Bad Ice-Cream Game

Bad Ice-Cream is a maze game from Nitrome where you play as one of a handful of scoop-headed ice cream characters chasing down fruit while enemy fruit-monsters chase you. Touch one of them and you're out, so the whole game is about managing space: where the walls are, where the enemies are, and where you're about to be.

Your main tool is ice. Hold the block key and you throw down a wall of ice in front of you, which blocks enemy paths, seals off corridors, or crushes anything caught underneath it when it forms. Clear every piece of fruit on a level without getting cornered and you move on to the next, harder one.

Controls

Move with the arrow keys. Hold spacebar to lay down ice blocks in the direction you're facing.

Tips

• Use ice offensively, not just defensively. Dropping a block directly on top of an approaching enemy destroys it, which is often safer than trying to outrun one in a tight corridor.
• Clear an escape route before you clear fruit. Grabbing the last piece of fruit in a dead end is worthless if an enemy is already blocking your way back out.
• Watch enemy patterns, not just positions. Most enemies move in predictable loops, so timing a dash past them beats waiting for an opening that may not come.

It's a good fit if you like tight, puzzle-ish arcade levels you can finish in short bursts rather than a game with a big time investment.