Once upon a time, a number of new Icehouse games were talked about on the Icehouse mailing list, but many months passed without their rules being posted, and all who played them remained sworn to secrecy. Eventually they achieved semi-mythical status. I decided that there really ought to be a page dedicated to these alleged games, to keep track of them and to attempt to shame their inventors into posting the rules. Thus this page was born, and promptly achieved a cult status none of my own games ever could. (Oh, well.)
All information here was gleaned from legitimate public sources; please, please do not give me any information on these games that you have received confidentially, and please assume that any info you have received privately is confidential, unless the designer of the game has expressly stated otherwise. And if you should happen to drop any tasty morsels on the Icehouse list anyway, I will pounce on them. My standards for considering a game semi-mythical are somewhat arbitrary; however, I may sometimes exclude games where nothing substantial is known at all, games that need more time to achieve the status, and games and variants that were discussed on the icehouse mailing list in sufficient detail to be playable. (Martian Landgrab, Black root / White root Martian Go, extra colors in Ice Traders, et al. may remain semi-mythical to you if you weren't on the icehouse list when they were discussed, but that is your problem.) I'm a bit concerned that designers may find some sick sort of cachet in semi-mythical status; I wish to remind readers that semi-mythicality should not be cause for pride, but for acute embarrassment.
If you are looking for non-mythical Icehouse games, check out Liam Bryan's list.
Here are the "games":
Date First Mentioned: July 20, 2000, on the looney labs Origins 2000 scrapbook page. But to be fair, this just gave the name, and it wasn't the designer's fault it was mentioned there. The designer then accidentally mentioned it on the Icehouse list, when intending to send a private message, but I can't hold that against him. However, on January 10, 2001, the designer did finally send a message to the list with enough intriguing details to warrant semi-mythical status.
What we know:
It is a system for creating puzzles; the designer compares it to Rush Hour by Binary Arts. Individual puzzles will be printed on cards.
Date First Mentioned: October 22, 2000, on the Icehouse Mailing list.
What we know:
It uses a 5 by 5 board.
Date First Mentioned: Possibly May 19, 2000, which is given as the date of the last update on EZ's page, which bears the cryptic words: Martian Backgammon -- coming soon
What we know:
Presumably, it bears some similarity to backgammon. It is not to be confused with Icegammon or Kotra, two games which would have been called Martain Backgammon had Mr. Zuckerman not been squatting on the much coveted name.
I'm *really* going to post the rules to Martian Backgammon very very soon.
--Eric Zuckerman, August 26, 2000, on the Icehouse mailing list.