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.
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Links:
JayIsGames Write-Up
Comprehensive Walkthrough
Gameplay Video

The Scoop: There are a handful of things I really like about Maze Stopper 2, but probably the biggest aspect is that (as far as I know) the idea is completely original. Most titles can be described as “Game A + Game B” or “An evolution of genre C,” but I’ve never played a puzzler like Maze Stopper. It’s good to work your brain in a new way.

The premise is that the action in Maze Stopper starts out paused. Once you unpause it, your character and all CPU characters will begin moving towards the goal using the most direct route they can take. They move automatically – you don’t actually control your player.

In every stage, if it’s left unaltered, the CPU will get there first. To turn the tables in their favor, gamers have the ability to lay down walls on any open tile on the map. In the beginning the puzzles are simple – wall up the CPU’s direct paths to the flag, so it has to take the long way around the stage. Or use some open space create a lengthy back-and-forth obstacle course for the CPU to traverse, slowing them down.

The introduction of speed-up and slow-down pick-ups complicate the puzzles, later on. You might actually need to hinder your own player, forcing him to take a longer path, as that path contains the speed power-up and will actually get him to the goal quicker, for example.

Some later stages are a little too complicated for their own good. It becomes necessary to frequently pause and re-pause the action, laying new walls a couple at a time, in order to manipulate where the CPU will go, every step of the way. Luckily developer Flash Relax created a detailed animated walkthrough (linked below), to prevent anyone from becoming irreversibly stuck.
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Links:
Kongregate Mirror
Additional Levels
Walkthrough

The Scoop: Karoshi: Suicide Salaryman is the first Flash version of indie developer Jesse Venbrux’s morbidly amusing puzzle series. Gamers play as as a nameless, generic office worker, and the goal of each stage is to find a way to kill yourself.

The game gets a lot of attention for it’s suicide-centric premise, but that premise is really just an excuse to create puzzles that aren’t really that different than those found in most platform puzzlers. The only difference is instead of opening a route to the exit, you’re opening a route to a pit of spikes to throw yourself in. Fun! This means you’ll be pushing and pulling blocks to activate switches, making sure you’re in the right position when activating a switch, figuring out how to reach specific levers, etc.

Across the game’s 49 stages you’ll ultimately end up killing your salaryman protagonist only a handful of ways – touch an electrified block, run into a spike wall or spike pit, get splattered by a falling safe, or get hit with a flying bullet. This simplicity works in the game’s favor. When you start a new level, how you need to kill yourself is usually immediately apparent. If you see spikes but no other dangers, that’s your answer. The trick is then working through the puzzles to get your salaryman over to them. There are a few tricky exceptions later in the game that require outside-the-box thinking, but for most stages, a little logic is all you’ll need.

The kill-yourself theme leads to some amusing moments for longtime gamers, as videogame conventions are flipped on their head. During the game’s final bossfight, hearts are thrown at the player. When collecting one, the player actually gains a life, meaning they now have to be hit by the boss one more time in order to “win.”
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Links:
Newgrounds Mirror
Kongregate Mirror
JayIsGames Review
Guide/Walkthrough
The Escapist Write-Up

The Scoop: If you like slow-paced puzzle games, I want you to give Freefall a real shot. I very nearly closed the window after I saw the low production values – there’s nearly no sound, the controls are clunky, and the graphics spartan. The first few puzzles aren’t very compelling, either. It initially comes off as just another generic puzzler.

But I’m glad I stuck with it. As the levels progress they become more and more clever, and by about puzzle 10 (halfway through), I was hooked. I ended up puzzling my way through all 20 stages. The final level is a doozy.

The game rules are simple – when two matching blocks touch, they disappear. Eliminate all blocks on a stage to progress. You move blocks through the stage one grid at a time, giving you ample time to think through your next move. The challenge later on is that you’ll often have three blocks of one type to eliminate. If you touch two together, they disappear, leaving you with one left, and you’ll have to reset the board. It’s tricky to arrange things in the proper manner so that one block falls between the other two, eliminating all three in one go.

Freefall isn’t going to win any awards – if you don’t typically like slow-paced, thinking man’s puzzle games, it’s unlikely that this is a great entry into the genre – it won’t change your mind. Nonetheless I enjoyed the mental exercise, despite the clunkiness. You will too, if you enjoy other games of the sort.
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