I've got a couple more hours of gameplay on this than it shows. I took my PC over to my Grandpa's house, where we generally eat and watch crappy TV movies every Saturday or Sunday. No one there plays games. Period. Well, no one happened to be watching the TV, so I plugged my computer in and fired up steam in big picture mode, and started to play some Poker Night 2. Once I switched over to A Good Snowman, my family started to ask...

"What the crap is this?"
"Uhm... What?"
and my personal favorite... "You don't have a girlfriend, do you?"

But everyone kept watching. Then my cousin, my age, started to help. It took us about 15 minutes to figure out one of the puzzles, But when we did, it was like, "ohhhhhhh, wow we're dumb". My dad came over and watched a bit and laughed when I'd kick the tables or chill on the hedge while we discussed the strategy.

I must have told the game mechanics to five or six of my family, seperately, as they all started to watch and "help". My aunt finally plopped down and really started getting into it. I was starting to get bored, and tried to change games, but she started getting agitated and said, "put the snowman game back on!"

After I handed the controller over, she played with intense concentration for about an hour before we told her we needed to leave. She asked if I could build her a PC so she could play it and other similar games on her own.

Thanks, Snowman team, You guys got some of my family to actually play with me. It's only taken 15 years to get to this point.

Full disclosure: A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer. Video review embedded below.

As I toddled around in the snow as its adorable monster, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build’s focus on companionship, and my consistent inability to find it in my own life.

I’ve always been introverted and awkward around people, content to spend my time alone with the easily understood companionship of a book or computer. But even as I told myself I was fine being alone, there are times when loneliness becomes overpowering; when I needed someone to talk to, someone to just be there to shake my from the confines of my subconscious and remind me life isn’t something you’re meant to go through alone.

The point of this is not to attempt to garner your sympathy, as I’ve no one to blame but myself for the solitude I’ve spent so much of my life in, but because it’s under these circumstances that I found myself connecting to A Good Snowman and it’s little monster. Trapped alone inside a walled garden, they’re desperately looking for someone to hold no matter how odd it might outwardly seem, a struggle I’m all too familiar with.

But A Good Snowman isn’t a game designed to empathize with those who feel isolated from society, but to show them that maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. It acknowledges both of the necessity of friendship, and that it’s something you have to work for and are going to make mistakes trying to find, but are never going to get there if you sit waiting for it to come find you. Figuring out how to build a snowman was important to me, not solely because of the satisfaction of solving a puzzle, but because it meant my monster didn’t have to be alone anymore.

It’s hard to properly put into words exactly why I felt so strongly about it, but standing wrapped in a hug with my new icy friend, I found it hard to let go. It’s a useless mechanic, but its inclusion was what changed A Good Snowman from a cute puzzle game, into something that felt personal and meaningful to me. I wasn’t building stacks of snow anymore; I was bringing people together, all with their own names and faces, and in some small way finding comfort in the fact that my monster’s garden was no longer empty.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, projecting myself on to a game in a way that was never intended, but I don’t know if it really matters to me in the end. Whatever it was originally proposed to be, to me A Good Snowman was the video game equivalent of a warm hug from someone as longing for a friend as I was. Digital or not, I didn’t realize how badly I needed one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9smxbUK8sLM&feature=youtu.be
You can read more of my writing on Kritiqal[kritiqal.com].

A must-have for puzzle enthusiasts!

This is without a doubt the most charming puzzle game I have ever played. You play as a featureless and lonely-looking monster who builds snowmen and gives them all their own character traits and names. And then he hugs them. Well, it's up to you really, but naturally you want to hug your new friends?

The mechanics are similar to Sokoban, but your goal is to stack three snowballs with gradually decreasing size on top of eachother to create a snowman. Snowballs come in three sizes, and what makes this less trivial than it might sound like is that a snowball rolled through a tile filled with snow will increase by one size. And if you don't have one of each size lined up properly when it's time to stack them, you'll probably have to start over. Like in Sokobond, there is a convenient erase-one-step feature too though, so if you haven't messed up too badly, you might be able to save your effort without starting over from the beginning.

As you solve puzzles, you open up more routes through the snow-clad park the game is set in. You can choose which puzzles to tackle when, to some extent, and if one particular puzzle stumps you initially, it might help to come back to it later. As you progress, you'll find more and more complex puzzles, and some of the trickier ones even require you to build two or three snowmen in the same area. If things get too tough, you might enjoy a breather on one of the many benches scattered throughout the park.

The game allows for many different interactions with your environment beyond building and hugging snowmen and they are all animated in a simple, yet delightful manner. Try kicking a table, shaking a bird bath, roughing up a flower or wrestling a pine tree. Most of these actions are inconsequential beyond adding atmosphere to the game, which they do brilliantly, but some might have unexpected results. Don't be afraid to experiment.

My first run through the game took about three hours. Or so I thought. The last required puzzle of game has you building the developers Ben & Alan's snowman equivalents. On completion of this puzzle, the gate to the exit opens and the camera pans over the park of snowmen, before a dubious "THE END?" is displayed on screen. So what's this then? I don't think I'm spoiling too much by saying that, yes, this game contains secrets. Furthermore, the secrets are excellent and complex, and they at least double the length of the game.

I am a sucker for both cleverly designed puzzles and secrets in games, and this game offers heaps of both. The switch to Haxe in place of the Adobe AIR runtime used in the developer's last game, Sokobond, even further sweetens the deal for Linux users. Throw in the gorgeous visual and audial design direction of this game and a few dozens of hugs and I'm completely sold.

In conclusion, I compell you to buy this game now if you too have a monster within you who is desperate for puzzles and affection.

