Skating Season Review

I've always wanted to be an ice skating walrus, and thanks to this new game, my dream has finally come true! Actually, I'm an ice skating walrus wearing a cape and goggles; it just doesn't get better than this. All those lovely fish better watch out!

This is a puzzle platform game which has my hungry walrus ice skating around as he hunts out fish. Simple touch controls allow the little guy to be moved effortlessly around the various obstacles to his fishy target, and once caught it's back to the friendly penguin chef to prepare the fish for dinner.

But the various obstacles; such as floating icebergs, walls of ice and huge oil pipes, make things tough and a lot of forward planning is needed to guide the caped little guy to his fishy target. Sometimes a wheel needs turning in order to turn on the pipes, which if oil; creates fire or if water; creates ice and experimenting with which one to use and when is the key to completing some levels. As well as puzzle solving, the little guy needs to be pretty nimble on his ice skates, as avoiding rolling giant snowballs or jumping onto passing chunks of ice requires split second timing.

But getting it wrong and sliding into the icy cold water isn't entirely the end of the game as our plucky little hero is gifted with three lives. Which he needs as some of the levels are very tough indeed and despite the intuitive touch controls it's all too easy to slide into the drink. It also pays to plan ahead as the game can be very frustrating on some of it's levels, and often the earlier puzzles that have been solved in the level will have to be repeated as the poor walrus gets himself stuck due to poor planning and the level reset button gets pressed time and time again.

The whole game is played out in glorious cartoon graphics with entertaining sounds and I can easily see this game appealing to the younger iPad owning generation.