You would think that a “Simple” Candy Crush reskin would not have this much of an impact on battery life and you would be right. Except for one little detail: This is NOT a “simple” Candy Crush reskin! Instead this not only makes everything look and sound different, there are new power ups for you to buy that all have differing effects on the game including the old favorites like the Snowball which gives you 5 more moves in move based levels and the Hourglass which adds 15 seconds to a timer based level. There is also the Ice pick which allows you to remove a single gem candy ice crystal of your choice at any time which by itself can be extremely useful if used correctly. However there are also character specific powerups.

Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that this game appears to have all of the main characters from the movie and seems to follow the plot fairly well (I’ve only gotten to level 66 at the time of writing). The characters are not just static picture either, they are rendered in full 3d (on the iPad 4th gen you cannot see any pixelated textures or jagged lines on the characters so these are fairly detailed models) and react dynamically with fluid and (Mostly! They can interact strangely if things happen too fast.) seamless animations to events in gameplay that seem to be in line with the characters personality from the movie.

A child Kristoff is the first character we are introduced to (No sign of Sven though). His powerup is…. nothing, the character is used to introduce the base mechanics and the Ice Pick item. Then we are introduced to Anna and her Torch powerup which allows you to destroy 8 connected ice crystals in any shape that you wish. The next level introduces Elsa and her Snowflake powerup which allows you to destroy every ice crystal of a single color currently on the board. A few levels later we are introduced to the Troll Magic powerup which is basically a random button which goes through the others that you have unlocked so far (It feels a bit cheep but that’s the only thing that does so far!). Several levels later we are introduced to Hans and his Sword which can destroy every ice crystal in one column or row.

And that’s as many as I have unlocked so far – there will undoubtedly be more further down the line.

As for the game itself: There is plenty of it for the low price of free! You get several hundred levels with various challenges stemming from the base mechanics of beat the clock and get x score in y moves.

The main challanges seem to be elimination of a certain number of specific ice crystals, removing ice blocks and frost and combinations therof. The gameplay is limited by a lives mechanic. You start with 5 lives and if you fail a level you lose a life which takes 30 minutes to come back unless you pay $1.29 to refill lives when you have lost all 5.

However because while the level itself is seemingly hand-made, the ice crystals in the level are randomly generated so with enough perseverance the random number generator will eventually give you a set of ice crystals that will get you through the level or you can just buy powerups, snowballs, hourglasses and ice picks to force your way through a level or you can try the third way of getting the occasional powerup, ice pick, hourglass or snowball through the daily prize so you aren’t really missing out by not spending a cent.

Obligatory screenshot (Scaled down. Click for full resolution):

Interesting fact: The screenshot above was taken on an iPad 4th generation with a resolution of 2048×1536. While playing this there were NO dropped frames or slowdowns regardless of how many particle effects were happening on screen. It appears that even the old A6X SoC has power to spare while running this game.

UPDATE: I have just been informed that later levels also add wolves into the mix as gameplay elements rather than just having the relevant levels as “Beat the clock” challenges. Reading about the frustration caused by them makes me look forward to hitting THAT paywall(!)