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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.
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) 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. 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. 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. 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. 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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.