They began by adding a character to a virtual environment where the figure was enabled to climb a pole-like object. One of the team's priorities at the time was to code a physics-based simulation of scenarios where characters were "being shaken off or narrowly avoided being stomped on". In May 2003, Team Ico assembled a demonstrational build of NICO and presented it at a production meeting. Full development of the game was sanctioned directly after it was pitched, and commenced in the same month. That year, the NICO technology demo was shown across Sony's foreign offices among a lineup of prospective PlayStation 2 titles, and its exposure excited the spectators. Although the team attempted to work on the game in secrecy, at a certain point images of NICOs horseriding characters were leaked onto the Internet. Their circulation led enthusiasts to speculate about what they perceived as a sequel to Ico. According to Ueda, the team reused elements of Icos character designs for NICO to expedite the production of the concept video and minimize its costs. He asserted that NICO was not related to Ico despite their stylistic similarities, and that his colleagues did not identify the former game as a sequel. However, contemporary and retrospective sources described Team Ico's second game as both a spiritual successor and prequel to Ico. The staff used player feedback to advance the testing of the "organic collision deformation" system by inputting simple objects to experiment its capabilities. Although Team Ico had conducted an elaborate research of the game's technological framework, they did not finish its validation when they entered the production phase. After evaluating the limited number of personnel that was involved with NICO as well as their professional profiles, Team Ico concluded that they were not qualified to deliver an online-only game. They then resolved to abandon that direction and to reformulate NICO into a single-player title. The team discarded Icos development tools that they had used at the outset of the project and moved to write new programming utilities. Relatedly, they opted to create a dedicated game engine for the title in lieu of that from Ico. While the staff had intended to reuse the development practices that they had employed in Ico to proceed with NICO, the departure from the technology of the older game meant that its successor "was [built] almost from the ground up again". Production After a lengthy