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alt title(s): Ice World
Brother, can you spare some warm underpants?
Cold, cold, cold as Alaska and the Yukon put together. Thankfully, you usually won't freeze to death.
Ice Worlds may be the Green Hill Zone or The Lost Woods in the wintertime or may just be a colder climate. Ice is in great abundance for your slipping and sliding pleasure, and expect Super Drowning Skills if you fall in the water. Even if your character can normally swim, he usually finds himself turned into an ice cube if he falls into the water of an Ice World. Ice Caves are a common variation/addition.
Enemies of an Ice World usually fall into three categories: Animals found in the Arctic or other generally cold areas (penguins, seals, polar bears, etc., plus the occasional Yeti or snowman) who are trying to kill the hero for no good reason; Mooks equipped/designed for cold weather, and "ice versions" of enemies found in other areas.
Perfectly cubical blocks of ice are also surprisingly common, and can usually be moved to solve puzzles, or melted with fire-based attacks. Careful, as these blocks may have enemies frozen within them.
Slippy Slidey Ice Worlds are also a common example of a Single Biome Planet. Arguably, it's one of the more realistic ones, depending on how far the planet is from its sun.
The term "Slippy Slidey Ice World" was invented by the UK computer game magazine Amiga Power to describe what they considered to be an irritating trend of making platforms slippery just to add Fake Difficulty. Of course, as far as this trope is concerned, it also encompasses non-slippy, but snowy, worlds.
These levels have become a staple of platforming games and it's rare to find one without an ice level. As another UK gaming magazine NGC (nowdays known as N-Gamer) put it, "leaving out an ice level is like eating baby Jesus. Not a right thing to do"
Expect soft, echoey, "soothing" music which may not match the tone of the game, especially if it's an RPG. Alternately, there's a good chance (especially in older games) for ice levels to have a Christmas theme, in which case expect to hear public domain carols.
The Slippy Slidey Ice World has even been given its own "holiday" in the form of Obligatory Ice Level Day .
Examples:
Film
- Hoth from Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back.
Literature
- Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is set on a planet called Winter, with the requisite giant glaciers and twenty-foot snowdrifts.
Real Life
- A Iceball Earth event is said to have happened several times between roughly 600-800 million years ago.
- The Jovian moon Europa is one of the real Ice Worlds in our solar system.
- As per the first sentence of the article, Alaska and the Yukon, as well as Siberia and both the North and South Poles.
Tabletop Games
- Ice Worlds are a standard planet type and designation in Warhammer 40000. Best known example is probably Valhalla of Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM) fame.
- The Paraelemental Plane of Ice in pre-3rd Edition Dungeons And Dragons. The whole plane isn't just made of ice, it is ice—the primal wellspring from which all cold in the multiverse is generated.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- Ancient Domains Of Mystery has one near the end of the game, and it's too slippery to use spiked boots. Throw the tons of Clingy Mac Guffins to get past.
- Banjo Kazooie has one and a quarter of these-Freezeezy Peak is a fairly standard example (barring perhaps the evil snowmen that cross into Goddamned Bats territory due to their skills as flak batteries...), while the season-themed Click Clock Wood finishes in winter, converting The Lost Woods into a Slippy Slidey Ice World.
- White Glacier in Bomberman 64. The third level of White Glacier was actually called "Shiny Slippery Icy Floor."
- One of the most popular missions in City Of Heroes, "Arrest Frostfire" features an ice-covered room that includes ice-slides and a ice half-pipe. Seldom does a team of player characters enter this room without someone deciding to take a couple of minutes to play on the ice.
- During the Winter Event of City Of Heroes, the Ski Chalet appears in Pocket D, an snow-covered mountain floating in a void with a wooden shack on top and ski slopes, complete with Badges for beating the best ski times. A unique instanced map only found in this event turns Croatoa snowy.
- In the Crash Bandicoot series, Slippy Slidey Ice Worlds have appeared near-regularly since Crash Bandicoot 2, and again in Crash Team Racing, Wrath of Cortex and Twinsanity.
- Mount Sabre from Crystalis is the game's typical "ice dungeon", complete with ice slides. It's possible to jump up these slopes if your character has the Rabbit Boots equipped and isn't using magic. In fact, it's required that you do this in order to reach an important Upgrade Artifact for your first sword.
- Gorilla Glacier in Donkey Kong Country.
- Also, a couple of levels in the second-to-last region of Donkey Kong Country 2 were ice levels, though they were indoors, so they weren't snow levels.
- Donkey Kong Country 3 had more typical snowy stages, complete with log cabins half-buried in snow.
- The Ice Cap Zones in Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and Sonic Adventure, amongst others in the series. The Sonic 3 version was the first appearance of an ice world in the series, relatively late for a series that had already mined out every other zone cliché.
- And to show it isn't left out of modern Sonics in this day and age, we have Holoska from Unleashed.
