsolved Case; the intriguing story, the hidden-objects gameplay, as well as solving a vast array of puzzles to get the cogs in your brain working. I was hoping Icebound Secrets would be just as good – and it was! Let’s discuss why in this review.

Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Google Play, and the Apple App Store.

Story – The Chilling Mystery of Frostwood

The story of Icebound Secrets drives the game forward. You arrive in the town of Frostwood, a detective-journalist investigating why its residents have suddenly gone missing. Upon your arrival, Frostwood is blanketed in snow, and the place is pretty much deserted except for a few brave souls. The place is in the grip of terror, caused by a group of mysterious and terrifying beings hunting for living souls.

As a detective, it’s down to you to figure out what is going on and how to save the town from these chilling monsters, with help from the remaining townsfolk.

The entire game is set in Frostwood, and as you progress through, you unlock new areas. Frostwood is fairly large, consisting of a variety of streets, businesses, facilities, and even a mysterious castle. While the setting is big, it’s hard to get lost thanks to the ability to easily jump between locations.

The Characters

Although the cast for Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane is small, this is beneficial as the characters are easily distinguishable from one another and you don’t have the difficult task of remembering who is who. Even though they may not have much in the way of personality, they are useful with the tasks in hand, providing assistance throughout.

The antagonists of The Frostwood Bane are worth a mention as well. They certainly feel like a threat throughout the game, appearing at times to cause havoc and terror. Combined with their compelling backstory and frightening appearances, they serve as formidable opponents.

Characters like Christine provide assistance throughout your quest.

Gameplay – Mind-Exercising Puzzles Galore

Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane in terms of gameplay mainly consists of puzzle solving. This comes in a variety of forms, whether it’s point-and-click, hidden objects, pairing items, and many different mini-games.

Go Here, Go There to Find What You’re Looking For

As you play The Frostwood Bane, especially once you get past the first area, you’ll find that you spend a lot of time going back and forth between the various areas you’ve unlocked, even backtracking to the very first location. This is because you have to search around each area several times to find different items to progress in your current task.

One Thing Leads to Another

Everything in Icebound Secrets links up. For example, you cannot access an item until you’ve found another item first. You find yourself back-pedaling a lot to get the wheels in motion.

You might think this gameplay mechanic is time consuming and frustrating, but actually, it isn’t. This is one of the foundations that makes Icebound Secrets so addictive. You’re constantly hunting around areas, exploring for hidden clues and items to help you in your quest.

It is immensely satisfying whenever you find what you’re looking for, or you unlock a new area, or you can access a mini-game that will grant you more items for further progress. It’s amazing how locating one item can get things moving.

You find one thing, and that will lead to you finding or unlocking something else, and on and on.

Going Back and Forth

To get everything you need and complete all the tasks, you’re required to return to previous locations. Fortunately, this is very easy to do in The Frostwood Bane. You can quickly access all the locations you’ve unlocked in one place at the press of a button. They’re all listed by chapter, so you can easily go back and forth to where you’ve been before.

A Steer in the Right Direction

One thing that really impressed me about Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane was its hints system. There’s the actual Hint button that’s always available at the press of a button should you ever get stuck, directly pointing you to where you need to go or what area to focus on.

However, Icebound Secrets is further helpful with its map feature. If you look up the locations while in the middle of a task, an exclamation mark against the location tells you that’s where you need to go to solve an available quest. Perhaps an item currently in your inventory will unlock something in that area, or it’s part of a mini-game you can access. 

Thanks to these features, rest assured you’ll never be lost in The Frostwood Bane.

You return to the library several times, as this is often where the main characters are based.

Many, Many Mini-Games

Aside from roaming around the various areas and locating key items in a point-and-click fashion, Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane also features numerous mini-games in the form of puzzles to solve. These can unlock new areas, open hidden compartments, and ultimately progress the story.

These mini-games vary in style, but also in difficulty. On average, the puzzles are tricky but solvable. Nothing is impossible, although some puzzles are notoriously difficult, requiring a lot of problem-solving and strategy to overcome them.

Fortunately, if you get seriously stuck on a mini-game, you do have the option to skip it. There’s no penalty for bypassing a mini-game, except missing out on the chance of solving it yourself. This is especially useful if you’ve been stuck on the same puzzle for ages and want to get on with the rest of the game. Also, many mini-games allow you to reset them if you feel you’ve messed up and want to start over from scratch.

Despite some puzzles being more frustrating than others, generally, the mini-games in The Frostwood Bane are well designed and fun and rewarding to solve.

Some puzzles can initially seem daunting. The key is to keep a clear head and take it one step at a time, but also think ahead.

Graphics – Nicely Presented

Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane has a consistent theme throughout, notably winter, with more-or-less everything covered in snow. It also has an interesting mix of modern-day and fantasy, with the everyday setting of Frostwood combined with the supernatural elements of the monsters. These themes all come together quite nicely to create a compelling game.

One thing that comes to mind with The Frostwood Bane‘s presentation is clean. The different areas are well presented and distinguishable, which makes navigation in the location selector easier. The puzzles are also clear to understand.

A useful visual tool in the game was the cursor. Like many point-and-click puzzle adventure games, The Frostwood Bane has a circle as its navigator, rather than a small arrow, and it works well here. What’s especially handy is the subtle indicator that appears whenever you move over an interactable item.

It’s a lot easier to play a puzzle game when everything is presented clearly.

Audio – Subtle Background Music and Crisp Cues

Music plays in the background of Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane. Appreciatively, it matches the theme and mood of the game, but it’s not loud and booming, creating a distraction. It’s just there to create an atmosphere, and it’s done just right. Even when you’re getting frustrated over a puzzle, the music doesn’t cause an unnecessary annoyance.

The sound effects are done well in The Frostwood Bane, taking prevalence over the music. They are audibly clean and crisp, making a satisfying click whenever you collect an item, or when interacting with a puzzle. They do their job right.

Icebound Secrets: The Frostwood Bane was played and reviewed on the Nintendo Switch with a key provided by Legacy Games.