Image Courtesy of <PERSON>
This review continues my series of detailed reviews that attempt to be part review, part resource for anyone not totally familiar with the game. For this reason I expect readers to skip to the sections that are of most interest.
If you liked the review please thumb the top of the article so others have a better chance of seeing it and I know you stopped by. Thanks for reading.
Summary
Game Type – Dexterity Game
Play Time: 15-30 minutes
Number of Players: 2-4 (Best 4)
Mechanics – Area Movement, Targeting
Difficulty – Pick-up & Play (Can be learned in 10 minutes)
Components – Excellent ++
Release – 2016
Designer – <PERSON> release of note)
Overview and Theme
Students...they are always trying to sneak out of class for one reason or another. But when the students are penguins and the school is offering up a smorgasboard of fish...well they don't need a second invitation!
Welcome to Ice Cool, a dexterity game that pits students in a quest for fish against a Hall Monitor looking to catch them out!
Good dexterity games are great fun, but they are easy to execute poorly from a production and design point of view. So how good is Ice Cool and is it a must have dexterity game?
This will be the first in a series of reviews that I intend on becoming a tradition. It isn't easy to find the time to write reviews in the week leading up to Christmas, so from this year onwards I will release a new Dexterity Game Review on Boxing Day! Kind of kills two birds with one stone.
Distract the teacher will you? I just need to duck out to the gym to write this review...and maybe grab a snack!
The Components
Ice Cool is a pretty fabulous game to look at and it also brings to the hobby a new innovation!
The Boxes – Which would be the box\board design. have created a new packaging and design system in one called Box in a Box. Essentially it consists of (in this case) five 3D-boxes that are all manufactured to be sheer millimetres bigger or smaller than one another. This allows the boxes to stack inside one another when the game is packed away and the largest box serves as the base, thus the game only requires a lid to seal the game. It's rather spiffy.
But those boxes also constitute the playing surface of the game as well as allow the game to be 3D in nature, which is rather important for this dexterity game. Each of the boxes in Ice Cool represent an area of a classic high school. Each box has one or more doorways or arches that allow a Penguin to move through and the whole production is coloured to look like ice.
The boxes also feature a couple of icons to denote where to attach the beige coloured Fish Tokens (see below) and the player's Fish Tokens. 470
To help with the setup, coloured icons appear on the floor below doorways\arches to ensure that the school is built in the correct orientation. It's clean, efficient design. Good job people.
It's really very cool and eye-catching on the tabletop. I'm really surprised that haven't released another title to make use of the technology\production idea of Box in a Box yet. Perhaps they just haven't found another good game design to complement it. I think a dungeon crawl design would be the perfect fit as the board would already have 3D walls to bring the dungeon to life and still allow for modular dungeon creation. Get onto it people!
Image Courtesy of Sandman1973
The Penguins – These are critical to the playing of the game. Each of the 4 Penguins are made from hard plastic and are weighted in the base (think those inflatable punching toys that can wobble back and forth and you have the idea). This allows the Penguins to be flicked in ways that allow them to curve around corners and jump over walls.
These pieces will become semi-iconic over time I think.
Image Courtesy of TheBoardGameFamily
The Fish Tokens – These lovely wooden tokens are equal parts functional as they are a part of the scoring.
All of the Fish Tokens are designed similar to a peg. They have the fish shape to them but they have a slit that allows them to clip onto the walls of the boxes.
The functional part comes in the form of the beige coloured tokens. These belong to no-one but they are required to be placed at key locations to secure the 5 boxes to one another and keep the whole shebang in place.
The other Fish Tokens are then coloured to match each Penguin. These are the fish that the players hope to collect and eat in order to score points. These are placed above doorways\arches as indicated by icons, ready for play. 872