If you decide to read my extra long review, I'd suggest getting yourself a coffee or a festive drink before starting; oh yes, and a few hot mince pies with brandy sauce on them. :)

Merry Holiday season to all who celebrate Christmas and all those who don't; may the festive season bring happiness and some nice surprises to all. :)


I have over twenty spare Steam keys to give away. Priority will be given to those who have previously posted comments about games over the last several years; but that doesn't mean you won't be considered even if you've never posted a comment before.

I'll start dishing out keys either tomorrow morning or on the 27th. We have guests coming on Boxing day, so I may not have time to sort them tomorrow. Please check out the game on Steam first to see if it is something you'd definitely play, thank you for your understanding. (I've linked each game to it's Steam store page). I'll send out the Steam codes to the email you use to post comments here.

Regards Stephen aka Whiterabbit-uk.

Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age:

In Brief:
Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age is a casual farming strategy game with a relatively easy time management theme; (at least in the early stages of the game). It's the sixth in a long running franchise from the publisher Alawar Entertainment and the developer Melesta with twelve titles released between 2008 to 2014 and a further title released in 2021; (Though there are some other variations released for android phones e.g. Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Domain).

I βeta tested the first four games , finding later versions were basically just re-hashes of the originals with different themes and skins. Still, it's a worthwhile game to download in my opinion; and, especially if you are into the Farm Frenzy franchise. (Steam has an amazing deal on all but the last in the series; see my conclusion for details)

The game was originally given away on Christmas Day 2016 where it received a positive 73% from 49 votes with 22 comments, which you can see HERE.

You can read some written walkthroughs of the game HERE, HERE and HERE and some Big Fish Community members feedback HERE.

You can also see some videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

The Game:
Whether you prefer the sunny beaches of Tropical Farm, or the icy landscapes of Farm Frenzy: Ice Age, one thing is certain – farming fans have no shortage of time management games to choose from. Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age is the third frantic game with the title "Farm Frenzy 3" to be released by Alawar (and as mentioned above, the sixth in the series), and it delivers much of what you’ve come to expect from the series.

The original Farm Frenzy 3 had you traveling across the globe, while Farm Frenzy 3: American Pie had you farming in the USA with robots. You may be wondering to yourself, "Why is each game is being called Farm Frenzy 3 instead of Farm Frenzy 4 or 5?" The answer becomes apparent if you’ve played more than one game in the series. Each Farm Frenzy 3 game is a variant of the original, with the same game play mechanics and feel, yet a slightly different theme.

As you might have guessed by the name, Farm Frenzy: Ice Age follows the protagonist called Scarlet as she runs a frosty farm way up in the North Pole. There’s a surprise guest, but his jolly identity should be a no-brainer given the location. Like always, the story is light and doesn’t offer much in the way of details or explanations.

The game play follows the same familiar format as the other Farm Frenzy 3 games. You need to keep your well full in order to provide food for your animals to stay alive. Animals drop produce, like eggs and feathers, and these can be gathered and sold.

The graphics have undergone a complete overhaul to fit with the chilly theme, so you farm is over a frozen pond instead of a green pasture. All of the animals are animated, so it’s rather fun to watch them waddle around the screen eating fish and amusing themselves. Since everything is Arctic-themed, you get to raise penguins, royal (colourful) penguins, walruses, and woolly mammoth. As usual, you can also buy cats to help gather produce, and dogs to chase away predators. Dogs don’t explode in this version, by the way…they just roll off the screen.

Polar bears pose a problem and will randomly attack and steal your livestock, but these can be captured with rapid mouse clicks whereupon they are caged and then taken to market to be sold for a profit. After the first few levels you will get more than one bear appearing at the same time. Until this has occurred I'd advise not buying a second penguin, because you'll almost certainly lose one of your penguins which may stop you winning a gold or silver cup. Immediately after capturing your first polar bears, get yourself a second penguin, then sell the bears. Bears may be dressed up in funny fancy dress later in the game and can be sold for extra cash. For another cute surprise, pause your game and leave it running for a while, and see what happens.

You can use the items you’ve gathered to produce processed goods like cookies and cakes once you’ve bought the right upgrades, and additional goodies can be paid for and airlifted into the playing field to help you meet your targets. Most of these processed goods are the same as in Farm Frenzy 3, and include cookies, cakes, fancy feathers, clothing, and ice cream.

As in previous games, sometimes processed goods are required to make other processed goods, leading to complex chains. For example, feathers can be made into decorative feathers, which can then be made into fabric, which can then be sewn into clothes, which can then finally be used to dress bears. Don’t worry about having to remember all of that, since everything is introduced very slowly and becomes second nature with repetition.

