Inevitable Ice
In any platformer, no matter the setting, the designers will find a way to introduce an ice level. It doesn’t matter if the game is about men made entirely of fire who live on the surface of a star and shoot lava at each other — somehow, somewhere, there will be ice they need to run and jump on. And this ice will not act like ice in the real world; there will be no chance of slipping and falling unless the characters move slowly. Instead, the ice will just cause the characters to gain tremendous amounts of inertia, such that any change in velocity will take a long time to accomplish.
It is also a rare occurrance that the ice will have any effect on the mobs at all; they will probably be able to move normally on it.
I know this is reaching back a bit, but it turns out… you know how I mentioned The World Ends With You once upon a time? Well, it turns out that, while “Shibuya ain’t cold enough for ice,” there is ice, not in the main game, but in the minigame. This make it a lot easier for you to send your own pins flying off the board thanks to your own stupid mistakes. Thankfully, I’ve only seen ice on one board, and the NPC you have to challenge is pretty far out of the way, and he’s only in the day you unlock after beating the regular game, so… let’s just say I haven’t encountered it more than once thus far.
Comment by Nyperold | 14 April 2009