Snow Bros.

How to play Snow Bros.

1. Choose 1 player or 2 players from the title menu. In two-player mode Nick and Tom play at the same time.
2. Throw snow at a monster until it becomes a round snowball. A partly covered monster is frozen but will thaw.
3. Stand beside the finished snowball and press Throw to kick it. Line it up so it rolls through other monsters.
4. Touch a rolling ball to ride it and press Jump to leap off. Collect sushi, bottles, letters and banknotes before the floor ends.
5. Clear every monster to climb to the next floor. On every tenth floor, kick snowballs into the boss until it falls.
6. If every player runs out of lives, press Throw on the continue countdown to carry on from the same floor.

Controls

About Snow Bros.

Snow Bros. is a browser recreation of the 1990 Toaplan arcade game in which two snowmen, Nick and Tom, climb a tower of fifty single-screen floors to rescue a pair of twin princesses. The goal is to bring back the arcade loop of covering a monster in snow, kicking the finished snowball and watching it clean out a whole floor. It uses newly written TypeScript, hand-authored pixel sprites drawn in code and synthesized sound. It does not load the arcade program, use extracted sprites, sounds or level data, or claim to be an official release.

Every floor is a fixed screen of one-way ledges. You can jump up through a ledge from below and land on top of it, and monsters can do the same. Snow shots fly a short distance in an arc. Each hit adds a layer of snow to a monster, freezing it in place; leave it alone and the snow melts a layer at a time until it walks again. Four hits turn an ordinary monster into a round snowball. Heavier ogres need six. A finished snowball shakes after a few seconds and the monster bursts free, angrier and faster than before.

Walking into a snowball pushes it slowly, snow thrown at it nudges it along, and you can stand on top of it to reach a higher ledge. Pressing Throw beside it kicks it hard. A kicked ball rolls along the ledge, falls through any gap or open end, bounces off the side walls and finally shatters after its fourth bounce. Any monster in its way is flattened, and any resting snowball it touches is set rolling in the same chain. The first monster in a chain is worth 500 points and each further one doubles the reward, up to 16,000. Every flattened monster leaves a prize: sushi worth more the longer the chain, a coloured bottle, or a hero-face bonus item. If one kicked ball clears the entire floor, banknotes flutter down from the top of the screen for a short collection bonus.

Touching a rolling snowball does not hurt. It sweeps you up and carries you along, and pressing Jump throws you clear. That is how arcade players crossed a floor quickly or followed a chain down to the bottom. Touching a monster that is not covered in snow, a frog flame, a bat orb or a boss costs a life. You come back at the start of the floor, blinking and protected for a few seconds, but any bottle effects are lost.

Four bottles change the snowman. Red makes him faster and lets him keep three shots in the air. Blue throws bigger snowballs that cover a monster twice as fast. Yellow throws much further. Green inflates him into a floating balloon for ten seconds; he can fly in any direction with the stick and bowls monsters over on contact. Picking up a bottle you already have is worth 1,000 points. A hero-face item opens a short bonus with four blue monsters. Cover each in snow to reveal an S, N, O or W, then roll a snowball over the letter to collect it. Completing the word gives an extra life. Extra lives also arrive at 70,000 points and every 200,000 after that.

The monster roster grows as you climb. Red horned demons wander and hop up to the next ledge. Green frogs hop and spit flames along their ledge. Yellow monkeys with blue faces chase you and make huge leaps. Purple bats ignore the ledges entirely and drop fire orbs from above. Orange ogres plod slowly, then charge when you stand on their level. If a floor takes too long, a hurry-up warning sounds and a pumpkin-headed spook drifts in through the walls. Snow can knock it back across the screen but nothing defeats it, and after a while it releases ghosts that chase you too.

The browser version uses authored boss designs and attack patterns. Every tenth floor holds a boss: a giant green lizard on floor 10, a pair of stone gargoyles on 20, two sumo brothers on 30, twin floating masks on 40 and the Demon King on floor 50. Bosses only take damage from rolling snowballs, so snow the minions they release and kick them back into the boss. Floor 50 ends with the ending scene. The browser keeps your best score, the highest floor you reached and your sound preference on this device, and offers to start again at the last ten-floor checkpoint you reached.

A few useful tricks

• Snow a monster near a wall or an open ledge end, then kick it so it drops onto the monsters below.
• Freeze a second monster with one hit before you kick; a frozen monster is still flattened by the ball.
• Keep an eye on a finished snowball that starts to shake. Kick it before the monster bursts out angrier.
• Ride a ball when you need to cross the floor quickly, but jump off before it shatters.
• On boss floors, keep one minion snowballed near you so a fresh ball is always ready to kick.

Good questions