The Other Children

Lore & Background

The ruins of ICO are a vast, crumbling complex of stone halls, towers, and overgrown courtyards, and the Other Children move through them like a slow tide. They are not animated in the way a living creature would be; their motions are jerky, their forms seem to flicker between solid and translucent, and they cast no true shadow despite being made of shadow. They hunch, lurch, and turn with a mechanical wrongness that sets them apart from Ico's fluid, human movement.

Their relationship to Yorda is the emotional core of the game's mystery. She is one of them—or was, before something changed her. The player never receives an explicit explanation of what turned her, what the ruins are, or what purpose the Other Children serve. They simply exist as a fact of the environment, as inevitable as the crumbling masonry or the shifting light. Yorda's goal is to reach them, to rejoin her people, and the game's entire structure is built around whether Ico can get her there before the world's hostility claims them both.

The Other Children are never given names, dialogue, or individuality. They are a collective, a presence. In the game's sparse storytelling, that anonymity is itself a statement: the world of the ruins does not distinguish between one shadow and another, and Yorda's individuality is the single thing that makes her story matter against the backdrop of all the others.

In Their Own Story

The corridor was long and the light came thin through a crack in the ceiling far above. Ico stopped at the edge of the archway. Three of them stood in a loose cluster, their dark forms swaying as if pushed by a wind that touched nothing else. One turned its head—slowly, too slowly—and Ico felt the pull in his chest, the one that always came when Yorda's hand slipped from his.

He did not run. Running was for later, for the chasms and the collapsing floors. Here, he simply waited, his small hand still raised, fingers spread, as if the gesture of holding could reach across the stone and the silence and the wrong, flickering dark of them. Yorda stood behind him, her shadow-self swaying in counterpoint to theirs, and for a moment the corridor held five figures: one boy, one girl, and three of the things that were almost like her.

Then the nearest one lurch-stepped forward, and the moment broke, and Ico ran.

Reader's Guide

In ICO, the Other Children are the shadow creatures that populate the ruins alongside Ico and Yorda. They are Yorda's kin—she is one of their kind—and their presence frames the entire narrative: Ico must escort her back to them through a world that is hostile to both of them.

Visually, they are dark, twisted humanoid figures with elongated limbs and a flickering, semi-translucent quality. Their design echoes Yorda's shadow form but without her distinct silhouette, making them read as a corrupted or generic version of her. They move with a jerky, staccato rhythm that contrasts sharply with Ico's fluid animation.

In gameplay they function as static or patrolling obstacles. Some block narrow passages and must be lured away or timed around. Others actively chase Ico when he strays too far from Yorda. A few sit in fixed positions as environmental hazards. They do not speak, do not react to Yorda specifically, and do not vary in behavior between encounters. Their narrative function is atmospheric as much as mechanical: they make the ruins feel inhabited and wrong, and they constantly remind the player that Yorda's destination is also a place of danger.

Unlike Yorda, they cannot be held, calmed, or befriended. The hand-holding mechanic that defines Ico's bond with Yorda is useless against them. They are the world's indifference made flesh.

Did You Know?

• The Other Children share a visual DNA with Yorda's shadow form, reinforcing that she is one of their kind and their world is her home.
• They are never given names, dialogue, or individual animation variations; they function as a collective presence rather than distinct characters.
• Their jerky, staccato movement is a deliberate contrast to Ico's smooth, human animation, making them read as fundamentally inhuman.
• ICO's developer Team Ico, led by Fumito Ueda, later created Shadow of the Colossus, but the shadow-creature design language of ICO was not directly carried into that sequel.