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v1.5.1 ===================================================================== GENERAL Welcome to Icy Tower(R)! This game is completely free. You may play it as much as you like without paying a single buck. In exchange for playing it, you are instead asked for a small favour. Please let all your friends know about the game. We're sure they will love it. Also, feel free to send us any comments you might have about this game. See contact & support at the end of this document. DISTRIBUTION Icy Tower is freeware, anybody may (and should) play it. Therefore, you are encouraged to distribute this game (in its original form) like crazy. Upload it to every web site and BBS you know, give a copy to all your friends, etc. There are however a few requirements: * Give proper credit to Free Lunch Design * Provide a link back to our site www.freelunchdesign.com * You are not allowed to repackage the game. The installation file as it can be found on www.freelunchdesign.com must be kept intact. * The game may only be downloaded in it's original form. It may not be served to users via download managers, wrapped with toolbars, or anything similar. Also, this game may not be included in a compilation or any other kind of commercial package without permission from the authors. This includes cover disks, game compilations and everything else that involves money. See contact near the end of this document. DISCLAIMER Free Lunch Design does not accept responsibility for any effects, adverse or otherwise, that this software may have on you, your computer, your sanity, your dog, or anything else that you can think of. Use it at your own risk. We have, however, never experienced any

trouble with it. DESCRIPTION Icy Tower is small and short but surprisingly addictive game. Control Harold the Homeboy as he climbs his tower of infinite height whilst doing cool jumps and moves in order to get a high score and awe from his friends in the hood. INSTALLING AND STARTING THE GAME Since you're reading this text the game is probably installed and ready to be played already. If not, locate the installation program (icytower_install.exe) and run it. When installed you will find the necessary shortcuts in the start menu. THE STORY One day, when Harold had nothing in particular to do, he found a huge tower. The tower was icy cold, incredibly high and totally deserted. "Ey, dis seems like a cool place to hang out in", Harold thought and entered. The tower was indeed empty, but small platforms here and there made it possible for anyone brave enough to ascend to its higher levels. "Ey, I bet a homie like me can do some mighty cool jumps and moves in here", thought Harold, gazing upwards. And so it started... Help Harold to make the coolest and highest jumps in history! THE TITLE SCREEN The title screen will present you with a menu of the following format: PLAY GAME INSTRUCTIONS PROFILE HIGH SCORES LOAD REPLAY OPTIONS EXIT - Starts a new game. You can either play a classic game, or you can make it easier or harder by customizing the tower and then starting a custom game - Shows you a brief instruction screen - View your profile or start a new one - View all the high scores made in the game - Loads and plays saved replays - Lets you change sound and graphics settings - Exits to your OS

Use the arrow keys or game pad to navigate the menu. The current selection will be pointed at by Harold's hand. Use space or button 1 to select. PROFILES Icy Tower will track your performance over time in a profile. As you play and get better, you will also rise in rank. All the details and the data collected in your profile can be viewed in the profile menu. If many players are sharing the same installation, multiple profiles are

a great way of separating each others' achievements. THE OPTIONS MENU The options menu is divided into four smaller menus. They are all described here: GFX OPTIONS The graphical options control the visuals of the game. Here you can alter settings that control the character and floors. To add custom characters, see that section below. New start floors must be unlocked by jumping higher and higher in the tower. CHARACTER START FLOOR EYE CANDY FULLSCREEN SOUND OPTIONS Here you can change the audio output. SOUND VOL MUSIC VOL CONTROLS In the control menu you can customize the keys used for the game. LEFT RIGHT JUMP REJUMP Select Select Select Toggle key for left key for right key for jump rejump on and off (see Note 2 below) - Adjust sfx output - Adjust music output Select what character to play with Select what floor type to start on Increase or decrease amount of graphical objects Toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode

Note 1: Eye Candy does not add to the game play but will improve the playing experience. If your computer is slow and the game lags you can try to turn this off to improve performance. Note 2: Rejump. If this is on, you can hold spacebar and Harold will jump constantly. If off you'll have to repress space to make a new jump. Some like it one way, some like it the other. GENERAL CONTROLS Move about in the menus using the arrow keys and enter. When playing, these are the default keys for controlling Harold: Left and right arrows Space P - Run left/right - Jump - Pause

You can quit the game back to the menu by pressing P and then ESC.

If you have a game pad connected, use the direction pad to move Harold and button 1 to jump. PLAYING The first thing you need to know is that Harold will constantly accelerate as long as you move him. The second thing is that the faster Harold runs, the higher and longer will he jump. The third thing is that you can bump into walls, turn around and maintain most of your speed. This is a useful technique if you want to do cool jumps. As you ascend the tower it will start to scroll slowly and you will have to keep up in order to not fall of the screen. This is not so hard in the beginning since the scrolling is very slow. But every 30 seconds, an alarm clock will sound and the scrolling will go slightly faster. The clock in the upper left corner of the screen shows you how much time you have left until the next speedup. Icy Tower can be played in many ways, although you might not get a very high score in some of them. :) The main goal of the game is to get a high score and a nice place in the high score list. You will get 10 points for each floor you reach. This alone will not give you any great scores, however. To be really victorious, you need to learn the secrets of combo jumps. To start the combo mode, you will have to make a jump at least two floors high; i.e., run with Harold until you have enough speed, jump, and land two floors above where you started. When in combo mode the meter to the left of the screen will fill up but will drain within one second. In order to stay in combo mode you need to make another jump of at least two floors. If you manage to do that before the meter is empty, the meter will be refilled and you can continue doing combo jumps. When the meter runs out or if you make a non-combo jump, you have finished your combo and you will be given score depending on how many floors in total you managed to climb during your combo. The rewards you can be given are: GOOD, SWEET, GREAT, WOW, AMAZING and EXTREME, and a few more. The latter ones are really hard to get and will require a lot of practice. The tower is infinitely high and Harold will never reach the top. It's up to you to make sure that his stay in the tower generates a lot of score so that he doesn't need to feel ashamed in front of his friends. Good luck! REPLAYS Icy Tower features the possibility save your jump sessions and view them at a later time. You can also send the replays to your friends and brag about how skilled you are. Every time you finish a jump session, a menu will appear where you can either watch it all again, save it or continue to the main menu. If you choose to save the replay, you need to enter your name (so that

