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.)
If you are looking for non-mythical Icehouse games, check out Liam Bryan's list.
Here are the "games":
Date First Mentioned: April 6, 2000
What we know:
One player is known as the Zen Master, the others are Novices. Bizarre acts involving different colored stones, (the term voting has inexplicably been used,) are performed upon groups of icehouse pyramids, which may be the same as Koans; we're not sure. A set of cards contains Rules that can be applied, or players can create their own Rules. The idea of publishing these cards, (and presumably, whatever meta-rules rule the Rules, was floated, but as yet, nothing has come of that. There are some pictures of Zendo being played here. Hmm, I could have sworn there were better pictures than that somewhere. They must have mysteriously disappeared.
Date First Mentioned: July 17, 2000, on which date Jacob wrote: We've done some major overhauls of Zarcana which we'll probably publish in a few weeks.
What we know:
Suit powers have been increased relative to trump powers, and there has been in general some effort made to make sure the game is more balanced than Zarcana is currently.
Date First Mentioned: August 16, 2000
What we know:
It uses a 5 by 5 board. According to the Thought Residue at wunderland.com for August 17, 2000: Kristin has invented another Icehouse game, and I like it even more than Volcano! She's calling it Blockade, and it's kind of a cross between Backgammon, Volcano, and Peaceful Resistance. It's only for 2 players and you need Black Ice and dice. We'll try to get the rules up soon!
For semi-mythical games, soon never comes very soon at all.
Date First Mentioned: October 22, 2000, on the Icehouse Mailing list.
What we know:
It uses a 5 by 5 board. Coincidence or conspiracy? (Hint: it's the one that ends with a "y". I'm not allowed to say more than that.)
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.
I'm *really* going to post the rules to Martian Backgammon very very soon.
--Eric Zuckerman, August 26, 2000, on the Icehouse mailing list.