Read time: 7 minutes

From Cult of the Lamb to Graveyard Keeper to Blumhouse Games’ upcoming Grave Seasons, developers are more and more using the soft aesthetics and approachable mechanics of cozy games to explore darker themes. As the genre continues to expand, so does our definition of what cozy can look like—and it isn’t just soft colors, gentle soundtracks, and Ghibli-esque narratives.  

Aerial_Knight’s latest release Mr. Freezy takes that idea and runs with it. The horror puzzler explores a concept games don’t always give Black women the freedom to be: angry. 

The game takes place in New Detroit, where authorities are searching for a serial killer, codenamed Mr. Freezy, after finding severed heads in freezers across the city. While the cops are looking for the stereotypical male (probably Caucasian) assailant, their “man” is actually “a mysterious woman kidnapping men and locking them away in her basement workshop.”

In each level, the player strategically arranges the heads of victims so that they can be beheaded in a single slice. As you progress through each level, more heads are added to the lineup. Each head has a modifier that makes lining them up perfectly increasingly difficult, forcing the player to find creative ways to multiply their score and reach the top of the leaderboard. 

In each level, the player strategically arranges the heads of victims so that they can be beheaded in a single slice. As you progress through each level, more heads are added to the lineup. Each head has a modifier that makes lining them up perfectly increasingly difficult, forcing the player to find creative ways to multiply their score and reach the top of the leaderboard. 

The full version of the game also includes a fear mechanic: “If a head stays on the board too long, they’ll get scared—and now it takes you multiple swings actually to decapitate them,” explained Aerial.  

Before Mr. Freezy became a blood-splattered narrative about feminine rage and severed heads, it began as a much simpler, run-of-the-mill cozy, slice-of-life simulator.

“It started off as a refrigerator management sim,” Aerial recalled in an exclusive interview with BGG. “Whenever people come over my house, they would open up the fridge and then just be staring [into it] and I would yell at them ‘Yo, close my fridge!’ And that’s where the concept came from.”

From there, the idea sprouted. As he fleshed out the features and motifs he was certain he wanted to include in this title, something became evident. “It wasn’t fun. I wanted to make a game that featured a Black woman. I wanted to make a horror game. And I wanted to make a puzzle game,” said Aerial. “So I tried to take all those things and combine them.”

In just a month, Aerial had transformed the wholesome idea of a refrigerator management sim into something much darker without losing the whimsical nature of a puzzler. Thus, the delightfully odd game about a woman who has been kidnapping men, chopping off their heads, and hiding them inside freezers across New Detroit was born.

If you’ve played any of Aerial_Knight’s previous titles, some of these heads, and the Afro-futuristic reimagining of Detroit, might look familiar–a coordinated effort to keep the world-building intact across his growing catalogue. “Mr. Freezy really kind of takes my other two games and brings them all into one universe. It’s an interesting side quest for me,” he explained,  in reference to his 2024 release Never Yield, and a beheaded Smoke Wallace, the main character from Dropshot, which released earlier this year.

It’s unclear how or why Smoke ended up in the freezer, or even why Mr. Freezy is slashing these unsuspecting men. For Neil, the story isn’t so much about the why, and more so about giving Black women the same narrative freedom afforded to characters who don’t look like us—to be complicated, flawed, dangerous, and even monstrous. 

“I was really surprised by how Black characters need all these reasons for why they do what they’re doing when other characters don’t need the reasons,” explained Aerial. “Black women can be bad guys too, you know. There doesn’t need to be a purpose behind it. She’s just evil.”

When thinking of the voice for Mr. Freezy, Aerial highlighted that working with Black Girl Gamer founder Jay-Ann was a no-brainer. “I showed her the pitch, and was like, ‘Your voice would be perfect for it.’ I kind of modeled the character after her so it [could] match her voice—and she knocked it out of the park.”

Jay-Ann’s performance is very reminiscent of Mortal Kombat’s Ed Boon or Jamieson Price—hyping the player up and celebrating combos with a maniacal laugh that is somehow both chilling and encouraging. Surprisingly, this collab almost didn’t happen. Aerial pitched Jay-Ann on another game he was working on, but it “fell through” due to lack of funding. 

During a time when corporations seem intent on bleeding the industry dry of creativity, more and more indie studios and solo developers are taking matters into their own hands—and making the games they want to see. While funding has always been a huge obstacle, it’s especially difficult for studios led and created by Black developers. When larger and AAA studios do invest in diversity, those projects are few and far between and rarely get the same marketing push as their counterparts. Often, it’s up to the creators and their communities to support new releases and keep the momentum up. Making it more difficult for studios to reach the same market saturation of brand-heavy titles with the financial backing. 

“All we ever asked for was a chance,” said Aerial. “Play our game, and if it’s bad, let us know. We’ll take that. But if it’s good, give it a like, give it a comment, share it with your friends so that we can grow. Those giant corporations have so much advantage over us with marketing, exposure, and name recognition.” 

Now, he’s looking to push the boundaries of the Aerial_Knight universe, and is quickly carving out his space in the indie world as one of the notable names that pop up in searches for Black game developers. Around the launch of Dropshot this past February, his catalogue—Dropshot, Never Yield, and the later’s sequel, We Never Yield—crossed a combined one million downloads across Xbox, PlayStation, Epic, and Steam. The growing universe of New Detroit is looking to become a virtual place that can accommodate different experiences—and where Black characters can be anything, including a guiltless, head-slashing villain.

With Mr. Freezy being his fourth studio project, Aerial sounds cautiously optimistic about the future of his budding universe. “If people really, really like Mr. Freezy, I’ll push that forward a little bit so we can get some DLC or something like that out. We’re still kind of gauging Dropshot to see how people like that—and what [we] can do for updates.” 

Aerial continued, “I like going back and making sure all my games are in a really good state and bringing them with me into the next projects.” For his next game, Aerial said he’s aiming to “shoot my shot” on a larger-scale project, which, given the amount of lore he has to work with, is an exciting development for all Aerial_Knight fans. 

For players looking for a new casual obsession, Mr. Freezy is bound to turn heads, pun intended. The roughly 30 minutes of gameplay that I experienced with the demo left me itching to climb the leaderboard long after it ended. So much so that I spent nearly another hour replaying each puzzle. Despite unleashing my competitive spirit and the axe-wielding serial killer, the game itself is light-hearted. Fans of both cozy puzzlers and horror themes will love how easy it is to pick up and play while their favorite show runs in the background. 

“That’s the purpose of my games,” said Aerial. “I want short, fun experiences like we used to have. We could play it for like 10, 15, 20 minutes, and then, you can go to bed.”

Mr. Freezy is available now on Steam, with a PlayStation port scheduled to be released on September 8.