Arctic Escape

Genre: Top-Down Arcade / Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Arctic Escape is a family-friendly Top-Down Arcade game with Puzzle elements released on mobile devices and on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2011, and later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released. In this game, players must place arrows on the ground to guide a group of penguins to a helicopter while avoiding traps and hazards.

The gameplay in this game combines elements of the classic games Lemmings and Chu Chu Rocket, but it doesn’t play quite like either of those. The game does a good job of introducing new elements throughout and keeping things interesting in its various levels.

This game’s biggest problem is in its cartoony presentation. The game uses fairly simple 2D visuals for its levels and characters, and they do not look in any way impressive. Yet despite this, the game has an absolutely horrendous framerate, and absolutely chugs whenever you try to scroll the screen. This problem alone made the experience nearly intolerable for me, and dragged down what was otherwise a pretty delightful game.

In the end, you may still enjoy Arctic Escape’s fun Arcadey puzzles if you can look past those terrible framerates. However, I think that’s a pretty big ask – the framerates are so awful that I think most players are better off skipping this game.

tl;dr – Arctic Escape is a Top-Down Arcade-style game with Puzzle elements that has players placing down arrows to guide penguins around hazards and toward a helicopter. Unfortunately, this otherwise enjoyable game is nearly ruined by its atrocious framerate issues. These issues are so distracting, it’s hard to recommend this game.

Grade: C-

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