Ice Breaker
Genre: Nordic Puzzler
Platform: Windows (Flash)
Developed by: Nitrome
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The Scoop: Ice Breaker is another original and stylish flash game from the wizards at Nitrome. Like all of their titles, half the reason I’m drawn to it is because of the distinctive pixel art and catchy music. The production values and sense of style are much higher than is typically found in online games.
The object of the game is to get each viking in a stage safely back aboard his ship. Usually all the vikings will be trapped in ice. And it’s up to you to slice and dice that ice in a specific way so that he falls, slides, or otherwise lands safely aboard, and not in the water below.
The puzzles start off fairly simple – in one early stage you’ll need to slice ice stalactites from the ceiling, so that they fill in holes in the floor below, allowing your viking to safely slide across. In later stages all kinds of elements are introduced, including balloons, ropes, and catapults. Ice Breakers gets HARD. I’m generally pretty good at games, but I was only able to clear just over half the stages before getting stuck.
My only complaint about Ice Breakers is that because the entire experience is physics-based, the controls and puzzle solutions can sometimes be a bit fiddly. You might make a slice two times in a row that look identical, but because one piece of ice is slightly thinner/thicker than the other, you end up with a completely different result.
Still, it’s a smart, original, and stylish puzzler. I expect no less from Nitrome.
(8 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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Links:
JayIsGames Write-Up
Comprehensive Walkthrough
Gameplay Video
Comments
One Response to “Ice Breaker”
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Cool concept, but you’re right on the fiddliness. Even if you know the solution, some of the levels take a certain amount of luck, especially towards the end. And given the inelegance of some of my “solutions,” I’m pretty sure I didn’t always do it the way they intended. Fun though.