I just saw that here at ciao.uk no one seems to know the little game "Icy Tower". Before I start writing about it, I have to tell you it's absolutely free, you can download it all over the net and people in Germany love this game. Why? I'll try to explain you what it's all about!WHAT IS ICY TOWER? °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Before you start you can chose a character you want to play with (when you download the game you have 3 characters to chose but you can download lots more if you like to). With this character you have to climb a tower. That means you donīt have to go through each level from left to right as usual but only steep upwards. You jump from platform to platform and have to be careful not to miss one, otherwise you fall doooooooooownnnnnnnnnnnnn. The higher you climb the smaller get the platforms and the distance between the platforms also gets bigger. What also makes the game a bit difficult is the fact that the tower seems to move down and the longer you play the faster the tower moves and so you have to jump faster. That means the chance of missing a platform gets higher. The look of the platforms changes when you reach a certain level and you can use some special kinds of combos to jump higher and get more points so it doesn't get boring too soon.
CONTROL / POINTS °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
To control your character you only have to use three keys (right, left and space-bar to jump - but you can also change this if you don't like it that way). Generally you can say the faster you run the higher you can jump. If you manage to take more than one platform (floors) with one jump this is a combo. Such a combo doesn't just look funny you also gain more points. A little example: For each floor you get 10 points that is 50 points if you go step by step. But if you take the five floors with one combo you gat the 50 points for the 5 floors + for each floor 5x5 points for the combo, all in all 75 points. PECULARITIES °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
• I like it very much that you can download lots of other characters to play with, for example Bart Simpson, Sonic, Mario, Guybrush Threepwood, Kirby, a worm (PC-Game Worms) ort he sheep from the PC-Game worms and lots more. You can even create your own characters (I'll tell you later how this works). • All in all there are 10 different kinds of floors (see picture). Each 100 climbed floors the design changes. There are also points in the game when you reach them the game is automatically saved and you can start at this point at a later time so you donīt have to start at 0 again. • You can also find programs to download with witch you can change the whole style of the game, e.g. to Mario-style, Matrix-style or night-style. You only have to change the data-file. • Thereīs also a fun-mode. You need a switcher (also available for free on the internet) With this switcher you can for example turn the screen upside down or other funny things. • Also special is the fact that the game is absolutely for free!!!!!
GRAPHIC °°°°°°°°°°°°
The graphic might be a bit simple but there are a few really nice and considerable characters and who doesnīt like all of the characters can create his own one. Also the background and the colour of the texts can be changed with a bit of extra knowledge; you can see this by some characters that are available for download (see pictures). Surely it is not the non plus ultra but nice to look at. After all it is the principle that counts and the easier the game is designed the clearer it is. It reminds me of our old Nintendo-games. You can also make some changes in the game-options, for example that many colourful stars fly around if you manage to do a very good combo and blinking logos like "Good", "Great" etc. appear. I think this can be a bit disturbing and blocks the clear sight, but you can also play without this. SOUND °°°°°°°°°°
When you download the game you can chose between three different files. The smallest file has the lowest sound-quality. I chose the file with the highest sound quality but I can't tell in as far the quality differs. The sound that is brought with the regular characters can in deed go a bit on your nerves, but you can also easily change the wav.file for the background of the character (itīs really easy ;-)) and put your favourite music at its place. If you create your own character you can also fill in own sounds for the different jumps etc. Or you simply shut don your boxes and everything is quiet ;-)
EXTRA: HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN CHARACTER °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
If someone likes to create his own character, I'll tell you how you can do so. It's really very simple.
First you have to open the folder "characters" in the folder "Template" you open the file "template.pcx" with a drawing program like Corel or Photo Impact etc. then you can see (I think) 15 violet pictures with the character. You have to keep the colour of the background and change the whole pictures into this colour (leave the green field around as it is). Then you can draw your own figures in the fields. What your character has to do in each picture is written below (e.g. jump). You have to create an own folder within the characters folder and save your drawings there. Now you copy the template.txt into your new folder, open it and there you change the template.pcx into the name you gave your new characters file otherwise it won't work! Yes, some music! Just copy the wav.files you want to use into your folder and then you have to rename the single files in the text-file. Don't forget to save your new text-file and that's it! If you have any more questions don't be shy to ask.
I hope it was clear enough. It's really a bit difficult to explain such a thing in English *smile* WHERE TO GET IT °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Free Download (e.g.): http://www.icytower.unas.cz/down2.htm (here are also some other characters etc. for download) Lots of characters to download: http://www.mizimace.de/characters/index.html
File size: the icy tower game is in three different file sizes available the smallest is 20MB I think - not very big. CONCLUSION °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Before telling you once more how much I like this game, I have to warn you: you can get addicted to this game, so donīt download it if you get easily addicted to such games!!! All the others I wish much fun with this game and if you manage to create your own character you can tell me, I would be happy to see your self-made characters. It's really great fun!
Greetings from Icy Wuschel!
P.S.: Hope there arenīt too many mistakes in my review. Never wrote something about a PC-Game in English ;-)