Your goals vary by level, and you earn a higher score for beating levels faster. Everything is done with the click of your mouse, so as you’d expect, it can get quite frantic as you advance. The fast pace and quick multitasking is part of the big draw in Farm Frenzy 3, and I’m happy to report that Farm Frenzy: Ice Age is just as hectic as its predecessors, while being less complicated and more user friendly than Farm Frenzy: Pizza Party.

Useful Information and game tips::
Pause, Restart, and Game play Time: Clicking on the sled, the helicopter, or the goals will not affect your completion time. These will also stop the current game play, so you do not have to worry about accidents happening while you are looking through the warehouse, or the items available to buy on the helicopter.

You can click on the "Menu" button in the lower left at any time to pause the game; this will also not affect the game play time. This will bring up a list of several options, including Continue, Map, Main Menu, and Restart Level. Do not worry; if you click on the wrong one, a confirmation screen will follow.

I have noticed, however, that in all of the Farm Frenzy games, just as you are about to finish the level, the timer appears to add 1 second before the screen changes to show how many stars, etc., you have earned. This section of the review takes the extra second into account, and the times indicated to get gold are the times shown on the completion screen.

Factory Upgrades: In this game, like American Pie, you will need to upgrade your factories to be able to start almost every level. You can go back and repeat levels to get more stars.

During game play, you can upgrade the factories even while they are making product. This is sometimes crucial and can save you a second or two that you need to make gold. Upgrading the factories makes them produce at a faster rate. Even though you may only have enough raw products to produce two items, upgrading the factory to be able to produce 3, 4, or 5 of the item will improve the production time of the two items.

Upgrade factories at the beginning of each level if you have enough stars regardless of whether they are currently producing or how many of the items you need to produce. The upgrades improve time. You can also click on the factories while they are producing to make them go faster. A bar will appear showing the green production rate, and a smaller bar that goes from light orange to red, based on your rate of clicking. If the red bar gets near the last bar before the top, and the factory itself is starting to turn red, it is almost maxed out, and only about 2 clicks from exploding. You do not want them to explode, so if they get to this level, just stop clicking on them for awhile, and the red bar will go back down. If they explode, you lose the product you were making, and have to buy the exploded factory all over from the beginning.

Upgrades for warehouse, sled, cat, dog, helicopter, and well: In Ice Age, you will have a sled instead of a truck to carry your wares to market. I like to get the cage upgraded as quickly as possible, because on some of the levels, you may need the bears before the dogs get to them. I personally don’t like to upgrade the dog right away, because in this version, the dogs don’t get stronger, there are more of them, and they don’t cage the bears for you, they destroy them. I also like to get the warehouse, sled, helicopter and cat upgraded quickly. The well upgrades can wait until the later levels where you will need more fish.

Map and Level Order: The map in this version can be very confusing at first, unless you have already played the American Pie version. At many of the intersections, upgrades will allow you to go to levels not in any specific order. For the purposes of this walkthrough, and so you can find the level you may need help with easily, I’ve written this with the levels in numerical order. You don’t have to follow the levels in order through the game to be able to complete it; you can go any direction at the intersections, provided you have the needed upgrades.

Mammoths, Hay, and Animals: This game introduces the mammoths, which eat hay, rather than fish. At any time you have mammoths and animals, be sure to have hay for the mammoths, and don’t forget to scatter fish for the animals. You buy the hay from the store on the helicopter. When it arrives, it will be placed randomly on the farm area. You cannot pick up the hay. The mammoths will go to the hay when they need it. The bears, however, can delete the hay if they run over it or land on it, so try to capture bears before they get your hay. If they do get the hay, be sure to replace it as quickly as possible.

Selling Products: Whenever you send the sled to sell your products, you want to look to see how much money you will need, and secondly, how full is your warehouse. My own "rule of thumb" is to send the products in descending order by how much they are worth. For example, cakes are worth $200 each, and cookies are worth $100 each, so I would sell the cakes first. Then sell the bears 1 at a time with each sled load. In general, keep the sled going back and forth with as full a load as possible for the maximum profit, while still getting the bears out of the warehouse.

Technique for Scattering the Fish: When scattering the fish, be sure to place the fish low on the screen, right on top of the warehouse and to the right of the farm area. This will keep your animals away from the bears, for the most part. The bears usually come down near the top and left of the farm area.

Their are optimum area's where you should place your fish. Check out the walkthrough for a screen capture of the best placement. The first bear has landed to the top left. You can see the shadow of the second bear that will fall in the middle. Although the penguin has wandered near the top of the screen, it will normally move to the right or will go back towards the fish. Get the bears that are closest to your animals first.

