Games - Icy Tower

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	Games - Icy Tower

Icy Tower is a freeware video game created by Johan Peitz of Free Lunch Design, inspired by Xjump. In the game, the player controls Harold the Homeboy whose goal is to climb the tower as high as he can by jumping up floors, and earn points while doing so.

Gameplay

Overview

The Tower consists of floors in different sizes and is of infinite height. The player's goal is to reach higher and higher floors without falling (i.e. jumping but missing a floor and falling past the bottom of the screen), as well as to keep ahead and above of the ever-faster upward scrolling of the game (explained under 'Scrolling').

Movement

Your character will constantly accelerate as long as it moves. The faster it runs, the higher and longer it will jump. Hitting walls (the sides of the tower) and immediately turning around generally maintains your character's speed.

Scrolling

As the player escalates the tower, it will start to scroll upwards slowly and the player will have to keep up in order to not fall off the screen. This is not so hard in the beginning since the scrolling is very slow, but every 30 seconds, an alarm clock will sound and the scrolling will go slightly faster. There is a clock in the upper left corner of the screen that shows how much time is left until the next speed-up.

Scoring

You will get 10 points for each floor you reach. This alone will not gain you any great scores however. To be really victorious, you will have to make cool jumps, combo-jumps, for which you will be awarded

n^2

points for every

n

floors jumped in one combo.

Players either thrive for the highest score they can achieve (by making the biggest combo they can jump), or to reach the highest floor they can.

Rewards

After making a combo-jump, you are given a reward as well as points. The bigger the combo, the greater the reward. As of 1.2, rewards are simply a flashy message along with the following words, spoken after the player has successfully finished a combo.

Floor Types

Every 100 floors, the floor type (the way the floors look) changes. As of version 1.2, there are a total of 10 floor types, type 1 being floors 0-99 and type 10 being floors 900 and above. Version 1.3 features one more floor type (called "chain-floor"), which starts off from floor 1000, and can not be unlocked or seen in lower floors.

Icy Tower features the ability to start the game with a floor type of your choice, but only after you have successfully landed on the actual floor where that particular type begins.

Replays/High Scores

Version 1.2 introduced the ability to save replays of games. This gives the player the ability to provide proof of their highest scores, combos and floors. The offspring of this ability is the global , which lists the best Icy Tower scores, combos, and floors, and allows internet users to download replays of those events.

Note: You must have Icy Tower installed on your computer to view downloaded replays.

Atmosphere

Much like Sony's PaRappa the Rapper, Icy Tower depicts ghetto and hip hop culture as a happy and humorous enviornment. The main character, Harold the Homeboy, is implied to be an emcee, as he sings and raps the menu music (which is a parody of hip hop and R&B), and uses the slang. He also wears a beanie, while his homie Disco Dave contrasts with him, what with his disco quotes such as "stayin' alive," his wardrobe and his afro. Notably, the character's theme music is the Earth, Wind & Fire single "Let's Groove."

The levels and graphics in general are also very colorful and bright, much like the Mario games. Interestingly, level six platforms are based on bricks from Super Mario Bros., with Yoshi eggs displaying your jump count.

Characters

Version 1.2 introduced the ability to play with custom characters. Icy Tower comes with two default characters: Harold the Homeboy and Disco Dave. Icy Tower also comes with a template character, allowing fans to create their own characters, with their own graphics, sound effects, and background music. Characters can be downloaded from the internet. The , or offers some of them.

Types of levels

00 - Covered with snow.
100 - Covered with snow and ice.
200 - All made from wood.
300 - Some kind of a shiny, blue floor.
400 - All is covered with pink chewing gum.
500 - The bones level, all made out from bones.
600 - This is like a jungle level.
700 - A Super Mario brick level, there are also the question marks at the edged.
800 - A cloudy level. The level is filled with clouds.
900 - A shiny rainbow like level.
1000 - Some kind of a dacing floor that glows.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Icy Tower ]

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