A little bit of Bejeweled + a little bit of Yoshi's Cookie = a good amount of fun to be had.

If you are like me, and you've played your fair share of puzzle games, then the mechanics of Ice Puzzle Deluxe will seem very familiar to you right from the beginning. Outside of the winter wonderland cartoon graphics of penguins and other such cold climate animals that outline the border of the level you are playing, it would be hard to distinguish the objects in this game from others. For instance, placed on a large, varying pattern board made of squares, you will find a number of different colored beads and jewels that are very reminiscent of the jewels used in Bejeweled. Heck, for that matter, you are matching up these jewels in groups of at least three just like in the Bejeweled game. Now, unlike Bejeweled, you don't make combos by switching one jewel for another, but rather, in a nod to another puzzle game entitled Yoshi's Cookie, you move entire rows of jewels either vertically or horizontally to complete combos. To move these rows you left click with your mouse and drag the column either up, down, left, or right.

So you've got your board, your pieces, and your mechanics, but what is the purpose of it all? Placed on your board are yellow squares, which can either take up a small fraction of the game board or either cover it entirely. The goal of Ice Puzzle Deluxe is to make combos on top of these yellow squares, so that they can be removed from the board and then, once all of those yellow squares are gone, you can then move onto the next board and its yellow squares. At first it is extremely easy to make combos and eliminate these yellow squares, but the more you remove, the more difficult it becomes to maneuver other jewels into areas where yellow squares still remain. For instance, I always seemed to get the middle squares just fine, but then the corner squares were rather quite difficult to eliminate. As you advance through the levels, the yellow pieces will start changing shades of color, and this means that instead of just needing to connect one combo on it, you now have to do maybe two or three to eliminate it.

Thankfully, you aren't alone in your endeavor to rid the world of yellow squares, because based on your performance at linking combos, you'll be able to earn power-ups that can help eliminate some of those pesky squares. You've got hammers (can take one yellow square), dynamite (removes a 3x3 patch of 9 squares), ball rows (can eliminate entire rows from left to right), a sun looking object (can eliminate all those jewels of the same color you click on), and then even larger sticks of dynamite (clears the entire board of jewels and gives you new ones to work with). Not only will you receive power-ups during your time with the game, but you will also gain trophies for various accomplishments that you create. So if you get your first eight-chain combo, for instance, your game will pause, a trophy will be shown filling your trophy room, and then you have that to always help you remember your accomplishment.

As you advance, the boards become more and more difficult due to the shapes that are placed on your board. Its hard to describe, but your board itself will be a funky design made of straight lines, and then within that you usually have other design obstacles that make certain squares near impossible to eliminate without some serious thinking. I felt these constantly changing designs did an excellent job at making the rather easy gameplay become increasingly more difficult as I went along, and thus I was always engaged with what was happening on the screen. I was never bored while trying to figure out these puzzles.

The game is made up of three main modes: 1) Quest, 2) Logic, and 3) Relax. Quest mode was where most of the challenge and depth seemed to be located, as it played out like a typical game, but you had time limits to clear boards under, or else you lost a penguin (the penguins represent your lives). The mission of Quest mode is to visit each of the worlds, and solve that level's puzzles until an animal in a block of ice is freed. I didn't care so much about releasing some animals, but the time limit kept the action quick and the nerves shaky. Logic mode is presented as various boards with jewels setup, and it is your job to solve the puzzles by moving them around. Typically, it seemed as if you could make only one move and complete the puzzle, but others were difficult to see (meaning 'see' the answer) and required a few more steps to pass them. Relax mode is simply the boards seen in Quest mode, but with no time limit and no animals to free. Relax mode is exactly that