- Slightly before that, we had Blizzard Peaks in Rush Adventure. And before that there was White Acropolis from Sonic The Hedgehog 2006.
- Sonic Advance had Ice Mountain.
- Sonic Advance 2 had Ice Paradise.
- Sonic Advance 3 had Twinkle Snow.
- Sonic 3D Blast had the Diamond Dust Zone.
- Sonic & Knuckles oddly had half of one in Lava Reef Zone, where you oddly transit from a zone inside of a Volcano in act 1 to a zone inside of a frozen volcano in act 2. (Or was it the other way around?)
- That was just the lava cooling and becoming crystalline - yes, it's technically frozen lava, but the level is still hot, and the blue crystals aren't ice.
- It's a recurring theme for Sonic (and in Rush Adventure, Blaze) to be snowboarding in ice levels, like anyone with 90's 'tude.
- Done also in Robotnik Winter, from Sonic Triple Trouble, which hasn't yet been mentioned, and is only the second time Sonic goes snowboarding. Another Game Gear ice level is Blue Marine in Sonic Blast, most of which is underwater and it is utterly horrendous. As is the rest of the game.
- "The Sanctuary of Water and Ice" from Rayman 2. Rayman 3 has "The Summit Beyond the Clouds".
- An unlockable stage in Soul Calibur II has ice on the floor, where the characters can slide across and easily ring themselves out.
- Even landing an attack would send you sliding.
- Chrono Trigger has a mountain in the future setting where you have to resurrect Chrono. It's big and snowy, and slippery in some bits.
- Mario series examples:
- World 4 in Super Mario Bros. 2 and World 6 in Super Mario Bros. 3, as well as one of the worlds in the original SMB (however, that one didn't have noticeable ice tropes, since it was merely done with recoloring several things white-ish).
- World 5 in New Super Mario Bros. As well as slippy ice, there were also areas where deep snow reduced your movement.
- Although New Super Mario Bros Wii has mostly the same order of levels as its prequel, the ice world is bumped back to World 3 for the sake of showcasing the Penguin suit power-up earlier.
- Super Mario 64 has two — Cool, Cool Mountain and Snowman's Land. In the DS remake there's also a mini-snow land complete with high arctic winds.
- Super Mario Galaxy has several ice levels- one combined with a lava level as a textbook Hailfire Peaks.
- Super Mario World doesn't have a dedicated ice world, but a few of the secret levels are ice caves.
- Joke's End in Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga.
- Paper Mario has Shiver City/Mountain, and the sequel has Fahr Outpost.
- The planets Hoven, Siberius and Grelbin in the Ratchet And Clank series. To Insomniac's credit, the designers found ways to make all three planets very different from each other.
- Greenland Invasion, the two-level game provided with Power Game Factory, is set entirely in an Ice World, but without the Frictionless Ice.
- The entirety of Ice Climber, and the Ice Climber-themed levels in Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl.
- The Snowhead region in The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask (though the Snowhead Temple is half molten lava and half ice).
- Ocarina of Time before it also had Ice Cavern, which wasn't a full dungeon, but still counts.
- The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess continues this idea with Snowpeak, but the two Yetis you meet are peaceful allies who cook you food and race you down the mountain on snowboards made of ice.
- There's an island in The Wind Waker that's kind of difficult to get into because of this.
- Don't forget whenever you make it winter or come across a perpetual winter area in Oracle of Seasons. Winter's even the first season power you get!!
- The Temple of Droplets in The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap.
- There is also an ice dungeon in Link to the Past, complete with irritating sliding floors and penguins.
- Final Fantasy:
- There was a wintry sequence in Final Fantasy VII wherein you had to make Cloud stop and move around to warm up his body or he'd freeze to death.
- Mt. Gagazet in Final Fantasy X.
- Icicle and Northern Region in FF7, Trabia FF8, Forgotten Continent FF9, Paramina Rift FF12
- In Final Fantasy XI, a zone named Uleguerand Range features a battlefield with pricey and valuable rewards. The cost of entry? Sliding down an ice wall and landing in a very specific spot, amidst tons of sight, sound, and magic aggro from monsters. And God help you if a snowstorm starts.
- The planet Dezoris in the Phantasy Star series
- Justified Trope: The Slippy Slidey Ice World is the very first level in the Amiga game Fire and Ice. Reason being, the main character defeats his enemies by freezing them and this is easier if the ambient temperature is low. Needless to say, later levels consist of deserts and lava.
- In Lego Star Wars, a game that plays like Star Wars set in a cartoony platform game world made out of Lego bricks, Hoth is pretty much one of these, complete with a lot of sliding around on one's bum.
