The second of three winter-themed games Nitrome released to close out 2007, and of the three, the one that hews closest to what Nitrome’s bread-and-butter is at this point. All the hallmarks are here: arcadey 2D platformer centred around a core mechanic (in this case, being able to slide on the ice, both as a method to attack enemies and as a way to rapidly gain speed going down a slope), where the game does a good job at introducing new things to keep in mind via new platform types and enemies, which perhaps dips a bit in quality once levels become really long and losing sends you right back to the start. Snow Drift mostly manages to mitigate that last issue, though! If, mainly, because it’s kind enough to pepper the level with enough health ups to at least make the endurance tests much more feasible. Not to say the levels still aren’t difficult, or… rough, in some places, but it becomes much less of a weakness when it only takes four or five attempts to make it through, as opposed to, like, 10+ tries. And it means that you don’t necessarily get tired of what’s specifically fun about this: having to position yourself carefully so you can jump over an enemy and then slide into them from behind, how certain sections constantly keep you on your feet and don’t let you let up right until they’re over, and how whenever you slide its a crapshoot as to whether you’ll be allowed to drift freely or whether the game will throw a random obstacle at you that you’re suddenly gonna have to react to. It’s fun, if not quite smoothed out — felt like there were some weird things with hurtboxes, and there’s this one enemy where getting past him without taking damage felt like kind of a crapshoot — but as a whole this was fun! Definitely the first of their more traditional platformers to really feel like it sticks the landing.