Brain Games BGP5168 Publishing Ice Cool - Flicking Action Dexterity Game for All Ages - Kids, Family, Adults, and Gamers

Product Information

As with our section on visual accessibility this is about as accessibile a dexterity game as we can imagine. The fixed constraints, the walls, and the nature of play all mean that while physicality is an issue the design mitigates for a lot of minor impairments that would otherwise render a game unplayable. However, this is not a design space in which even being ‘the most accessible’ is much commendation. This is a category of games, wall to wall, that is likely to be inaccessible if physical accessibility issues must be considered.

If the Runner completely goes through a door with a fish token of his color on it, he takes it and draws the top card from the fish card draw pile. You look at the card and put it face down partly covering your color reminder card. In 2004 three board game enthusiasts embarked on a mission to grow board gaming culture in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It started with localization and distribution of the popular game “Settlers of Catan” and now Brain Games is the largest board game distributor in the Baltic countries. The game ends after as many rounds as the number of players (each player will be the Catcher once). Count the victory points from your fish cards and the player with the highest total of victory points becomes the winner! Don't forget to also count your revealed ones! If the Catcher at any point during his turn touches one or more Runners, he takes away their ID cards. We had one game where the catcher actually jumped two walls and caught me on the other side of the board. To be honest, I wasn’t even mad, that was an amazing shot. It’s moments like this which make Ice Cool so much fun. Ice Cool is going to be one of those games where there will be cheers or cries of anguish as people make particularly difficult or impressive shots.

The Story

The game ends when each player has been the Catcher twice (the players alternate between the rounds for who plays the Catcher and who plays the Runner). If you want the penguin to move in a straight line, put your finger in front of it and make a push on the very center - it will move in a straight line. Given how competitive some of us are (sibling rivalries, anyone?), you can imagine how ICE COOL can – and will – become the smash hit of the evening at your games night. There’s no formal need for communication during play. None of the cards have anything written on them that requires literacy, and the only noise will be that which you provide yourself as excited commentary to the action.

It’s hard to know really how transferable my life experience is, so I’m going to break this review of Ice Cool up into two different parts – one for a middle aged UK audience, and one for everyone else. If you grew up in the UK during the eighties, turn to review 1. Otherwise, turn to review 2. The game consists of a series of rounds where players will rotate being the hall monitor and the students. The students want to steal the three fish in their colour without being caught, when one penguin gets all three fish the round ends. The fish are hanging above the doorways between rooms, all you have to do is pass through a doorway to get your fish. The hall monitor wants to catch the students by bashing into their penguins. Should you succeed, you take their hall pass, and should you get all the hall passes then the round ends. Fish and hall passes are all traded for scoring cards which can be one, two or three points, though as a bonus, collecting a pair of one’s allows you to take an extra turn. Once everyone has been caught by the hall monitor the game ends and you count up the points on your score cards. Amy’s Final Thoughts It’s like Subbuteo, but with penguins. Or rather, it would be like Subbuteo if Subbuteo was actually fun. Innit. Also, do you guys remember Thatcher? She was a piece of work, right? Still, Theresa May – makes Thatcher look like a moderate. And remember Spitting Image? I saw a few episodes of it quite recently. It didn’t age well. Like us. Look at us. Look what has become of us. When did this happen? HOW DID WE GET SO OLD? Ice Cool is entertaining because of the player interaction. Playing almost feels like a sport where the penguins are an extension of the players. There's a sense of achievement to difficult manoeuvres. Curving arcs through doorways, or jumping walls to catch your friends. Players come together sharing those moments, often with a cry of "Did you see that?!".

If there is one genre that I can’t get enough of it’s card drafting games. But if there is a second genre that I am addicted to, it’d have to be dexterity games. I love them. I think it’s because they always feel so unique when you compare them to each other. That and they are usually the genre of games that seems to inspire the most talked about moments. That one amazing shot will always create a lasting memory. What use is Maths when you could have the easy life you see the other penguins having when you watch David Attenborough on TV? Cutting class is so much more fun and there’s plenty of fish to be had in the kitchens, so long as the hall monitor doesn’t catch you! Ice Cool is a children game for 2-4 players ages 6 and up, however adults will enjoy it as well. One game takes approximately 30 minutes to play. The box includes 4 plastic penguins, 5 cardboard boxes – rooms, 16 wooden Fish tokens (12 fish in 4 player colors and 4 fish in natural color), 45 Fish cards (each showing 1, 2 or 3 victory points), 4 color reminder cards, 4 penguin ID cards. We strongly recommend Ice Cool in both of our categories of cognitive accessibility. Emotional Accessibility

The Catcher has to catch the Runner twice before the round ends. When the Catcher touches the Runner for the first time, he takes away his ID card as usual. Then the Runner is moved to the Classroom and the Runner immediately takes a turn starting from the red circle like in the beginning of the game. The Catcher's turn completely ends and he cannot play two fish cards with value 1 to take an extra turn before this immediate turn of the Runner. The game is over when every player has been the Catcher once. The player with the most victory points is declared the winner!If you make a jump over a door with your color fish token on it, you do not receive the fish token. You must move through the door to receive the fish token! I think though that it’s likely to be an issue with vanishingly small relevance – I don’t doubt people can become Ice Cool masters if they want, I just suspect most people won’t want to. While mismatched skill levels are likely to be common, they’re not likely to be mismatched enough to trigger the problems relevant to this category. What’s cooler than being cool? Ice Team. Bad paraphrase of a great song aside , Ice Team is a cooler than cool two-player racing game where players see who can be the first to get their four polar bears across the finish line having collected the most fish from igloos to be crowned coolest of the ice caps. Bear to Igloo Four This is the end of the review. Spend your remaining few hours before the embrace of the grave reflecting on the cold, desolate country we have forged with our collective political indifference. O Discordia.