The biggest draw of mobile gaming is the ability to game on the go. Ice Maze, the latest puzzle game from mobile publisher Reaxion, fits this bill well. It features simple, easy-to-use gameplay mechanics and packs just enough depth to keep you coming back for more than a few plays.
Ice Maze's premise is simple: You are in control of a happy little snowman who has to get to his ice hole before the sun melts him. In order to do this, you'll move him up, down, and from side-to-side around an icy maze in order to navigate him into his hole. You're allotted a specific number of turns for each level, and your score is determined by how quickly and in how few turns you can get your snowman to the end of the maze. The tricky part is that, because you're on ice, if there isn't a wall or barrier to stop you, moving in any direction sends you sliding all the way across the playing field. So in order to properly navigate, you'll have to figure out the best way to maneuver your snowman into the necessary walls and objects to keep him from sliding too far away.
During play, you'll also periodically see two items you can collect. If you pick up the ice-cream bar, it will award you more turns for that level. If you inadvertently grab the hot teapot, it will cut your available number of turns in half. These power-ups and power-downs appear at random and will move around while you play, so you'll have to be aware of them at all times.
Ice Maze features about 78 levels of varying difficulty. From the outset of the game, you can simply choose one of three difficulty levels--easy, medium, or hard--and then just keep playing until you've exhausted all of them. The game itself has no definitive end, but once you've played through all the different mazes, that's basically all there is to see.
As for its presentation, Ice Maze is pretty simplistic, though it's not too bad by any stretch of the imagination. The playing field and your happy little snowman are both nicely drawn and feature some decent detail. The snowman himself never animates, so you're basically maneuvering a motionless object the entire time. You'll hear occasional little blips as you move the snowman around, but there isn't anything else in the way of audio.
If you're on the hunt for a decent puzzle game for your cell phone, Ice Maze is a good choice. It's a nice little time killer, and it's a fairly fun and challenging one at that.
