Fire 'n Ice (1992)

Beat every mission including the 50 hidden ones. Each mission took only seconds to a few minutes to complete, unless I got stumped and could not figure out the solution. I used a walkthrough for some levels, though it was written in the style of what to do not how. Sometimes it took some trial and error to figure out what the guide meant, and for a few stages I had to resort to the button press sequence guide, which was difficult to follow while also not losing my place in the text. The levels that gave me such trouble were about creating complicated ice structures that took many moves to create, so there were a huge number of possible moves to make. I preferred the puzzles with only a small number of possible moves so I could use logic to work out what to do. I would have enjoyed the game more if you were not limited to only creating ice at a down diagonal angle. If I could create ice in any direction it would have prevented many of the dead end soft locks and overly complex sequences required. The game was very impressive with a lot of content, including story scenes and a level creator. I have no interest in making levels and apparently custom levels could not even be saved. The game already took way longer to beat than most NES games, on top of having to take breaks to play simpler games when I was sick of taxing my intellect. Great puzzle game.

8.0/10

Fire 'n Ice, AKA Solomon's Key 2, is a NES/Famicom game that has you solving lots of block-pushing puzzles. Lots of games of that sort out there (starting with Sokoban I believe), but this one has a bit of a twist to it with its fire and ice mechanics. You play as a mage named Dana (...is that a boy's name?) who can create a block of ice specifically below himself at a diagonal. It's kind of weird, but eventually you sort of get used to it. Your goal is to put out all the fires in the level, by either smashing them with blocks of ice or by pushing blocks of ice into them (the blocks slide across flat surfaces, Pengo-style).

All in all not a bad game, and definitely a step up from the first Solomon's Quest (which tries to be half-platformer, half-puzzle solving and IMO doesn't do great at either). Like most games of this sort, it starts out easy enough and eventually gets incredibly difficult. I had to quit in one of the last worlds, because it was just way too many steps to solving each puzzle. If you like brain teasers though this is a good one, I recommend giving it a shot especially if you have NES Online for the Switch (which will let you rewind, should you mess up on step 78 of 82 in a difficult puzzle).