Ice Age : Scrat’s Nutty Adventure
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Just Add Water
Published By : Outright Games
Category : Platformer, Puzzle, Adventure
Release Date : Oct 18, 2019

When I first saw that this game would be coming out, I am not ashamed to admit that I got excited at the prospect of a new Ice Age movie. I recently introduced my son to the first movie and he loved it, yet it looks like Ice Age : Scrat’s Nutty Adventure on the Nintendo Switch isn’t a precursor to a new movie. It looks to be an entire adventure focused on our nuttty little friend, and in it’s own right be an expansion to this universe.

As you can probably guess, our story follows Scrat himself. He loses his favorite possession in the depths of the Scratazon Temple where it has been sealed away. If he wants it back, he must go off on a quest to retrieve the four Crystal Nuts and return them to the temple. To find them, he’ll need to explore the far reaches of the land, embracing the power bestowed upon him by each Crystal Nut that he finds and brings back to it’s rightful place.

The world you’ll be exploring is 3D generated, and broken up into four different regions that are each made up of four different areas, as well as the hub world you’ll be centralized in most of the time. From the hub you’ll travel outwards until you reach the absolute extreme in one direction and locate the next Crystal Nut.

Exploration in the game is technically open, but also linear in the sense that you can only go in certain directions when you have obtained the necessary skills to do so. Initially, Scrat is very limited in what he can do. He can run, jump, and perform a simple kick attack. He can also crawl slowly, or dodge to get out of the way quickly, but once you start finding the Crystal Nuts you’ll be able to pick up cool, useful skills like double jumping.

The way each area works is you’ll enter from one side and you’ll need to reach another side to exit. The four worlds are chained together like this, but can be explored in all directions between, again depending on your current skill knowledge. Hidden across each area are a few pieces of a broken tablet and an animal statue, as well as hundreds of purple-glowing collectible nuts.

While you’ll be dealing with a fair share of platforming in each level, you’ll come across a sampling of enemies to fight too. A lot of these are bug-like creatures, like beetles, mosquitoes and the like. Every now and then though, you might find yourself up against a bigger foe that will require some cunning thinking to outsmart them. Scrat will always have the necessary moves to deal with whatever gets in his way.

If you’re looking for a challenging platformer for yourself to play, Scrat’s Nutty Adventure might not the place to bring your skill set. However if you have a younger gamer in your household, this may be more for them. Everything about the game is very simple in it’s presentation and execution, and won’t take much on your part to get around.

Enemies aren’t even fully deserving of that title, since the vast majority of them don’t even really have a chance to land an attack on you. They are so easy to jump in front of and waylay them until they go down, the only real challenge “combat” wise will be the bosses you come up against. They will have much more health, and for the most part can’t be attacked directly with Scrat’s kick. Instead you’ll have to either throw things at them or use the area around to cause them enough damage to sideline them.

Platforming is pretty easy, there are some tough areas of it but it mostly comes from how stiff and sluggish the controls can feel. So many times I found myself basically running off ledges because it felt like there was some substantial input lag. And there were other times when I landed on a ledge and Scrat continued forward a short distance…but it was long enough for him to walk off into oblivion.

As for the collectibles, the only one that I could tell really made a difference were the collectible purple nuts scattered around. Every so often you’ll meet a threshhold of this that unlocks some concept art on the main menu, which is something I learned completely by accident while I was trying to find what completing the tablet’s and animal statues did. For these latter two, I couldn’t find much of anything other than just the prideful knowledge that you added them to your collection.

Other than it being relatively easy, I had a good time playing Ice Age. I actually did most of my play sessions of this game with my son watching and he absolutely loved it, so I want to stress that this “ease” of the game is strictly aimed at adult players. If you’re picking this up for your young one, it should go off without a hitch. I would have personally enjoyed a bit more of a ramped up challenge, but from my time with this game it seemed pretty clear that the target audience was a bit younger. So keep that in mind when you hit up the eShop or your local retailer to add Ice Age : Scrat’s Nutty Adventure to your personal library.