Ice Cream Nomsters Review

Ice Cream Nomsters is a lot like ice cream itself: it feels smooth, looks sweet, and sounds delicious. However, play it for enough time and you’ll realize why ice cream is just an occasional treat: it's all empty calories.

In Ice Cream Nomsters, players guide an ice cream truck around different neighborhoods delivering scoops of goodness to houses looking for a fix. Instead of serving the children that theoretically live in this neighborhood, the houses’ monstrous, anthropomorphized nature suggests that the buildings themselves are consuming the cones. It's cute in a "Monster House" sort of way. In fact the whole game, with its minimal soft lines and pastel colors, looks really pleasant. It would work as the design for an actual hip ice cream store. The music is upbeat and cheery too, reflecting how ice cream delivery should be a labor of love.

However, the gameplay only reflects the labor. From a bird's eye view, players draw paths throughout town streets for the truck to follow. Stopping near home base refills the ice cream supply while going near a house in need completes a transaction. Ice cream melts over time though, so the goal is to be as efficient as possible by minimizing backtracking - using power-ups like speed boosts and avoiding obstacles.

Between rounds, players can also use coins they've earned to upgrade various stats like truck cargo size and ice cream durability. But ultimately, playing Ice Cream Nomsters just feels like actually working a delivery job. Despite its overall aesthetic, there's nothing that silly or fun about running these tedious routes. Players unlock new maps over time, but their small average size means gigs get really repetitive really quick. For example, occasionally players must service a party by delivering multiple cones to one house, but there's nothing exciting about repeating the same tiny loop.

Ice Cream Nomsters clearly had care put into its general look and feel. But for an actually enjoyable experience, players should just pay a real delivery person to give them ice cream instead.