is a 2012 adventure horror game developed and published by kouri for Windows. Players control the titular character from a top-down perspective trapped in an eldritch art museum, where they meet the characters Garry and Mary. Together, they make the goal of escaping the museum and returning to the real world.
Ib was the debut game of its creator, who developed it using the RPG Maker 2000 game engine. The original game was released as freeware available for download from the developer's personal website. A remake using the RPG Maker MV engine with updated graphics, music, and mechanics was published by Playism for Windows in April 2022, for Nintendo Switch in March 2023, and is planned for release for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in March 2024.
The game is considered a cult classic and a influential title among indie horror adventure games. Upon release in 2012, Ib was a critical success, and quickly became popular both in Japan and internationally. The remake had a generally favourable reception.
Gameplay
Ib is a single-player adventure horror game. Players control Ib, the title character of the game, from a top-down perspective as she navigates and tries to escape a surreal art gallery. The gameplay consists of examining and interacting with objects in the world, collecting items, and solving puzzles. There are enemies, but no combat. Instead of fighting, players must evade enemies by escaping into other sections of the gallery. Getting caught depletes the player character's health, represented in the form of petals of a red rose. Once health reaches zero, the player loses.
Ib is a silent protagonist, and dialogue between characters is sparse. The gameplay is non-linear; players can achieve different endings depending on the choices made and actions taken throughout the game.
Plot
A young girl, Ib, is visiting an art gallery with her parents. While examining a strange painting, a sudden power outage ensues, the gallery's doors lock, and other visitors disappear. Guided by a trail of paint splatters, she is lured inside another painting and finds herself within a surreal painting-like "fabricated world". Making her way through the otherworldy realm, she comes across a collapsed figure on the ground. After successfully reviving him, the figure introduces himself as Garry. Like her, he is also trapped inside the gallery, and the two resolve to escape together.
Later on, they encounter Mary, an eccentric girl around Ib's age, who joins the group. Soon after, the group gets separated by an emerging wall of vines, leaving Garry isolated. The player's perspective alternates between Garry and the duo, and the former uncovers the true nature of Mary as a painting and the game's antagonist. As Garry finally catches up with the pair, Mary turns hostile but is fought off, and the other two escape.
From there, the plot diverges depending on the player's actions. As Ib and Garry continue to explore, Garry may die or become insane, with the latter triggering an immediate game over and the former forcing Ib to continue alone. The player will discover Mary's painting that they must then burn, effectively killing her. Failure to do so causes Mary to follow Ib back to the real world and be recognised by Ib's parents as their second child. Successfully burning the painting allows Ib to escape back to the real world. If Garry is alive, he will be either stripped of his memory and leave, or retain it and promise to meet Ib again before parting ways.
Development and release
Ib was created by kouri, a Japanese indie game developer of whom little is known. It was developed using the RPG Maker 2000 game engine and initially self-published in February 2012 as freeware, available for download from the developer's personal website. Updates continued until June 2014, culminating in the release of the final version 1.07. Ib was kouri's first experience in game development; he chose an art gallery as the setting because he thought it would be an easy one and horror as a genre because he, mistakenly, thought he would never get tired of it.