Price: $0.99 Score: 9/10 Category: Games
In Clickgamer‘s latest polar puzzler Floe, a little white bear has lost her mother. It’s your job to help her reunite with mama bear, and the way to do it is to help little bear navigate a series of ice floes.
The story around the game is decent and cute, detailed enough to create a plot and a purpose, but never too much to handle. Most of the game consists of solving the series of 64 puzzles, but every now and then you transition into shore cartoon bubble intonation conversations that briefly remind you that you’re helping the little polar bear through for a purpose.
Along the way the polar bear bats her thankful eyelashes at helpful seagulls, narwhals, walruses, penguins, and other polar animals in a similarly cutesy animated style. These are exactly the bright, irresistible drawings you might expect from a popular Asian cartoon. While some people would call the style of this actually challenging puzzler cute overload, others will love the adorable pet-like sounds and bright manufactured colors of Floe.
As an added bonus, around Christmastime Clickgamer updated the game to add a Santa hat on the little polar bear’s head. These are nice touches, and it makes the game feel a little more personal and caring.
Outside of the actual aesthetics of the game, Floe is a nicely executed puzzler. The little white polar bear starts on one side of the ice floe and it’s your job to move the colored ice blocks to help her reach the other side safely.
To move the blocks you tap the edge of the floe or tilt your device. Then you tap on where you want little bear to go and continue the navigation until you complete the level with her safe navigation. As you get more advanced more moving parts jump into the picture and you have to deal with multiple sliding blocks, freezing one at a time into place with taps.
You earn stars by passing the level in as few ice slides as possible, and unlock more levels as you advance. The first batch of the 64 levels is easy enough for a kid, but by the end of the game you’ll find yourself immersed in incredibly challenging situations that feel like a total and complete relief when solved.
If you like cute games and challenging block moving puzzles Floe is a perfect fit. It’s entertaining and fun, but probably not for everyone.
Bottom Line: Floe is a fun accelerometer based navigation puzzler that’s either the cutest, or on cute overload depending on your perspective. The initial levels are perfect for kids, but the batch of tricky ones might even give a mensa member a run for their money.
