Game Preview: Ice Flow

By W. Eric Martin
May 27, 2008

Publisher: Ludorum Games
Designers: Dean Conrad & John Streets
Players: 2-4
Ages: 11+
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Release Date: May 31, 2008
Price: £25.00 (see below)

Dean Conrad and Ludorum Games debuted in 2007 with Fagin’s Gang, and while I was lukewarm about the game, it won the best board game award at the 2007 UK Games Expo.

This year’s Games Expo takes place May 31-June 1, and Conrad has another game to spring on people: Ice Flow, which sounds like a neat mash-up of the Frogger video game and Wolfgang Kramer’s Goldland. Players have three explorers that they need to move from Alaska to Siberia, and to do so these explorers have to move from ice floe to ice floe to cross the Bering Strait. Why not a canoe or airplane? Because they’re tough guys, that’s why!

Ice floes move north or south through the Bering Strait, and they sometimes bear fish, rope or, well, bears – polar bears, that is; you can pick up the fish and rope, but hands off the bears, buddy.

On a turn an explorer must chart the movement of an ice floe, observe an ice floe rotation, or discover a new ice floe. (While the explorer is doing this passive activity, you – playing the hand of God – will move, rotate or introduce a new ice floe.) Either before or after this ice floe activity, the player may move an explorer or go fishing, using the rope to catch two fish. Rope is also used to cross ice packs, that is, the broken ice between ice floes. You can eat the fish to gain enough strength to cross an open sea hex, or you can use it to distract a polar bear and cross an ice floe safely. Play your fish right and you can sic the polar bear on another player, forcing him to flee.

While the game sounds like fun, it also provokes an existential crisis. As the rules state: “Ice Flow ends as soon as one player gets each of their three explorers to a different station in Siberia: This player is the WINNER!”

While the player might be a winner, the explorers seem like losers. Why am I sending these poor schmoes to Siberia? Did they cheat on my wife? Steal money from my retirement fund? What did they do to deserve this sorry fate? My heart goes out to them, those sorry doomed explorers of the frozen North, but I’ll send them to an icy death if that’s what I need to do to win. May history understand and forgive me…

If you’re not bothered by the suffering of your fellow men, then perhaps you’ll want to preorder the game as you save a few pounds and the shipping is free. FRED Distribution will have the game for sale at Origins in June 2008, in addition to distributing it to U.S. game stores.

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They totally need to hook up with the Dangerous Sports Club. Then they’d have a theme. Posted by Frank Branham on May 27, 2008 at 10:08 AM | #

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