iPhone Game Review -- Donut Games -- Icy Escort

By Bill Martens



Product: Icy Escort
Version: 1.10
Size: 4.4mb
Requires: iPhone OS 3.0
Languages: English
Website: http://www.donutgames.com/

This past week, I began to look at games for my iPhone 3Gs and of course, there are plenty out there. However, the distance between the good, the bad, and the downright ugly is tremendous. One diamond in the rough was a game I ran across from Swedish Game Development AB, also known as Donut Games. Icy Escort is a puzzle style game with a twist.



You are a mother penguin trying to gather up all your chicks in this game and between jumping from frozen platform to frozen platform and figuring out the pattern of the current screen, you have to gather the chicks while being aware of the ever present timer which is counting down to zero.



On each level, you try and gather the chicks while at the same time gathering all the ice creams on the level. The ice creams and the chicks give you points, the chicks follow you around, and the obstacles present interesting results, sometimes making the levels even tougher than they appear to be.

We played through level 20 of the 30 levels in just about an hour of play. while not the most difficult of games over all, there were a couple of levels that gave us a fit or two due to the pattern required to finish the level or the lack of time available to complete it. One more than one level we finished the level right as the clock reached zero. This type of game reminds me quite a bit of the old Flappy game on the Nintendo Gameboy in the respect that it required more than just the typical mindless game play.



The only aspect that I would like to see improve on the game is the number of levels included. Hopefully the next release of the program will address this. The fact that 20 levels took less than an hour and there are only 30 levels means that one would be finished the entire game in less than one day.



Summary
While Icy Escort is not the most original game or even the most advanced program ever produced, if you are looking for an entertaining game that will not only allow you to pass the time but make you use your brain with the puzzles, then Icy Escort is the game for you. The best part of this game for us was that Donut games was offering the game for free for download from the Apple App Store. There is also a flash version of the game which is very similar on their website.

Also, if you are looking for a free game once in a while, check out the Donut Games site for the latest free-bees. While this app was free when we downloaded it, it is currently available for $0.99

Rating: 4 out of 5 Apples

March 2010 Issue coming this week

We are in the final stages of production for the March issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine. This issue will have a lot of new articles about Apple II items as well as iPhone App reviews among others.

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As of 1 February 2008, Mike Pfaiffer is both the production editor of Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine and the President of the group. Bill Martens, the former president will remain as the UG Ambassador but will have no dealings with the day to day production of the magazine or the group itself.

This change was brought about due to Bill's commitments elsewhere which have taken him away from having the time to perform the duties required by the production editor position. He also vacated the Presidency for the same reasons.

Online Catalog

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Virtual Apple gets upgrades

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They have added some advertising in order to produce more revenues as well as updated the SEO related items. You will see more changes in the coming days, including content related to the disk images, some hard to find games, more educational programs and a new magazine dedicated to the website.

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