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Snowy: The Bear's Adventures
March 9, 2007 | Ted Bade | |
Snowy: The Bear's Adventures is a cartoonish arcade-style game in which you control a cute cartoon polar bear’s movement up and down the screen capturing goodies, packing monsters in snowballs, and avoiding things that hurt. It is one of those cute games that can be played for hours of mindless entertainment. While the title might lead one to believe this is an adventure game, it is not. Rather, it is an arcade game. The game space includes a variety of cartoon screens in which you maneuver Snowy up and down as he winds his way home. You will find common horizontal platforms, placed close enough to allow Snowy to jump up to the next one and cut in such a way so that he can drop down to the ground or a lower one. More challenging screens contain angled paths, vertical walls that need to be hopped over, and even spaces that require a little skill to get into. Take a look at the screen shots to get a better idea. The only way down is to fall off an edge. This isn’t a problem unless the area below happens to be an open pit! While doing this, Snowy has to avoid attacks, capture power-ups, and destroy opponents. There are 88 different screens that can be played in this game. You deal with the monsters by tossing snow balls at them which encase them in snow. It takes several snowballs to encase a monster. Once they are encased, you have a period in which you can give them a kick off the screen, removing them and acquiring points If you wait too long the snow melts and the creature can go free. The good news is that once you hit one with a snowball, it freezes in place, so it cannot attack You, giving time to complete the freeze job and kick the resulting snowball away. You get extra points for clobbering other monsters as the kicked snowball rolls around the screen. After every so many levels are completed you are faced with a boss monster. It cannot be encased with snow and it creates many smaller minions that attack Snowy. Defeating the boss monster requires that you encase several of these minions in snow and roll the resulting snowballs into the boss. Of course this must be done while avoiding attacks from the boss as well as avoiding the plethora of minions. A bar at the top of the screen tells you how much life the boss has left. There are a variety of power-ups and valuables to capture as the game goes on. Some items simply give additional points such as a teddy bear or a piece of candy. Power-ups includes larger snow balls, longer range, faster speed, and immortality. You can also capture a heart which gives an extra life. In the immortality mode, Snowy flies in a space saucer which has four degrees of movement. All the player needs to do is touch the monsters to eliminate them. All pretty standard fair.
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