I have to admit - I totally missed the Adventure Time boat. I’ve never had anything against the show, I just never made it a priority to actually track it down and have a watch. It wasn’t until I found out about a forthcoming demo I was scheduled to attend for Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?! that I finally allowed some enthusiastic friends to sit me down with a few DVDs. What I found was a somewhat crazy, postmodern concoction comprised of off-the-wall humor and various game references, with an extra helping of creator Pendleton Ward’s unique brand of madness.

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Take that same foundation, throw in developer WayForward, and clump it all into a package that is nothing less than a loving homage to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and what you have is a game experience that actually has me more interested in the land of Ooo than ever before.Hey Ice King! is spread across four different worlds fans will recognize from the show - Candy Kingdom, Ice Kingdom, Grasslands and Red Rock Pass. Much like Zelda II, the game is split between two different gameplay segments - the topdown portions where you traverse the overworld map to reach the various areas, and the side-scrolling portions during battle and in towns and dungeons. Everything from the sound that rings when you open a chest to the action-based combat to the light RPG flavoring to the side-scrolling battles harkens back to Link’s second adventure - an homage that was quite intentional, according to Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward.“There’s a lot of Zelda in it,” creator Pendleton Ward said of the game in a recent IGN interview. As if the Zelda II gameplay wasn’t enough, this source of inspiration becomes even more apparent when you run into a door that prompts Jake to say, “Hey man! It’s dangerous to go alone!” Ward says that both he and the developers at WayForward were excited to use this game as a springboard for their own adventure. “We talked a lot about Zelda II elements, where Finn is walking around in top world mode and you run into the black, shadowy creatures, which randomly pop up. I think it’s fun to reference old games - a little nostalgia factor.”Indeed, the game plays much like Zelda II, but with Adventure Time humor and characters adding a modern twist to the classic gameplay. The visuals have that whimsical WayForward style, with great art design and animations bringing plenty of personality to these larger-than-life characters. While I only played the first 20 or so minutes of the game, traversing through the Grasslands to hunt down Ice King and complete random quests - Hey Ice King! showed much potential for old-school gaming goodness.Even the collecting element is done in true Adventure Time fashion. As you defeat enemies, they drop loot for your collecting pleasure - things like hamburgers, sea salt and ketchup which can be combined to replenish health, wings that help you jump higher, cloaks that make you temporarily invisible and blades that strengthen Finn’s arm attacks (which makes no sense... but this is Adventure Time, after all, so just roll with it). While Finn does all the legwork, Jake rides in his backpack, and you can use X to extend his arms for a long-distance attack. Later on Jake and Finn both learn new abilities, but I only had the chance to toy around with their most basic moves.Even with my limited exposure to Adventure Time, it was easy to recognize all the various nods the game pays to its source material. Marceline the vampire, Princess Bubblegum, the game system BMO (who acts as your inventory screen), the water nymphs - fans of the show will find references scattered all throughout the game. “There are some mini-bosses and stuff that are new to the game - like the bear with the chainsaw on its back, which I enjoy enough to want to put into the show,” Ward said. “But it’s mostly characters who you’re familiar with from the show, which is intentional. I think that’s what people would want to see.”What I played was still very early - but it quickly pushed a licensed game that was totally off my radar onto my list of games to keep an eye on. Here’s hoping it lives up to its potential when it arrives for 3DS and DS this Fall.

Audrey Drake is an Associate Editor at IGN and a proud member of the IGN Nintendo team. She is also a lifelong gamer, a frequent banisher of evil and a wielder of various legendary blades. You can follow her wild adventures on her IGN blog and Twitter . Game on!