The vikings are frozen and need your help!
Ice Breaker is a really fun and engaging puzzle game developed by Nitrome. The objective of the game is to rerun the vikings to their boat. Some of the vikings are not frozen, but rather are simply stuck, and you just need to encourage movement and clear any obstacles in their path to the boat. However, most vikings are entombed in the ice and you must free them from the ice wall by completely slicing the ice across its length or width (you can't do half slices, they must be complete slices). They still remain frozen once there separated from the ice wall, but now they can slide to the boat where their viking friend smashes the ice and finally frees them. Make sure that the ice chunks are not too large, since if they are, the waiting viking on the boat wont be able to smash it. Also, since you cannot move or control the vikings directly, insure that the path to the boat is clear for the vikings to slide.
The game provides a helpful mini map at the top left of the screen so you wont get lost. Unfortunately, you cannot move around the map by clicking on the mini map. Instead, you move around the game world by either placing the cursor at the edge of the screen to move that direction or by simply moving the arrow keys (if the arrow keys don't respond, make sure the game is focused by clicking on it). There are also status indicators at the bottom of the screen that show how many ice slices you have done and how many are left for the level, as well as how many vikings you saved and how many are left in the level. You apparently get a higher level score if you make fewer ice slices.
The game is fun to play and maintains interest even in later levels. There are 32 challenging levels, and to the game's credit, it doesn't amp up the difficulty by only increasing the amount of vikings you must save, or how many ice slices you can do in a level. Instead, the game slowly ramps up the puzzles difficulty and introduces different elements to keep things interesting. For example, in later levels the game introduces rotating ice platforms and rolling stone rocks.
Sometimes the game can get frustrating when you have to pixel hunt in order to cut the ice into smaller manageable pieces. It's an unfortunate flashback to the old dos adventure games, which while were fun games, contained many maddening pixel hunt "adventures".
Graphics/Music
Like most Nitrome games, Ice Breaker has amazing graphics and music. The game contains really nicely drawn pixel style graphics which really enhance the quality and the experience of the game, and the music is mellow and relaxing and doesn't disturb you while you figure out the puzzles.
