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Add to SafariWhen comparing Ice Cool vs The Magic Labyrinth, the Slant community recommends Ice Cool for most people. In the question“What are the best board games for kids?” Ice Cool is ranked 1st while The Magic Labyrinth is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Ice Cool is:
The game can lead to some awesome moments because of the little penguins. Depending on where you hit the penguin, it will move differently. For example, if you flick the head of it, it will make the penguin jump. This can lead to some crazy trick-shots where someone manages to jump over walls. You can also flick them on the side, which will make the penguin spin. By doing this you could spin through multiple rooms and gather a lot of points or catch several penguins on the same turn.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Often leads to memorable moments
The game can lead to some awesome moments because of the little penguins. Depending on where you hit the penguin, it will move differently. For example, if you flick the head of it, it will make the penguin jump. This can lead to some crazy trick-shots where someone manages to jump over walls. You can also flick them on the side, which will make the penguin spin. By doing this you could spin through multiple rooms and gather a lot of points or catch several penguins on the same turn.
Pro Easy to set up
The gameboard of Ice Cool is big, but it’s quite simple to set up. The playing surface consists of five boxes that all fit in the game’s box. You connect them in the correct places, all of which are marked with colored dots on the edges of the boxes. After that you take the little beige colored fish tokens and place them in the marked spots to keep the gameboard in place, and you’re good to go.
Pro Easy to learn
Ice Cool is very straightforward, it all revolves around flicking little penguin pawns. Doorways will have fish pegs attached to them, when you flick a penguin through it, then you’ll receive the fish and get to draw a fish card that gives you victory points. Each round one player will be the hall monitor who will try to catch other penguins and gather their student ID’s by hitting them instead of gathering fish.
The round ends either when the hall monitor has gathered all ID’s or when someone has gathered all three fish tokens. The game ends when everyone has been the hall monitor. The player with the most points on their fish cards wins.
Pro Beautiful design
Aesthetically Ice Cool looks very impressive. The playing surface is a 3D school consisting of five different rooms that feature many little details all over the walls – maps, fish, basketball hoops, etc. Everything has a blue, cold-looking color scheme, which kind of mimics an igloo.
The cards also have some great artwork on them. The ID’s are two-sided for boys and girls. Each colored penguin has a different look and style. The fish cards depict, you guessed it, fish. The bigger the point value, the bigger the meal.
Pro High quality components
The components of Ice Cool are very interesting and well-made. The game’s playing surface is made of five 3D boxes that all fit in the game’s box. The player tokens are four penguins made of hard plastic that are weighted in the base so that they keep wobbling when hit. Throughout the game players gather fish tokens, which are nice and small wooden pieces similar to pegs. There are also some cards in the game – ID cards and fish cards, which are all made of durable cardstock.
Pro Easy to play
The game is extremely straightforward and can be explained to absolutely anyone – you choose a pawn, roll a die. and try to reach the cardboard token on the gameboard before your opponent does. It’s not as easy as it seems though, there’s an invisible maze under the playing space, so you must use your memory to remember the paths. If the magnetic ball following your pawn under the gameboard hits a wall, then you return to the start and try again on your next turn. The first player to gather five tokens wins.
Pro Variable play time
Though The Magic Labyrinth is already quite a quick game that takes 20 minutes at most, if you want to play an even shorter game, then you can reduce the win condition to a smaller amount of required tokens by removing some from the cloth bag.
Pro Variable difficulty
You can manipulate the maze under the gameboard and remove as many wooden pieces as you see fit to adjust the game’s difficulty level. The game comes with 24 walls, but the number you use in your maze is up to you, the only rule being that all spaces on the gameboard must be accessible from at least one side.
Pro Great component quality
The Magic Labyrinth’s components are very well-made. The game consists of a multilayered board that has a grid on the bottom and an overlay on the top. The grid on the bottom side of the gameboard is filled with little wooden pieces that make up the maze.
The game is played with magnets – the pawns on the top of the gameboard are magnetically attached to a small ball under the gameboard. The magnets are powerful, and the pieces don’t accidentally come apart. The wooden pawns feel great to the touch and are easy to slide around.
Additionally, the game has a nice cloth bag with all the magic item tokens. The tokens are made of thick cardboard.
Cons
Con Has a learning curve
Ice Cool is quite skill-based and requires practice on flicking the penguin pawns to get them to go where you want to. The rulebook has some tips, but the techniques can only be learned by playing the game. A new player won’t do well against a player who has already played a bit.
Con Luck-based scoring
Catching penguins and gathering fish to get victory points in Ice Cool requires skill, but the values on the fish cards you get range from 1 to 3, which means that even if you’re good at the game, you can lose because of pure chance. Someone could potentially score the same amount out of one card as you with three cards.
Con Only one layout
The gameboard can only be arranged in one way, so the game can get quite repetitive in this aspect.
Con Token spawn is luck-based
The tokens that are required to win the game are placed one at a time and they’re drawn from the cloth bag. The token can be closer and easier to reach to one player as opposed to someone else. A player could even get lucky and have a token spawn on the space they’re on, which leads to them instantly getting it. This issue is especially prevalent in games with more players.
Con No simple way to move past other players
There can be a situation where a player must move past another player by going through their space. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult task because of the thickness of the pawns and the magnets underneath. Shimmying past someone could make a player accidentally reveal whether the space next to them is a wall or not.
Con Can get samey after a while
The Magic Labyrinth can lose its replay value after a few plays because it’s very straightforward and doesn’t introduce any new variables.
Con Tedious to set up
The game requires a maze to be built underneath the gameboard by placing wooden pieces in the grid before you begin, which can be annoying because it takes a while and the player who set it up could have a small advantage even if the gameboard is spun a few times before placing the overlay. There is one rule – each token must be reachable. Setting up the maze could also be difficult for children.
Con Three-player mode has its disadvantages
When playing with three players, the player whose starting space is in the middle of the other two players has a handicap. This is because this player is further away from the empty corner. If a token spawns near that side, then the other two players are much closer to it by default.
