In May Angry Birds creator Rovio Entertainment announced the launch of it’s publishing initiative Rovio Stars. Rovio intends to give smaller labels a leg up providing final development as well as marketing assistance.
The first game to be published is IceBreaker: A Viking Voyage from Nitrome Ltd. It is currently available for iOS devices (no word yet on an Android release). An icy wind has swept the Vikings away, leaving them stranded throughout the land and surrounded by trolls, deadly traps, dangerous enemies, and worst of all – troll snot! A Viking Voyage is a quirky, inventive, and colorful physics puzzler that deserves every bit of visibility the mobile publishing giant can give it.
And quite a voyage it is with long chapters, branching paths, and the promise of more content to come. The map system often allows a choice between different stages so there is always another path to try should you get stuck. IceBreaker manages to keep it’s physics fresh and not fallback too much on the tried and tested. Our task is to help get the Vikings back into their boat. To do this we manipulating the environment by cutting through blocks of ice, swinging and cutting ropes, and firing cannons.
Above all as Rovio stated for their program IceBreaker has lots of character. The little Vikings have lots of personality tied together by neat retro animations and story to provide context for each stage. This helps keep the player engaged through the game.