Note, this is a small rewrite of a review I wrote for GamingOnLinux.com: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/adorable-sokobanlike-puzzler-a-good-snowman-is-hard-to-build-released-today-a-musthave-for-puzzle-enthusiasts.5012

A very poignant and memorable puzzle experience. The game is so eloquently simple it can't help but remind you of your childhood when you made up and played with your imaginary friends in lieu of real ones that wouldn't make you stick your hand in a scary hole in an old tree or harass you because you didn't quite fit in.

A good friend is hard to build, find, and keep.

I love Sokoban games and I do like that game yet I HATE the fact it's so cryptic regarding the "Dream World" that I bet that most people who played that game and didn't finish that part simply never managed to reach that mode.

Here is a tutorial to reach the Dream World which is pretty much a "hard mode" :
- You just finished Ben & Alan area and the gate opened ? Congratulations ! Except that you can't unlock the "Dream World" through that gate, because F*** you logic :^) !
- Return to the first snowman you made (aka Lucy), look the gate has opened ! Go through it and you'll find yourself in what I'll call the "Dusk World", aka the same world as the one you just left, except under a dim pink light. Since it's a mirror, the snowmen are already built where you made them previously.
- Sit on the bench that appeared on Lucy's area by pressing LEFT and press LEFT again to FALL ASLEEP and finally join the first "Dram World" puzzle.
- In the "Dream World" you will see the same mirrored area except in purple tones and 3 large snowballs where you made your snowmen. The pink clouds are only there to show where were the hedges but don't stop you like a wall could.
- Now what ? Using the 3 large snowballs you will need to make a snowman.. Except that now if you push a snowball, they will leave a snow track and diminish in size if you push it in a purple area.
Push it once and you'll get a medium snowball , push it twice and you'll get a small snowball.
Push it on a snow area and it will also become bigger as normal.
- Using the bench again, press LEFT twice to wake up back to the "Dusk World" where you can reset the snowmen and make them again so they appear closer in the "Dream World", allowing you to make your first "Dream World" snowman.
- Finishing that snowman will unlock the whole "Dream World". You can now sleep and wake up using any bench by pressing twice in the same direction to sit and fall asleep or wake up depending on which world you are.

If there were some explanations regarding the dream world, how to reach it and what the hell to do in there, I would give a thumbs up. For now it's so damn cryptic that it's hard to understand what to do if you don't read one of the guides written to explain how to reach the area, and that's as annoying as the passwords menu in SNES Dragon's Lair.

Simple-looking puzzle game but pain in the butt to solve. If that wasn't enough, once you beat the main world, there is another one which will kill your remaining brain cells.

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is an endearing wintery puzzle game.

To make a perfect snowman you have to move snowballs around in a defined area filled with fresh snow to create a small, medium and large snow ball and stack them on top of each other.
You can't shrink the snowball, so when you push the ball too much and it gets to big and your snowman will have 2 belly's instead of a chest or head.
After building the perfect snowman it gets a name, adorable outfit and the heartwarming option to give it a hug.

The game looks adorable, it's relaxing and it made me smile every time I completed a snowman.
The puzzles are challenging and they get harder as you progress, but never to the extent that it gets frustrating.
Each level is designed with such care and precision that it shouldn't take more than a couple of retries to complete them.

Definitely one of the best puzzle games that I've ever played!

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build in its core is a quite nice, intuitive and easy to moderately difficult puzzle game from the Sokoban kind about piling 3 snowballs of different sizes on each other. The main game comprises of 30 puzzles and is quite fun, really relaxing stuff that can easily be finished in 2-3 hours. Cute visuals and soothing music, too. So far, so good, you might think, and until here I was kind of excited about the game. Well, but the game isn’t over then, but after that you can test your wits in a hellishly more difficult variant of those puzzles in another world. And to be honest, I actually agree with a lot of reviews here, the ‘normal’ game part just is the better experience in my opinion. As in this other bonus dimension (which is even hard to find, by the way) you have to build the snowmen in exactly pre-designed positions that you have to anticipate (to build yet another snowman out of these 3 in a kind of meta-phase), so you have to experiment in a really tiresome way by going back and forth between dimensions and building them over and over again at different locations. Or maybe I’m just too dumb, who knows. Anyway, this other half might appeal to hardcore puzzle fans, and I don’t want to say that the idea might not be interesting, but for me as a more casual/fun-based player and perfectionist, err, I just checked some YouTube videos to get through those ones the easier way. Please don’t judge me, I’m only human ;)

Anyway, the main game is still fun, the game is reasonably cheap-priced in sales, and for achievement-sensitive people, you can still get an 80% achievement rate even without doing the hard puzzle world, so all in all a thumbs up without question. And of course, don’t forget to hug the snowmen :)

Nice relaxing puzzle game. Simple controls, I keep asking myself "how can this be so hard with only one ability?!" That ability is push, you cannot pull a snowball, and it grows in size as it rolls over fresh snow. You must use a combination of deliberate movement choices and the order of movements to overcome the puzzles. It really is remarkable how clever a game it is, really greater than the sum of its parts. The music and ambience is really great.

When I first picked up AGSIHTB, I was immediately drawn to the simplicity of its controls and concept, as well as the complexies of its artwork, puzzle-making, and beautiful, haunting soundtrack. Seemingly the only creature of your kind, you will play as a introverted and lonely, but bond-hungry Monster. Your mission is building snowmen/ma'am for a battalion of friendship to fill the void you feel whilst trapped inside your beautiful, but hopelessly empty garden. As you interact with your environment: rolling snowballs to proper sizes, sleeping on benches, hugging snowpeople you've built, and maybe ever chasing a butterfly or two, you will slowly feel empathy and maybe even frustration (depending on your puzzle skills) with Monster's situation in his botanical cell. Free yourself, and crave for something more than solitude's wintry embrace.

8.9/10