Frozen Free Fall: Snowball fight describes itself as a game which will turn your living room into an epic puzzle matching battle. It sadly doesn’t live up to those lofty claims, borrowing heavily the best and worst elements of games like Candy Crush and Bejewelled, wrapping it up in a Frozen skin complete with different abilities and 195 challenging levels to get through. Of course, being a free to play game micro-transactions do rear their ugly head and can be tedious if you play extensively, once the extra lives and special movies dry up, its hard to ignore the obvious ploy to make money at play here.
The world map follows familiar locations in the film
The levels themselves follow a very familiar format to anyone accustomed to puzzle games. Match 3 of the same colour to destroy those blocks and accumulate points within the time limit or set number of moves given. This relatively simple and overused trope in puzzle match-em-ups is creatively used, with numerous different obstacles littered throughout the levels that progressively become more challenging. On top of that, the levels differ between point scoring to win the level, bringing special items to the bottom of the board and more. The levels follow a pretty familiar visual pattern to anyone who’s seen Frozen, with a World Map depicting the starting level in Arundell before travelling North to the Ice Castle and other locales through the film. Each area showcases a different obstacle to try and overcome and as these occur every 10 levels or so, there’s certainly a conscious effort to at least try and give the levels some variety and challenge. As the levels progress, these obstacles are slowly combined to make some very challenging levels toward the latter part of the game.
The local multiplayer mode is one redeeming feature of this game
For a free to play game, micro-transactions are almost an inevitability in a title like this. With special moves, extra lives and extra moves all exploited to maximum effect (and for ludicrously high prices I might add), Frozen Free Fall takes some of the worst elements of other freemium games and rolls them up into one big, ugly snowball. With five lives to start, once you run out there’s a 30 minute window before another life is given. There’s numerous pop up boxes dotted around the interface too, luring you toward the store where this tedium can be avoided by spending money to combat this.
The one innovative part of Frozen Free Fall is with its local multiplayer mode. With playable characters unlocked the further you get in the single player mode and no micro-transactions in sight, this is one area the game actually excels in. Two players go head to head in a match em up game to try and get as many matches of colours as possible in order to throw a snowball at the opponent. After a 2 minute scramble, the winner is the person who’s accumulated the most points and thrown the most snowballs. Its certainly simple fun and the arcade style this is presented helps make the mode the best part of this freemium game.
You’re only given a set number of special moves before they run out
For those loathe to micro-transactions and freemium games in general, steer clear of Frozen Free Fall. Everything here is geared toward exploiting this to full effect and although the gameplay is certainly fun and satisfying to complete some of the more challenging levels that keep you stumped for a while, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better elsewhere. As a short burst of fun between larger, more expanse games, Frozen isn’t bad but extended periods of time playing this is sure to become a tedious grind, given the emphasis on micro-transactions. The local multiplayer mode is good though and the quick, arcade style this is presented is arguably the best part of the game but with so many other puzzle options, Frozen Free Fall isn’t going to be one you’ll be rushing to play any time soon.
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Verdict - 3/10
3/10