Aerial_Knight’s Mr Freezy - A Good Value, Snappy Puzzler

After releasing Aerial_Knight's DropShot earlier in the year, developer Neil Jones and his team are back with a smaller and drastically different game called Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy - a simple puzzle game with enough compelling mechanics for it's short playtime and low price.

Set in the studio's Never Yield universe of games, Mr Freezy is a departure to a new genre and a much darker tone. You play as a wanted serial killer called Mr Freezy as you setup the next batch of victims to get a fatal chop to the neck. The devs tell the story through a small number of voiced cutscenes with limited motion, that expand on the dark, horror tone.

Despite this, the recordings of the serviceable performances do lack the level of audio quality I'd expect. But when you consider the scale of the project and the 5 dollar price, there's enough style and content to make Mr Freezy an easy pick up and play puzzle game. Especially when cutscenes could've easily just been subtitled.

However, the gameplay loop is where Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy held my attention. Like the developer's previous titles, Mr Freezy settles on a tight gameplay mechanic to build the entire game around. Where DropShot's hook had you shooting enemies whilst plummeting through the sky, Mr Freezy has you lining up a variety of heads on a grid of two horizontal rows of five.

Image: Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy - Killer

The objective is simple: line up a minimum of three adjacent heads on the same row before decapitating them. It's like a grim matching game that's perfectly suited to short or longer play sessions.

Each of the 45 levels tasks you with chopping a certain number of heads within a set number of moves. Aerial _Knight uses tutorial levels to onboard the basics: heads spawn on either the lower or upper grid, and then, you use a simple control system to select a vertical row and move the chosen head. Yet it isn't that simple as each selected head moves the two heads beside it, unless they're on the end of the row. So you must work out where the heads will end up, in order to figure out the patterns to get three or more heads lined up.

The first levels are easy as only normal heads appear. You can easily line up a row of five and chop them to gain a 3 times multiplier in 1 swing of your axe. Thankfully, the difficulty scales well for the most part, as new heads offer new gameplay mechanics to create more complicated levels.

Each head type contains modifiers to add clever wrinkles to force you to alter your strategies. Stone heads cannot be moved, knight heads cannot be decapitated without using a perk, pumpkin heads explode if they aren't destroyed in time, brat heads follow their own rules, and more.

Image: Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy - Stone Head

Mr Freezy also adds a fear modifier where heads get scared and ignite, forcing you to hit them with your axe twice in order to dispatch them. It's yet another factor that can potentially ruin your ability to get a 3 times multiplier by dispatching an entire row.

The developers try to balance this by including a number of unlockable perks - a collection of abilities that also have negative functions. The first grants 1 turn back on a successful full row wipe, another forces brat heads to listen to orders, and my favourite lets you destroy knight heads to continue earning multipliers.

Whilst each perk has a negative, I never found it too bothersome in comparison to the positives. If the game had been any longer, I would've felt the imbalance more. Although, its short playtime and cheaper price point helped me overlook what would've become flaws in a longer experience. But as it stands, Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy keeps adding new heads for the majority of its playtime. Only slowing down near the end of the game.

But when you account for built in leaderboards, perks, and head types, Mr Freezy encourages experimentation with different perks to replay levels and gain the top spot on the worldwide rankings. Yet, I can't see myself religiously repeating levels, as by the end, the slight randomisation and sticking only to two rows made each level feel more rudimentary than I'd liked once I'd figured out the patterns to succeed.

Image: Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy - Cutscene

More positively, Mr Freezy is undeniably an Aerial_Knight video game from the opening moments. Exact fonts and art styles from his earlier games are used to create a cohesive universe. But this time, a black and white presentation has been chosen to represent the murderous concept. But my one criticism of the art is the heavy use of comic book, animated Ben Day dots that have been laid over the entire screen. I found it distracting to focus on the puzzles, but lowering the transparency would be a quick solution.

Mr Freezy also compliments its voice acting with a simple and lightly used score. Effective strings and keys align with the horror tone. Despite this, I found many repeated sound effects to be overused, to the point where they stood out too much during gameplay.

While the majority of the game was fun, the puzzles gradually felt repetitive near the last batch of levels. But I still felt compelled enough to see the story and levels through to the end. If the game was more expensive and longer, I would've scored Mr Freezy lower, but for the small price and its pick up and play approachability, it's well worth a try for those who enjoy spending a short time with a few simple but engaging puzzles.

Aerial_Knight's Mr Freezy is far from perfect, but it's a fun way to spend a few hours playing an accessible puzzle game. Yet another example of the developer's passion to create unique worlds set around a solid core mechanic. And better yet, it's a solid value proposition for a few evenings of entertainment.

*Review Code Provided By Publisher