Help an ice skater collect stars and find the glowing exit on frozen ponds in Skater’s Solstice.  It’s a 2D top down viewed puzzler.  You can skate up, down, left, or right, but you can’t stop going in that direction unless you hit a rock or the edge of the pond.  You must figure out the correct path to take in each level (50 in all).  The game is available on all current consoles but reviewed on PS4 here.

Controls are simple.  Use the D-pad to move up, down, left, or right and that’s it.  There are three stars in each level, but you don’t HAVE to get them all.  Just making it to the exit will let you go to the next level, but you can go for the stars if you want an extra challenge.  Some stages have spikes that go up and down and you must time your moves so you don’t get hit, otherwise you must start the level over again.

The game is a decent puzzler, but I did have a few minor problems with it.  A hint option would’ve been nice, or maybe a way to rewind your moves.  The levels get pretty hard after stage 10 or so.  And many of the levels are so big, they take up more than the screen size and it can be hard to remember where the unseen rocks are or how to time it so you don’t hit the spikes.  They could’ve either let you pan around to see everything or made the levels smaller.

Kid Factor:

Skater’s Solstice is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  You can hit spikes but it doesn’t really show anything, it just takes you back to the beginning of the level as soon you do that.  So hardly violent at all.  Reading skill isn’t needed, but younger gamers may have trouble with the tougher levels.

Tags: Game Reviews