How to play Fresh Ice: a beginner's guide
Everything you need for your first rinks in Fresh Ice: the controls, the puck-drop clock, stars, Tips and what to do next.
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Fresh Ice is a short, calm puzzle game about one job: driving the ice resurfacer. Every level hands you a rink that skaters have chewed up, grey and scratched, and a clock counting down to puck drop. Your task is to drive over every bit of dirty ice and leave a clean, glassy sheet behind before the players come out. It runs in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with nothing to install.
If you already have the basics, the driving technique guide goes deeper.
The goal of each level
When a level starts you see the whole rink from above. Dirty ice is grey and rough. Anything your machine drives over turns clean and shiny. The percentage at the top of the screen shows how much you have resurfaced, and the level ends the moment it reaches 100 percent.
The scoreboard on the right is the puck-drop clock. It counts down from a target time worked out for that rink. You are never thrown off the ice for running out of time. The clock simply switches to LATE and keeps going, and you finish the job anyway. What the clock decides is how many stars you earn.
The controls
The machine behaves like the real thing: it is big, it only drives forward, and it turns on a fixed, slow arc. You do not steer it continuously. Instead you tell it which way to go.
- Swipe up, down, left or right. The machine swings round to face that way and drives dead straight until something stops it, such as the boards or a net.
- Swipe back the way you came to make a U-turn into the next row. Lean the swipe a little left or right to choose which side the new row is on.
- Tap a spot on the ice to drive straight to it at any angle. This is the tool for corners and small patches you missed.
- On a keyboard, the arrow keys or W, A, S and D point the machine, and Escape or P pauses.
Every swipe snaps to one of the four directions, so your lines stay straight even if your thumb wobbles. The first three levels each show a short hint for one of these moves, which is a gentle way to learn them in order.
Stars and Tips
Each level gives one to three stars.
- Three stars: you finished before puck drop.
- Two stars: you finished a little late, within about 35 percent over the target time.
- One star: you finished, however long it took.
You can replay any level you have reached to improve its stars. Your best result is the one that counts.
Tips are the game's currency. You earn them for the ice you clean, and more when your Glass Streak is high (more on that below). Stars, items you pick up and the rare golden skate lace add more. Tips are spent in The Shed, where you can buy new machines and power-ups. The venues and Shed guide explains what is worth buying first.
The Glass Streak
Under the progress bar is the Glass Streak meter, from x1 to x5. Long passes over dirty ice build it, while dawdling on clean ice or crashing into the boards brings it down. It multiplies the Tips you earn from cleaning, so a tidy route pays better.
Things on the ice
Each rink scatters a few small items for you to collect: lost pucks, mittens, curling stones, roses or medals, depending on where you are. Drive over them for extra Tips. From level 3 onwards a power-up token sometimes appears too. Drive over it and it drops into one of your two power-up slots at the bottom of the screen (or onto a slot of the same kind, or into The Shed if both slots hold other kinds), then tap the slot when you want to use it. A token you don't use is kept, and waits in its slot at the start of the next level.
As you progress, things start to fight back. Kids sneak onto the ice and scuff it, flurries dust your clean work, slush slows you down and, at some rinks, the lights go out. None of these end a level. They just make the route a little longer. Driving close to a skater sends them off the ice.
When you're nearly done
Once less than five percent of the rink is left, the game outlines the remaining dirty spots so you can see them. This is a good moment to switch from swiping to tapping: tap each patch and the machine drives straight to it.
Where to go from here
Every five levels you move to a new venue, from the home rink at Memorial Arena to a frozen pond, a curling club, a backyard rink and eventually a stadium. After every tenth level there is an optional Intermission bonus round, explained in the Intermission guide. Questions about saving, sound or playing offline are answered in the FAQ.
The best way to learn the turning arc is to feel it for yourself, so start your first rink and see how close to puck drop you can get.