Be sure to scatter fish as needed to keep your animals alive. Fit scattering the fish in as you are comfortable with the "Farm Frenzy rhythm" for each level. For each level that needs animals purchased right away, I’ve found it easiest to buy the animals first, and then scatter fish. The extra few seconds may be the difference between silver and gold on some levels.

Starting a Level Over for Gold: Whenever a bear tosses an animal, simply restart the level. There are very few levels that you can achieve gold if an animal is missing, or you have to buy again. Even if there are no money goals, this can slow your production by a few seconds on some levels. There are some levels where gold is not affected by a few animals being tossed. I have indicated this in the walkthrough for those levels.

It can be very helpful when starting a level to take a good first look at everything you have, don’t have, and can purchase. Sometimes you can purchase items and do not have to buy the animals to make them. Then figure out your strategy for the level, and simply start over.

Getting Gold: Some levels have little to no time for error to get gold. On these levels, it is good to have a plan of what you are going to do before you start them. On these levels, and any others to get better time, you can start buying the animals, or clicking on the sled as soon as it has landed, or begin upgrading as soon as the sled, warehouse, and helicopter have landed; as soon as you click on start, as the buildings are falling to start the level.

There are also several levels where it is obviously easier to get gold when you have all of the building upgrades. This walkthrough is based on how to get the gold rankings without having to get all of the building upgrades first.

On some levels, you can make better time by having more animals than you have factory upgrades. There is sometimes a delay with the animals producing, and you may have to wait for the animals to produce for a short time while the factory is not running. On some levels, you need the factories producing at maximum speed. Therefore, you need enough animals producing enough products to keep the factories going. My own "rule of thumb" is to have one more animal than the factories’ production quantities. For example, if your Egg Powder plant produces 2 powdered eggs at a time, then you will want to have 3 penguins.

Endless Mode: This will be unlocked when you complete Level 45 in the Career Mode. In the Endless Mode, it is simply patience and getting the goals as quickly as possible that will get you through it. There will be more goals as you achieve the goals shown. You need stars and money to buy the buildings. You earn stars by achieving the goals and money by selling your wares as usual. You can click on the goals in the lower right of the screen to bring up a list of the current goals and how many stars you will achieve for them.

Edited reference originally accessed HERE. Origin review by Lisa Haasbroek, posted on the 6th January 2010. Reposted after some editing by Whiterabbit on Christmas day 2016 and reposted on the 23rd December 2022.

Conclusion:
I loved the early Farm Frenzy games and was lucky enough to work as a βeta tester for Alawar when the first ones were released. To be honest, I wouldn't have even tried them but as a βeta tester I got access for free and basically tested any game they were releasing at the time and was pleasantly surprised when I played the first one. I'd always disliked Time Management (TM) games because I play games mainly to relax and most TM games are not noted for their gentle relaxing natures. However, the game felt quite laid back compared to all of the TM games I'd played previously with respect to the TM side of the game (at least if you're not bothered about scoring gold for each level, which I've never been). To me they are more a farming simulation and strategy game with overtones of time management. I tested the first four games, but left the βeta testing team just before this particular version was released. Plus, after playing the previous games in the franchise and generally enjoyed them, the formulae became a little stale. If you've only played a few of the franchise, then this and any one of the other games in the franchise are very good casual games and well worth downloading, especially for free.

You can get the first twelve in the franchise as a bundle via Steam HERE for the amazing price of only £1.49 (it's 90% off over the Christmas Sale). The last of that bunch was released in 2014. but a new one was released last year called Farm Frenzy: Refreshed which is on sale with 70% off at £1.85 during the sale. This latest version has had a graphic upgrade, but the game play is essentially the same as previous games. The graphic oddly reminds me of a cartoon I used to watch with my then young toddlers called Jellikins (1999 to 2003), and narrated by the amazing Rik Mayall (of the Young Ones, Comic Strip Presents, Black Adder, The New Statesman and Bottom fame).

The latest Epic Game freebies include all three of the original Fallout games, that are in an isometric viewpoint i.e. Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game, Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel.

Also, the Steam sale started on the 22nd December and runs until the 5th January next year, so lock up your wallets and purses before you bankrupt yourselves ;)

The latest Epic Game freebie is DEATH STRANDING an atmospheric post apocalyptic open world walking simulator with third person shooting and exploration elements. From 4pm tomorrow afternoon, the game will change to a new giveaway.

GOG's latest freebie Greak: Memories of Azur is live until late afternoon Boxing Day HERE

Also, the Steam sale started a few days ago, so lock up your wallets and purses before you bankrupt yourselves ;)

For other non Steam and Steam freebies always check Delenn's threads over in the game discussion forums HERE and HERE.