Bad Ice Cream — Play Free Online
More Co-op for Two games
Bad Ice Cream is a maze game where you steer a scoop of ice cream around a frozen board, clearing every piece of fruit before the monsters catch you. It comes from Nitrome, and the idea is simple to grasp: you cannot fight anything, but you can build walls of ice and smash them again. Most of the game is deciding where to put those walls.
A level is short, usually a minute or two. Fruit is scattered around the board, sometimes in waves, and the level ends once it is all collected. Monsters wander the maze and chase you, so every route you take is also a route they can take. The pace stays brisk without being frantic, which is why it suits a quick break between longer sessions.
On Fireboy and Watergirl it sits in the two-player corner. Where the temple games make you split up and solve puzzles with two different characters, here both players share the same job: clean the board and keep each other alive.
How to play
Move with the arrow keys. A second player on the same keyboard uses WASD, or one person can run both scoops. Your action key builds a row of ice blocks in the direction you are facing, and pressing it again breaks that row. Fruit cannot be eaten through ice, so breaking a wall is often how you reach the last few pieces.
A round usually goes in three steps: look at where the fruit and monsters are, use ice to cut off the monsters or fence a corridor, then sweep up the fruit while they are blocked out. If a monster is right behind you, drop a wall and keep moving instead of turning to face it.
Tips
- Build walls in narrow corridors. A single row of ice in a one-tile passage can seal a monster away for a good while.
- Do not box yourself in. Before you place ice, check that you still have a way to break out.
- Take the fruit nearest a monster first, while it is still far from you, and leave safe corners for last.
- With two players, split the board into halves and only cross over to help. Two scoops chasing the same fruit mostly get in each other's way.
Similar games on Fireboy and Watergirl
Bad Ice Cream 2 and Bad Ice Cream 3 are the sequels on this site, so they are the natural next step if you enjoy the ice-and-fruit loop. Duo Vikings is a better fit if you want two players to cooperate on puzzles with different abilities, and the Fireboy and Watergirl temples offer the same shared-keyboard setup with more of a platforming and puzzle focus.
It runs in the browser with nothing to install, on desktop with a keyboard for the best control, and it works well as a short two-player game on one machine.
Questions about Bad Ice Cream
How do I play Bad Ice Cream with two players?
Both players share one keyboard: one uses the arrow keys and the other uses WASD. One person can also control both scoops.
What is the goal of each level?
Collect all the fruit on the board while avoiding the monsters. You can build and break walls of ice to block them.
Who made Bad Ice Cream?
Bad Ice Cream was developed by Nitrome, the studio behind many browser games.
Does Bad Ice Cream work on a phone or Chromebook?
It runs in a modern browser with nothing to install, but a keyboard makes it much easier to control.
