Game Reviews

Ice Age Village

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| Ice Age Village
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Ice Age Village
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| Ice Age Village

Thanks to a rise in the popularity of in-app purchases, Apple's App Store is now awash with free-to-play titles that offer you the chance to accelerate your experience by spending real-world currency.

These freemium experiences now cover a wide variety of genres, but there's still an abundance of build-'em-ups that can often only be distinguished from one another by their licences.

Gameloft's Ice Age Village has a great licence (Blue Sky's Ice Age, naturally), but the French publisher has failed to turn it into something special.

Repeat storms

Your main aim in Ice Age Village is to help Sid, Manny, Diego, Ellie, and a bunch of other franchise favourites construct a suitable abode for a gang of refugee animals, who've been left homeless following an unexpected cataclysmic rift.

This involves building a selection of different habitats to attract the little critters, which - like most titles of this nature - gift you coins at varying intervals. This income is supplemented by revenue from attractions, such as mud spas. A range of goals, which normally instruct you to build or place specific items, guide you through this experience.

You can make progress through a lot of Ice Age Village at a pretty decent pace without the need to spend any cash, but a big range of animals, attractions, and even decorations are off limits if you're not willing to put your hand in your pocket.

It's possible to earn this game's premium currency, Acorns, in small amounts throughout play and by completing special in-game offers, but when you're expected to pay up to 1,000 Acorns for a single animal, "small amounts" isn't really enough.

Becoming a recluse

Ice Age Village isn't a bad game, but it's lacking a few essential features - most notably, character. Despite having the Ice Age licence, which comes complete with a range of excellent characters, Gameloft's experience feels rather flat.

Then there's the absence of any real social features. Sure, you can visit the villages of your Gameloft Live and Facebook pals, but that's about it.

Ice Age Village is far from one of the worst free-to-play build-'em-ups on the App Store, but it's just as far from being the best.

Ice Age Village

Ice Age Village isn't an awful build-'em-up, but it's severely marred by a lack of character and an absence of social features
Score
Anthony Usher
Anthony Usher
Anthony is a Liverpool, UK-based writer who fell in love with gaming while playing Super Mario World on his SNES back in the early '90s. When he isn't busy grooming his beard, you can find him replaying Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII for the umpteenth time. Aside from gaming, Anthony likes hiking, MMA, and pretending he’s a Viking.