A Novice's Guide to the Ice Cream Machine

This guide is my way of trying to get across my way of playing Ice Cream Factory, as an alternate way of trying it. The basic idea is really quite simple, but I shall go over it anyway.

Basic Idea

The aim of the game is to dodge Ice Cream. The blobs that fly from the bottom are ice cream, therefore you dodge them. Simple. But, to confuse even more those who are stuck by this basic game idea, some blobs of ice cream have *gasp* toppings! Even though they have toppings, you still avoid them, because they are ice cream. Get it? Dodge the ice cream. Do NOT collect the ice cream, even the ones with pretty toppings. If a blob of ice cream hits you, you lose a life. Lose all your lives, and ‘Game Over’. Understand? Good. If you don’t, please try and find another game. This one is evidently not for you.

Scoring and Levels

There are several levels of ice cream. Every time you go to a new level, the colour of the ice cream changes (wow!) and you have to dodge an extra twenty-five scoops. For each scoop that you dodge, you get five points. Get lots of groups of five points, and you get a big score. However, the pretty ice cream with a topping on is worth DOUBLE. It counts as two blobs of ice cream, and scores ten points. There are some, even rarer ones with extra toppings, which score a massive fifteen points.

Bonuses

As well as the ice cream, there are also occasional things that fly up that are not ice cream. Some of these are good to collect, and some are bad, bad, bad!

Good Bonuses to collect

- Slow bonus. This bonus is a red minus sign in a red bubble. This slows the ice cream down, so you have longer to dodge it, so you won’t be hit as much. On the first few levels, this doesn’t make much difference, but by the time you’ve got to the higher levels, the ice cream is going so fast that you can hardly see it. Slowing this relentless onslaught will give you a (slightly) better chance of dodging it. This is a cumulative bonus, so the more you get, the slower the ice cream will move.

-Shrink bonus. This bonus is a small purple Chia in a purple bubble. This makes your beautiful Chia smaller, so she can fit so much easier through small gaps between one piece of ice cream and another, and has a better chance of escaping from being trapped in a corner. Again, this is cumulative, so the more of these you get, the smaller the Chia will shrink.

- Life bonus. This bonus is a pink heart in a pink bubble. This is one of the best bonuses you can get. An extra life means that you can afford to be hit by the ice cream once more, which means that you last longer, which means that you score more, and earn more Neopoints. The only disadvantage is that the game resets all other bonuses when you do this, so your Chia will become normal size, and the speed of the ice cream will return to normal. This can be a good thing, though (see bad bonuses to collect section).

- Cherry Bonus and Fish Bonus. The cherry bonus looks like (surprise!) a cherry on a yellow thing, and the fish bonus looks like a fish head. These boost your score. The cherry one adds one hundred points to your score. That is the equivalent of dodging twenty blobs of ice cream. And to your money, it is the same as finding ten Neopoints on the floor. Not a vast amount, but every little helps. The fish bonus is even better though, and scores two hundred and fifty points. That saves you dodging fifty blobs of ice cream, and earns you an extra twenty-five Neopoints. The disadvantage of this, though, is that, like the life bonus, it returns all your game settings to normal.

Bad Bonuses to collect

- Growth bonus. This one looks like a large blue Chia trying to break out of an inadequately sized blue bubble. This is bad, because it makes your ice cream-dodging friend bigger, so she will have more parts of her body to be hit by ice cream. It has no advantages, and could mean that you lose a life quite quickly.

- Fast bonus. This looks like a green plus sign in a green bubble, and makes the ice cream come faster at you, which makes it harder to dodge, which makes you lose, which is bad. Bad, I tell you. Avoid this bonus as much as Sloth would an army of independent Grundos.

- Strawberry Bomb. Great name, not so great bonus. This looks very strange, but it has a strawberry on a yellow base. Avoid this, as it removes all your hard-dodged ice cream from the screen. That may sound good, but it doesn’t improve your score in any way, meaning that you just have to dodge all the ice cream all over again. It will also remove any bonuses from the screen, and losing that life bonus coming right at you can be very annoying.

Hints and Tips

- If you are trapped in a corner, always try and escape. When I say trapped, I mean when you are in, say the top right corner, and there is a blob of ice cream coming up your row, but in the row next to you, there is a whole block of ice cream passing, so you can’t escape. But always try. The worst that could happen is that you lose a life (inevitable if you stay still), and the best is that you escape.

- Do not risk a life trying to get any bonus, even a life bonus. If it is probably going to kill you collecting the life bonus, let it go. Gaining a life to lose a life is pointless. Likewise, if a good bonus is on the other side of the screen to you, don’t bother trying to get it, as you will probably get hit on your way across.

- Try and stay as close to the middle of the screen as you can. If you stay on one side, you can get trapped. In the middle, you can dodge to one side or another, and not get pushed against a wall, which you want to try and avoid if possible.

That’s all from me. Hopefully this guide will help you to become a much better Ice Cream Machine player. And hopefully, when I read this, I’ll pick up some tips I never knew I knew. Until next article, this is goodbye from me.

WARNING: Advice given in this article is not expected to be the best ever, but it’s the best I can give. Do not complain to me if it doesn’t help you at all. After all, I am only a novice.