Ice Cube Bear
Aside from the litany of misfortunes befalling polar bears in recent times, a new woe has reared its crystalline head: polar bears encased in ice cubes, solely at the mercy of the elements, a tight physics engine, and your puzzle-honed intellect. This is Ice Cube Bear, a frosty physics puzzle from the folks at Heroik.
Your quest is to send each frozen polar bear into the drink at the bottom of the screen, which will melt their icy prison and set them free once more. How might one accomplish this, you might ask? Clicking on cracked chunks of ice will vaporize them, as is characteristic of the members of the tumbledrop family tree. Sometimes there will be more than one polar bear, other times there'll be all manner of sliding platforms, hovering elevators, and other contraptions to make your endeavor simpler or more difficult.
The twinkling music never grates on you, and the visuals (the ice notwithstanding) are cuddly enough to be right out of a Saturday morning cartoon (of the nonviolent variety). While the front-end of the game delivers, other, more battle-hardened physics puzzlers might find this game to be a bit slow for their liking, or the bulk of the early puzzles might feel a bit too easy. Regardless of pacing or difficulty, though, it's an enjoyable game that can sate your "phuzzle" thirst quite handily. And somebody's got to save those polar bears.
It seems like an awesome game, with one problem: I find myself trapped at level 3.
Level 3: The Red button makes the elevator go down. The green button makes the elevator go up.
I got stuck at 3 for ages too Newbie. The game doesn't tell you that the block with the red/green light is actually clickable.
Seems like there is a glitch on level 11 of the bonus levels. Only looks like one way to win and it's not working.
This game seems to be exclusively a "timing game" with physics serving as a means to create achieve this game mechanism. I found the "puzzle" part very simple and straightforward (with a few hiccups).
One (small?) gripe: I dislike a lot of the interface choices. In particular: no restart shortcut and having the restart button on a sliding menu that moves when you move to press it? Seems like a horrible design decision.
In my opinion, it is a mediocre idea implemented mediocrely. I appreciate the effort that went into making it, but it I don't feel it is extremely high caliber (unlike most of the other games featured on this site). I would lump it into Linkdump Friday quality :)
@newbie
Click on the platform to lower it
Drop the two rectangular blocks
Drop the circular block
Click platform to raise it
as it is going up release pendulum to hit on backswing.
@newbie
For level 3:
Drop the two ice blocks and then send the electronic platform back down (by clicking on it again). Once all 3 are down, drop the big ball on the left.
This pushes Poley the Polar Bear onto the platform. Raise the platform (by clicking on it). Get ready for the timing part now: release the wrecking ball so it swings back once and then hits Poley off to the right (when the moving platform is at about the second icebrick from the top of hte column)
I loved this game. I don't usually like physics puzzles at all. This one however offered a lot of situations where, with the right bounces and momentum, you could circumvent some of the puzzles. For me this was a positive quality rather than poor game design.
Level 4, no can do. I guess they were lazy and didn't feel like developing the rest of the game, so they made that level unsolvable.
That's nice of them. Not.
I liked this game. And while the solution to some of the levels was not immediately apparent and required some trial and error, I was able to solve them relatively quickly.
I agree with Sully. Something is wrong with bonus level 11. There is only one way to do this and it just won't knock the bear off. I have done it about 10 times thinking it was just a fluke. I am now officially giving up.
Fun game, but not even checking levels for winnability is just plain lazy.
Not sure what is meant by the "bonus levels" -- but levels 1-20 were all pretty straightforward... certainly winnable. I'll agree that this was more deserving of being dropped into a Linkdump Friday.
The bonus levels are available as you complete level 20. Just redo level 20 to bring the option back up.
I can't get past bonus level 11 either.
Bonus Levels are here:
http://demonically.com/1407-Ice-Cube-Bear-ExtraPack.html
Level 11 seems almost like a clone of level 9 but just doesn't work...makes me suspect that there are no bonus levels 12 onwards and they just gave up! :)
The powers of posting. How to beat Bonus level 11! watch when you drop the ice plank and you'll see there is a tiny bounce before it settles. You need to use that bounce to give the ball a little extra momentum to push the bear-block over the edge. So you need to get the timing just right... when the left ball is just about where the ice river is in the background you need to release the ice plank. It should then fall just in front of the ball and as the ball rolls over, it gets a little kick from the bounce. It takes some trial and error but it can be done!
cute game
but sooooooooooo slow
and not very challenging
misandry said it best.
But I would add "AGONIZINGLY" slow.
It's cute, but I suspect they DELIBERATELY made the platforms painfully slow, purely to antagonize me. Well, it worked. I tried Level 10, I think it was, about 4 times - the one where there are 3 moving (barely) platforms, and if you don't time the clicking EXACTLY right, that's it. Phoom. There goes another 10 minutes of my life, just WAITING for the platforms to arrive, only to discover that the platform I clicked first, thinking it did nothing, was crucial for the ending. Wonderful. Now I get to sit through the 10 minutes of platform-waiting again. Woop-de-doop, what a well-made game we have here.
These platforms are like buses. You wait forever for the first one, then when it FINALLY arrives, you can see the second one is in perfect position. But you have to wait fr it to complete its circuit AGAIN.
If it weren't for the cutesy polar bears, and the slight likeness to that Nitrome Viking ice game, I would have given up a long time ago. And now I have. Looking at the clock, I can see that this game wasted 40 minutes of my life. Thanks a lot, Heroik.
the game is not impossible i have completed it if you are having trouble click walkthrough on the top screen menu and watch the video on how to complete the game thank you i'm awesome i know goodnight...
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