The first of three winter-themed games Nitrome released during 2007’s Christmas season, Thin Ice involves the player using their mouse to skate across the ice, drawing circles with their movements to break the ground under the enemy's feet, Pokemon Ranger style. It starts simple, and… remains simple. While the game does what Nitrome does best — introducing new enemies and mechanics, then mixing and matching, never letting anything fall by the wayside — the core problem here is that nothing ever feels like enough: most new enemies don’t do much to contend with how they all get taken out the same way, and most new mechanics aren’t generally more than a minor annoyance. There are things around the stage that give you points (just like the game Thin Ice is spinning off, Frost Bite) but also… nothing is stopping you from just going to get them? You get a bonus for collecting five letters spelling out BONUS, yet… because the arena is so small all the letters are usually, like, right beside one another. And when the game isn’t falling over for you… it’s usually being quite annoying, and generally not in a way that feels intended on the game’s part. Some enemies only become vulnerable after doing a certain attack but then you have to wait until they do their attack, and if they do it by the edge of the arena there’s not enough room for you to draw that circle around them so you have to wait for them to hopefully do it again in a place where you can actually interact with them. Obstacles in places where you can innocuously be trying to get an enemy when you touch their way huge hitbox, freeze you, and then send you careening into damage or another freeze obstacle. Enemies that go fast enough that it’s impossible to actually encircle them, either requiring you to do the circle ahead of time or attack ahead of time and hope they randomly clip into it and die. Enemies that clip directly into the edge of the arena and force you to restart the level. If I maybe enjoyed the game otherwise, then all those issues could be merely minor annoyances, but as is… when it’s not being annoying it’s too simple, too easy, a bit unmemorable to feel fun. And that could be fine, on its own, but as the game progresses, and these annoyances start to rear their heads, there’s nothing really there to counterbalance them, nothing to stop the cracks in the ice from spreading, and nothing to protect you from being hit full force by the cold once it all falls apart.