Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!!: Adventure Time's New Video Game Draws Crowds to West Hollywood

Liz Ohanesian

Jake Kaufman, Cristina Vee and Tommy Pedrini singing the Hey Ice King! theme at The Game Stop in West Hollywood

Wondering about that line in front of The Game Stop in West Hollywood the other night? What's up with all those white hats and blue t-shirts? It's Adventure Time, of course. The popular Cartoon Network series just spawned a new video game.

Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!!, available for Nintendo 3DS and DS, hit stores Tuesday evening. To celebrate, The Game Stop hosted a bash that included a signing with Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and game director James Montagna, plus a concert from Jake Kaufman, who composed the music for the game.

There were Finns and Fionas galore inside the Game Stop, plus one pair dressed as Marceline the Vampire Queen and her genderbent counterpart, Marshall Lee. The Flame Princess made an appearance, as did BMO. They had stood in line for at least an hour for a chance to meet Ward, who has become something of a superstar amongst animation fans. He thanked the fans right before the concert and then left quickly, a crowd of fans in the back waving and exclaiming, "Bye, Pen!"

I was unable to find a demo of Hey Ice King! to play, so I can't give you insight into how this latest adventure for Finn and Jake unfolds. It is, as the title implies, a quest to get the garbage that was stolen by the Ice King. Montagna describes it as an "action-adventure with light RPG elements." He also notes that there are new characters in the game, many of whom came from the pen of Ward.

"Pendleton really likes to communicate through drawings," says Montagna of working with the cartoon creator. "We'll get a lot of emails from him with drawings of ideas he had. That was always a treat, getting sketches from him."

WayForward is the studio behind Hey Ice King!, which is definitely a game made for fans by fans. Montagna, who has been with the company since 2007 and previously worked on titles like A Boy and His Blob, Mighty Milky Way and Silent Hill: Book of Memories, has been an Adventure Time devotee since the show's inception. "A bunch of us at WayForward were just crazy Adventure Time fans, so when the opportunity to work on a game came around, we were all freaking out," he says.

The sort of attention to detail that you can only get from fans does appear in the game. For example, Montagna really digs a little-known character who appears in the episode "Conquest of Cuteness." (Note: Depending on how hardcore you are about spoilers, this may be one.) "In the show, he's only on screen for a second or two and explodes," says Montagna. "Because I love him, we put him in the game as a boss."

Up next: the game music