Ice Kiss

Ice Kiss is a small Korean DOS platformer from 1997 that its authors released for free. The premise is simple and faintly naive: every level is scattered with girls frozen inside blocks of ice, and your job is to free all of them. Once they are out, the level ends.

The weapon is the interesting part. You do not shoot to kill — you shoot ice. Hit one of the polar bears wandering the level and it turns into a solid block, which instantly makes it part of the terrain. You can stand on it, jump off it and reach places that were out of range before. The bears come back after a while, so you cannot freeze the whole map once and be done with it; you have to plan when and where you want a step to exist. The rest of the danger comes from spikes, which you simply cannot stand on.

The result is a game that behaves more like a puzzle than an action title. Almost nowhere can you just run right — first you work out the order: which bear to freeze, which block to jump from, how to get back. Levels are short and a mistake costs seconds rather than half an hour, which suits it well.

Keep expectations modest, though. The resolution is low, the art is plain and the music forgettable; nobody would call this a big production. It is a freeware trifle of the kind that appeared by the hundred back then, except this one has a single good idea and sticks to it. For half an hour it is a pleasant surprise, and not much more.

On oldgame.cz Ice Kiss runs straight in your browser, with nothing to download or install.