Gamuli

Thin Ice

Thin Ice

Every block off the ice.

A sliding-block puzzle that melts. Drag each block to the doorway that's its own colour. But the ice you are dragging keeps changing size, and the doorway is an exact fit.

Get it on Google Play

The game

Every board is a rink with a way for the ice blocks to get off. Get all of them out in time and you have won; lose one and you have not.

What makes it a puzzle rather than a maze is that your pieces do not stay the same. Land on hot ground and the block loses a layer and steps down a size. Land on frost and it grows the layer back. A block too big for a gap can be melted down to fit, but only if there is heat where you need it, and only if you can grow it back before it reaches the exit, because the exit is an exact fit. Too big will not go. Too small won't go either.

Then the rink throws obstacles your way. Thin ice bears a small block but sinks a large one. Snowdrifts pack down under three shoves and clear on the last. Valves let you in one way only. A gate stays open while something rests on its plate, and closes the moment you step off.

Screens

An eight by eight board of ice blocks, braziers, frost, icicle valves and snowdrifts, with a purple block halfway out through the doorway of its own colour. A board part-solved: a green square, a blue slab and a blue L shape among braziers, frost and thin ice. The panel after clearing a board, showing the move count beside our own best route. Progress through a stretch of twenty levels, and how many were cleared in par. The How to play reference, opened on the goal, with the other nine sections folded away. The title screen.

Captured from the game.

Two moments

Close-up: a smiling yellow block pressed into the doorway of its own colour, a green block above it and a boulder below.
Out. Every block leaves through a doorway that's its own colour, and its exact fit.
Close-up: a cracked block bursting into red shards as its countdown reaches zero.
Not out. A cracked block carries a countdown, and nothing saves it but leaving in time.

What is different about it

Your pieces change size

Heat takes a layer off, frost puts one back, and it grows back exactly where it melted. Most of the difficulty is in planning a route for a block that might not be the right shape when it arrives.

Every board has a proved route

Our boards are generated and then solved, only the ones with a complete verified route ship. You will never be handed something impossible.

Par is a real number

The move count to beat is the shortest route we found, not a guess. Matching it is an achievement. Beating it means you found something we did not.

One board at a time

No map, no level select, no lives, no energy timer. You are on a board until you clear it and, if you are really stuck, a Reveal will play the solution out step by step.

Help

The game has its own reference: Settings → How to play lists every obstacle and gives you the rules of the game.

If something is broken, or a board looks unsolvable, write to support@gamuli.com and tell us the level number. Boards are certified before they ship, so a genuinely impossible one is a bug we'd like to hear about.