- Star Wars games were, at one time, a massively popular genre unto themselves- and every single one boasted a Hoth level, mostly because it constituted the only major ground battle of the films not prosecuted by teddy bears. (Geonosis notwithstanding.) See Best Level Ever for details. This became SO infamous that when the growing profusion of World War II shooters became tiresomely cliched, Penny Arcade's declaration that "Omaha Beach is the new Hoth" was scathing.
- In Super Princess Peach, World 6 (Gleam Glacier) fits this trope.
- Also in Stinkoman 20X6, level 7 is one of these where you can freeze if you stay still for too long.
- The Mega Man games. Where to begin...
- Ice Man in Mega Man.
- The outside of Dr. Cossack's castle in Mega Man 4.
- Blizzard Man in Mega Man 6.
- Freeze Man in Mega Man 7.
- Cold Man in Rockman & Forte.
- Chill Penguin in Megaman X.
- Blizzard Buffalo in Megaman X3.
- Frost Walrus in Megaman X4.
- Mega Man Star Force 2 had Grizzly Peak, probably the first straight example in any of the networking Mega Man games.
- To be fair, Dr. Cossack presumably lives in Russia.
- Iceman's stage in Battle Network was one of the bounce puzzle variety.
- One of the water bosses in any given Zero or ZX games will be Ice: Blizzack Stagroff, Poler Kamrous, Chilldre Inarabitta, Fenri Lunaedge, Leganchor the Gelroid, and Bifrost the Crocoroid all have stages that are partly or entirely on ice or snow.
- The Calinca Ruins in Mega Man Legends 2. In fact, all of Calinca Island and the Forbidden Island can be seen as examples of this trope.
- The Phendrana Drifts level of Metroid Prime qualifies. This level subverts most of the traditional ice-level conventions, with the exception of heat weapons as a great ally and the very soothing Theme Tune (well, the first section of Phendrana).
- Sector 5 - ARC from Metroid Fusion also fits the trope. An interesting example in that—like Norfair and Magmoor—the extreme temperature actually will harm Samus if she hasn't gotten the Varia Suit prior to entering the area.
- Metroid Prime 3 has the planet Bryyo, which is mostly a volcano-ridden tropical jungle but has an icy section accessible through a special warp tunnel. However, the ice aspect of the area is purely cosmetic, and pretty much irrelevant to gameplay.
- Pokemon Diamond and Pearl had probably the most annoying route of all 4 generations: Route 217, where not only can you not bike or run in the snow(even when you get to Snowpoint City), your walking speed is reduced to almost a Shuckle's pace! Even worse, there's a blizzard going on, which makes it Hail during battle.
- Don't forget, every few steps you'll sink up to your eyeballs in a snowdrift, and have to thrash around on the control pad to get back out and resume your sluggish pace.
- Gold and Silver had the Ice Cave, which is pretty annoying your first time through—you have a few ice puzzles, boulder puzzles(not unlike the ones on Red, Blue, and Yellow's Seafoam Islands), and Goddamned Golbat were fairly common in the dungeon.
- In Odin Sphere, you actually will freeze to death without a warming potion.
- Ape Escape could have cared less about freezing. Spike, the main character, sprints around the Ice Age wearing a T-shirt and shorts (though water is so cold that it causes him to spring up in pain rather than swim).
- World Of Warcraft has Winterspring aswell as Dun Morogh, home of the dwarves. Northrend has plenty of icy areas (Including the lifeless Icecrown Glacier,) but it has quite a few exceptions to keep it from being a Slippy Slidey Ice Continent.
- Etrian Odyssey 2: Heroes of Lagaard, true to its season-themed strata, boasts this for its winter floors. The highest floor in the strata adds to it by making the ice too thin to cross except at night, when the temperature drops. You are also given the chance to take a nice rest on one of the floors. Bad idea. The very first paragraph of this trope description should suggest why.
- Achaea's weather system occasionally produces blizzards, which leave players stumbling around blindly until the snow eases off. However, the snow seems to melt instantly on hitting the ground, and so does not actually create an Ice World afterwards.
- In the third game of the Valis series, there is a Nintendo Hard ice level which, at one point, requires you to accurately jump onto a platform, duck to avoid the low ceiling that will push you into a Bottomless Pit, and then use a special slide maneuver to get over yet another Bottomless Pit. This is, of course, right before That One Boss (one of several in the late game).
- La Mulana: the Graveyard of the Giants. Also subverts the musical expectation in having a thick, heavy background music to it, despite being a slippery ice level.
- Mass Effect features Noveria, where the ice is both real and figurative, as you have to deal with a very cold reception from the corporations controlling the planet. There's also a few uncharted ice world that can be visited, though usually the only hazards are the cold temperature itself and reduced visibility.
- And the pirates, but you find those everywhere.
- Kirby often has this as well (as any self respecting platformer series should), with Rainbow Resort from Kirby's Adventure, Ice Berg from Dream Land 2 and 3, and Shiver Star from 64 (although only the first level was heavily ice-based).
