Bad Ice Cream

Bad Ice Cream is Nitrome's 2010 arcade maze game, rebuilt in HTML5 and still playable in a browser window — no download, no account, no install.

You steer a scoop of ice cream around a grid, and every level has the same job: collect all the fruit before a monster touches you. What turns it into more than a chase is the ice. One key grows a wall of ice in front of you; press it again while facing your own wall and you smash it back down. The move that cuts off a monster's route can just as easily wall off the fruit you were walking towards, so most levels are really a short puzzle about where to build and when to break.

It was built for two players on one keyboard, and the second scoop changes the game rather than just doubling it. Player 1 moves with the arrow keys and acts with Space; Player 2 moves with WASD and acts with F. Two players can split the board, cut escape routes from both sides at once, and rescue each other out of a corner that would end the run in single player.

The controls are only movement and one action, so there is nothing to learn before the first level starts, but the forty levels keep adding enemy patterns and moving fruit to keep the routes tight. It is the kind of game that reads as a children's puzzle for one round and quietly turns into a timing test by level ten.

On cool games spot this page is the index entry: cover, description, and search terms. The game itself is loaded from a third-party HTML5 build in an iframe on Play, so nothing is bundled into the site. It is filed under action and tagged two-player and puzzle, so it appears alongside the rest of the arcade and couch-co-op games in the catalog.

Press Play and find out.