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Settings
On the title screen, use arrow keys (or numeric keypad) up/down to highlight the game options, and arrow left/right to choose among the alternatives:Difficulty:Easy: For beginning ice cream composers. You will want to practice a few rounds on this setting and master the controls before moving on. For the first few levels only one ice cream order will be waiting at a time.Stabilize: Switch on to avoid issues with tearing graphics, but leave it off if it slows down the game.Medium: Here the challenge begins. More of everything, including two outstanding orders at any one time. All scores will be doubled.
Hard: Frantic ice cream action. Three orders to be filled, insects galore and tonnes of random balls. For the pro. All scores will be tripled.
Full screen: Toggles full screen mode on or off. You can also do this at any time during the game by pressing alt + enter .
Begin a game by hitting space when start is lit.
Exit the program with space when quit is lit.
Controls
Guide Tom Khas with the arrow keys (or numeric keypad ) as he skates
around the preparation floor. Bump into ice cream balls to push them in
the right direction (preferrably onto the correct ice cream container).
Press space to throw ice cream scoops. The scoops can be helpful in pushing balls of ice cream to where you want them and are also good for dealing with vermin.
Arrow left/right turns Tom left or right
Arrow down brakes
Space throws scoop (hold to throw continuously)
Gameplay
Tom Khas' goal is to serve ice cream treats made to order as fast as possible and with maximum customer satisfation. If the customers become too disgruntled with him, he might just lose his job.
Cold Comfort Ice Cream Parlor has sixteen superb flavours to choose from, served in dishes, cones or glasses, depending on the size of a customer's order. The dish fits two balls, the cone fits three and the glass fits four.
Once a customer has placed his order, the order details are pinned
up and the ice cream container arrives on the conveyor belt. Balls
will be piped in from the freezers and Tom Khas has to hurry up and
fill the order as soon as possible. If he's really quick, he might
even manage to decorate the treat with a topping. Customers love
toppings!
The gnomes in the freezers work hard to make sure Tom gets the correct flavours with which to build his treats. Sometimes (more often as the difficulty increases) they will mess up, or just throw in a random ball for fun. Chances are Tom will mess up too, and leftover balls will slide around the floor. As only a limited amount of balls can be present in the room at any one time (this number too increases as the levels progress) Tom might find himself with a roomful of unusable flavours. He can then use the waste chute in the upper right corner to get rid of the offending balls. However, doing this will incur a score penalty.
Work would be much easier if Tom was left alone to do his job. Unfortunately it's not only our customers who take delight in our lovely ice cream. Ice cream ant spiders live in, eat, and lay eggs in the balls of milky goodness, and they do not approve of Tom trying to steal their homes. As the game progresses in difficulty, an increasing number of ant spider commandos are sent to reclaim the missing balls. While generally harmless, a swarm of angry ant spiders with an agenda will surely get in the way. A tough and hardy breed; nothing but well-placed super-sonic ice cream scoops will crush them dead.
Customer satisfaction
Happy customers is what this business is about. In the panel in the top left corner of the screen there is a satisfaction meter. As orders are filled, this will update to display our reputation on the streets.
Happy customers (indicated by a green face on a completed order) will
move the meter to the right, angry customers (red faces) to the left.
A merely satisfied customer (yellow face) will not move the meter at
all. Should the meter reach the far left, Tom is instantly fired
with no severance pay, and replaced by a scantily clad, buxom blonde in
a future sequel.
Customers these days expect perfect service, instant response times
and ridiculously low prices - the bastards. If Tom takes too long
filling an order, the customer starts to get impatient. He will rewrite
his order on angry red paper to make sure you prioritize his important
treat. Should you still delay, he will leave our establishment, slam
the door on his way out and never return.
The container
associated with his order will be crossed out and must be returned, all
evidence to Tom's foul-up destroyed, before the remaining customers can
relax. As long as there are crossed-out containers on the floor, the
satisfaction meter won't increase.
- Too little ice cream in a container: irrevocably angry customer
- Impatient customer (red note): satisfaction down
- Customer got tired and left: irrevocably angry customer
- Less than 100% of flavours correct: satisfaction down
- Less than 50% of flavours correct: irrevocably angry customer
- Topping: satisfaction up
After every two happy customers, the difficulty level goes up a notch. More pipelines open to spit out balls, more balls will be rolling around the floor, the orders get more complex, more simultaneous orders come in, more ant spiders attack. It is a tough life, the life of an ice cream customizer.
Bonuses
If an ice cream treat is prepared exceptionally fast, Tom Khas gets a bonus topping to add to a later treat. A topping will only stick to a full container and for the bonus to take effect the customer must be at least satisfied with his topped treat.
- Umbrella: increases Tom's turn rate for better control
- Strawberry: increases the speed with which Tom throws scoops
- Wafer roll: improves Tom's acceleration and deceleration
- Wafer: increases Tom's top speed
- Cherry: gives an extra boost to the satisfaction meter
Scoring
The larger the treat, the higher the score. Basically, Tom Khas gets points for the size of the treat and the speed at which he serves it. This is the base score.If he has a high overall customer satisfaction, he will also be awarded more generously. This, like the difficulty bonus, is a multiplier.
Customers love surprise toppings, so Tom can get some quite extravagant tips this way. This is also a multiplier.
Multipliers stack, so a topped, quickly served, four flavour treat on hard difficulty will rake in points by the tens of thousands.
Minor points are awarded for killing ant spiders, as well as adding balls and toppings to containers. Points are lost for wasting ice cream down the garbage chute.
The all-time top score for each difficulty is remembered and displayed on the title screen.
Have fun. And remember, the customers' eyes are upon you.
The Management
For those who have grown up with modern gaming where the trend is to make everything linear, long-lasting and way too easy, the job as ice cream customizer might seem a bit daunting at first. Remember then, with practice comes perfection and with perfection comes satisfaction. Here are a few initial tips to help improve your gameplay:
- Study the behaviour of the ant spiders and arrange so that they help Tom instead of obstructing him.
- Remember that you can be in two places at the same time. Where Tom is physically, and at the impact point of his scoops.
- Avoid the walls. The key to successful bouncing is momentum. If Tom bounces off a wall, his speed will be halved. Unless you have served a couple of wafer rolls, this will hamper progress noticably.
- For the same reason, avoid braking unless absolutely necessary. Should you be too close to the object you want to hit, it is often more effective to make a bigger turn in the opposite direction and come at it with full speed than to brake and make a narrow turn.
- When you have multiple containers in play, strike a compromise between grouping them for easy defense - you must always be ready to protect them from incoming stray balls - and spacing them out for easy targeting. As your aim grows better and the floor becomes more frantic, you will want to keep them as close to each other as possible.
- Never return a partially filled container, particularly not in the early levels when there can be only a few balls on the floor. Chances are the next order will not use the left-over balls and you will have to waste time trashing them on the other side of the room before the pipes can give you the desired ones.
- If all else fails, cheat: on the title screen, type "tesa" on the keyboard (make sure the window is activated first) to toggle auto-acceleration. In cheat mode, arrow up (or numeric keypad 8) will increase Tom's speed rather than him doing it automatically, giving precision control.
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