- Don't forget Cold Course and Frozen Fantasy from Canvas Curse, Frozen Hillside from Air Ride, Peppermint Palace from Amazing Mirror, and Ice Island from Squeak Squad.
- The Kirby series a definite fondness for Alliterative Names.
- The Wario Land games almost all had this in some way, the most prominent probably being Sherbert Land from the first game.
- Pictured in the bottom-left corner of the page image is 40 Below Fridge from Wario Land 4.
- Ecco The Dolphin crosses this with, naturally enough, Under The Sea. It's also at about this point that the game's true Nintendo Hard nature really starts becoming apparent.
- The Diablo II expansion Lord of Destruction takes place in the snowy, barbarian-inhabited wastes of Harrogath.
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age has a dungeon in an antarctic region that's full of slippery ice puzzles. They could be quite a pain in the ass, seeing as how you had to solve some just for 100% completion.
- There was also Imil, the whole southern continent of Tundaria, and especially Prox, so far north it wasn't even on the map. Now that's cold.
- Yoshi's Island DS. Levels 4-5, 4-6, and 4-7 fit this trope. You sllllliiiiiiiiddddddeeeeeeee.
- In the original game, levels 5-1 through 5-4 also qualify. Again, you slide.
- On Rune Scape, the 2008 Christmas event had patches of ice that you could only slide on until you bumped into a rock. So irritating.
- The various areas of the Shiverpeak Mountains in Guild Wars combine this with Death Mountain. Of course, even the lady Elementalists, whose preferred attire is a bra, miniskirt, and a lot of lace, have no trouble with the cold. One mission does make note of the weather in such an environment, however-the mission is set in the midst of a night-time blizzard, and the party is tasked with lighting a series of signal fires for the NPC's following behind them.
- The Antarctic level of the Transformers Armada. A bare wasteland of ice, broken up by a few icebergs and ravines... along with a crashed icebreaker and plane, abandoned research facility (blow up the buildings to find Mini-cons) scanner droids, spider bots, and the first boss of the level being freaking Starscream.
- The ice world on B5 of Light Crusader.
- The original video game adaptation of The Little Mermaid has such a level, though there are few places where Ariel gets out of the water. It's more notable for the falling ice blocks that thaw into live fish.
- The World Ends With You: While "Shibuya ain't cold enough for ice," there is an ice level, not in the main game, but as one of the boards in Tin Pin Slammer. In Another Day, after you go to Molco, head to the Udagawa Back Streets and challenge Mr. Kitaniji to Tin Pin. (He won't accept your challenge before then.) The board is icy, with no obstacles, making it much easier for you to send your own pin flying off the board by your own stupid mistakes. The ice does affect the other pins, however.
- Avalon Code has one that you have to go through twice over the course of the story. It's hard enough avoiding cliffs and pits the first time around, but the second time there are more of them, often in conjunction with speed-up floor tiles.
- The Goonies II
- American Mc Gees Alice.
- Ultima Underworld II features the Ice Caverns, which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Mercifully, most of the large slippery sections can be avoided entirely without missing anything worthwhile, although there's one which you do end up having to traverse.
- There's an icy world in a Commander Keen game. Complete with ice cannons, of all things.
- A few puzzles in Tales of Symphonia take place in a slippery, icy cavern.
- What's odd is that the low-gravity puzzles work the same way...
- In Baten Kaitos, surprisingly nonpresent. Even though there is an ice land, and you do tunnel through the snow, you don't slide on the ice. Maybe Xelha just got really good at walking on it.
- Spyro The Dragon had the Ice Cavern.
- Spyro 2 and 3 had areas with ice that you could slip and slide around on.
- Jazz Jackrabbit has several levels with ice and low friction.
- Jazz Jackrabbit 2 also has an ice level. It's literally a cold day in Hell.
- Part of Brutal Legend's map is the Dry Ice Fields, it's a non slippy version of this trope.
- Planet Freon from Ristar.
- The continent of Glacia from Skies of Arcadia
- The cursed version of the Kujara Ranch Level in Tomba 2 is nothing but snow and ice.
- Freudia's stage in Rosenkreuzstilette is one of these without the standard Mega Man ice physics (and more Instant Death lasers). Sichte's stage has the physics but no ice.
- Star Fox Adventures' has two cold areas: [SnowHorn] Wastes and part of [DarkIce Mines. There's not a lot of slipperiness in the former (although the Krazoa Shrine accessible from there does have a slippery floor), but they do have places where ice blocks your way, and the water eats away at your health as long as you stay in it.
- Eternal Sonata has a slight version in the Sharp Mountains. No Elemental Rock Paper Scissors regarding the cold aspect, but there are certain paths that are sloped. You can get to the top if you keep going, but if you stop, you slide toward the bottom.
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