Icy Tower Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

Small, fast but still great fun

Mobiles aren’t just marketing tools for movie execs to sell more merchandise. Let’s not forget gaming for the sake of gaming. Icy Tower is one such game. There's no film, there's not even a comic book about it; but it did start life as one of those addictive internet games that eat into your working day.

The premise is simple, get your man to the top of an infinite and presumably icy tower. The tower is stacked in platforms and if you take a running jump you can leap above many platforms in a single bound; miss your landing on the way down and it's game over. As with most internet phenomenon, this simple game mechanic produces an addictive and enjoyable experience.

The mobile version from Hands-On gives us the same fun in a smaller space. Getting all the action to fit on a small screen has meant sacrificing the size of the sprites. They are pretty small but their quirks and cheekiness are ever present. There are three characters to choose from; Cheerleader, Disco Dave and the main ragamuffin himself. The gameplay is the same for each but some of the animation and jumps are slightly different.

The controls work pretty well on the mobile although it can get a little hectic so make sure you have a firm grip. The aim of the game is not how high you got but how you got high. Speed always impresses and combos and super high jumps can be made if you keep the running jumps fluid and continuous throughout. The keys are intuitive with 4 and 6 doing the running and 1,2 and 3 doing the jumping. The platforms are pretty narrow and you will aggressively switching from left to right hence the need to have a firm grip.

Icy Tower has two game modes where the hard setting has narrower platforms. It also has three different high scores including combos and overall height. As the game is all about style, there's quite a bit of customisation on offer in terms of backgrounds and le piece d'resistance, you can watch and save replays of your terrific leaps.

To be honest, the game didn't really pull me in. The gameplay is a little too simplistic and easy. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep the combo going for several minutes at a time. Maybe a challenge mode with unlockable levels would have helped. But it was fun to play and maybe this is more for fans of the original rather than fresh climbers to the Icy Tower.