Snow Master is the latest game from North Carolina-based developer MT Apps (WordZinga!). The game was last updated in December of last year, so why review a snow-themed game in the middle of Summer? Well, it just so happens that the game was free for a 24-hour period last month and besides, haven’t you ever heard of Christmas in July?
Snow Master is a simple game which is really a collection of three mini games, each of which is essentially the same concept, with only minor gameplay differences. The first mini game is named Acid Snow. Basically as snow flakes fall down your screen, you have to swipe on the acidic ones (which are highlighted in green) to destroy them, while trying to avoid damaging the normal snow flakes that obviously are white. You get extra bonus points for destroying multiple snow flakes in a single swipe. As you play, you fill up a progress bar (represented by a ruler), which when full, lets you advance to subsequent levels with increasing difficulty as you progress.
The second mini game is Twin Flakes. In this game you have to match pairs the snow flakes to clear the screen before time runs out. Once you clear four sets of flakes, you progress the next level and you earn more time. The countdown timer makes this mini game challenging and is a key part of why the Twin Flakes mini game is particularly fun.
The third and final mini game is called Snow Mercy. In this game you are in Hell and I don’t know how, but snow flakes keep falling. Weird huh? Anyway, you have to swipe all of the snow flakes before they reach the pits of Hell. Also, fireballs will emerge from the bottom of the screen to burn your precious snow flakes, so you have to swipe them as well. These fireballs ain’t easy to swipe and odds are you might get a little frustrated, for they don’t react like the snow flakes do. Instead, you have to swipe them upwards from the bottom and even then, sometimes you’ll miss. The game could definitely use a little calibration on the swipe controls here.
There are separate Game Center leaderboards for each of the mini games and a help button on the main screen for easy access to the tutorials, which are clear and concise. Graphics, I like them! Nothing fancy, but brilliantly executed, the right palette for the concept and a nice character that could have been exploited a little more and not only appear on the main screen. The sound and music felt about right, nothing annoying, however nothing memorable either.
In Conclusion
As the name implies, Snow Master is a collection of snow-themed mini games. While there is nothing groundbreaking gameplay-wise, Snow Master offers nice looking graphics and some fun time wasting, swiping action. The Game Center leaderboards will probably get you to come back to the game more than a few times, but the addition of some achievements and more variety in the gameplay amongst the mini games would certainly help to extend Snow Master’s limited longevity.