you can take credit) and a filename. You can also enter a comment to remember this special occasion. How far you got, your score etc. will be recorded automatically. The replays will be saved in your profile's replays/ directory where you installed Icy Tower. If you want to send your replay to a friend, this is the place to look for it. To view a replay at a later stage, either open it via the LOAD REPLAY option in the main menu, or simply drag and drop the file on the Icy Tower icon. CUSTOM CHARACTERS In Icy Tower you can make your own characters, complete with their own sound effects and background music. It's not altogether easy, but if you set your mind to it, you will succeed. For information on how to make your own characters or add someone else's, read the information available in the characters/ directory. TROUBLESHOOTING / FAQ Before trying anything out, make sure you have the latest drivers for DirectX and for your graphics and sound cards! Q: The gamepad/joystick acts strange. It seems to pull in the wrong direction and so on. What is wrong? A: During setup your gamepad/joystick will be initialized and calibrated. Don't touch it! Let it be still while the game is in setup-mode. Q: The game starts and the menu shows but I cannot choose anything! A: Disconnect any joysticks and gamepads. Q: The game runs slow and choppy! How can I speed it up? A: Try turning off the Eye Candy and try turning on or off fullscreen. Q: I never manage to get any cool combo jumps! What am I doing wrong? A: Try harder. :) Make sure you use the walls to bump on and take it slow, you have more time to concentrate than what it feels like. SPECIAL THANKS A game won't get made all by itself. There's always people and stuff around who inspires the final product. In the case of Icy Tower 1.5 we'd like to thank everybody who ever played the game. Without you guys we wouldn't have the inspiration to go on. A truck load of thanks goes out to the forum members at the Free Lunch Design forum for helping out, testing and finding bugs everytime there is a new release. Without you there would be no new version. Also, all of you who play the game and compete with your friends, spreading the game all over the world. Thank you too! TECHNICAL MUMBO JUMBO Icy Tower is written in c using the game library Allegro. For

sound effect playback, LOGG was used. For PNG handling, the libpng and zlib libraries were used. The threading library pthreads was also used. Allegro & Logg: http://alleg.sf.net zlib: http://www.zlib.net libpng: http://libpng.sourceforge.net/index.html AUTHORS & CONTACT Free Lunch Design is a gaming brand from Sweden. Our aim is to create small, high quality games, where game play is in focus. Icy Tower was designed by Johan Peitz who also wrote the code for the game. The delicious pixel graphics were made by Emanuel Garnheim. Sound effects and music created by SomaTone Interactive Audio. Visit us on the web: http://www.freelunchdesign.com

If you have comments, bug reports, or just want to ask something you can contact Free Lunch Design by e-mail. We do however get a lot of mail and it might take a while before we answer, so if you have a question please check the online FAQs and forums first. E-Mail: info (at) freelunchdesign (dot) com FINAL WORDS Icy Tower became a game much bigger than we ever could have imagined. It is played and enjoyed by millions of gamers, of all ages, all over the world. It's nice to see that all the players of Icy Tower out there, are having as much fun as we had when we created the game. In closing, here's a poem by John Boney: "Harold As I sat there, trying to complete my work, he was calling me. When I was in the hall gathering books, I heard his voice. My heart pumps more blood through my restless body, and he is still there, constantly beckoning me. I have said to him that he cannot control my life, but his power overrules my futile pleas. I am a dog on a leash, the cruel master constantly jerking me back to him. When we first met, he only spoke in unintelligible ramblings. "Whoop-a-doobadoo!" he would say. My friend why do you speak so? I see you for hours everyday, yet I cannot understand you. "Whoop-a-doobadoo! Whoop-a-doobadoo!" The more I listen, the more I hear. "Come," he now says, "I want to be with you." I try to sleep, but he jerks me back from my rest on this cold floor. If only I could remove this painful collar, which engrafts itself around my neck and controls my head. Oh, how it itches. I am powerless before the master. His eyes are covered to shield him from the pain he is causing. He is unaware that he is abusing me every moment he lives. "Join me. You are safe in here." Ouch, why must you jerk me so? Your kazoo is harmonious, but it plays a tune of death. Are you trying to torture me? If only you knew the strife you inflict, you could change your ways. You wear a toboggan, for it is cold within these walls. But I have no

protection, except this collar, which I fear may never come off."

- The End-