Ice Age Village

Gameloft brings Ice Age Village to Xbox Windows Phone 8 for free!

We’ve just settled in with two strong Nokia exclusive Windows Phone releases this week, but avid gamers and non-Nokia owners are already hungry for more. Hey! Why don’t you go order a pizza from your Xbox 360 if you’re so hungry?

Well, assuming we’ve all had a nice lunch/dinner/second breakfast, it’s time for a new Xbox game from our good friends at Gameloft. This week’s release is Ice Age Village, one of the more casual-friendly titles that Gameloft announced for Windows Phone 8 last year. Whether or not the theme appeals to you, Ice Age Village happens to be free-to-play, so we all might as well put down our vegetable peelers and give it a try.

Build your own zoo

Ice Age Village WIndows Phone early gameplay

This game is loosely based on last year’s animated Ice Age: Continental Drift film, which I didn’t see. The first Ice Age was more than banal enough for me, thank you. But the idea is that the super (awesome) continent Pangaea has started breaking apart, leaving countless prehistoric creatures without a home. Thus Manny the sitcom mammoth, Sid the slurring sloth, and their friends take it upon themselves to build a new village for those homeless critters.

The gameplay in Ice Age Village is similar to Bug Village, except much prettier and about a million times better. Players will build houses in their own personal villages and try to attract new residents. If you get two of the same creature, they can even have a baby and become a modern Stone Age family. Play long enough and you’ll even get impressive creatures like the legendary Tyrannosaurus Rex.

On top of the general town building and customization, players will need to take on daily challenges and side missions in order to earn more precious currency. You’ll even play minigames as Skrat, the chipmunk weasel thing that everyone likes to see get hurt.

Social features!

Ice Age Village WIndows Phone social features

One big plus over Bug Village is that Ice Age Village actually has the social features found in other versions of the game. That means players can visit their Facebook or Gameloft Live friends’ villages, providing an actual reason to decorate and care about the village’s looks. The ability unlocks once you reach experience level 6.

Update: The social features are pretty much broken at launch. Darn.

To spend or not to spend

Ice Age Village Windows Phone In-App Purchases

Ice Age Village is a freemium game, so it costs nothing to download. But like other town-building games, players can also buy currency with real money. There are too types on offer: coins and acorns. Coins are the common currency, while acorns are much rarer. The game offers a good amount of stuff for purchase with coins though, so it appears less evil and money hungry than Real Soccer 2013. Acorns are at least available in a $2 pack, though the cheapest coin pack is seven bucks. Let's hope the Achievements don't require any spending.

Time to build!

Ice Age Village is free for Windows Phone 8. The file size is 73 MB; quite merciful for a Gameloft title. Get it here from the Windows Phone Store.

QR: Ice Age Village


Reader comments



No freemium for me! No problem though, I have several games I want to play (I always complete the games I buy), next ones on my list are the oldies I Love Katamari and Little Acorns, then the new Monopoly. Yay!

Uninstalled already. Two much clicking for no reason. You have to collect coins and stuff for some locations every 30 seconds. No thanks.

You just saved me a download. Hate these freemium games. Unless we spend a thousand bucks or more, these games wont let you finish them. Thank god WP very less freemium titles!

Why? Better games require better software and's that easy. Hard to swallow? By yourself a WP8 phone, don't complain on every article.

"Better games require better software and hardware" no it doesn't.
Games don't automatically get better because we get better hardware.
They can maybe look better and have more stuff in them but that don't mean they are better.
a game should be fun.
I hope the wp 7.5 gets more support than it have had this last months.
not everybody has the money to spend on a new phone like every year.

Wp7 has been out for awhile and has limitations. Its gonna be dead someday just face it. Its still getting some games including Ms Splosion Man which is never coming to WP8 so that's something lol.

Dont talk as if wp7.5 handsets hv got stone age hardware. 1ghz single core with 512mb ram is more than sufficient. Its because nokia n ms neglect that wp7.5 is not seeing any support.

WP7 is harder to port games to and the Adreno 205 in the Snapdragon S2 is very weak. I doubt you will see new Gameloft games porting to WP7 anymore.

"better games?"  This game is RUBBISH and it is SLOW to load on my Lumia 920!  7.5 users should be thankful this shit isn't available.

The  QR popped up a marketplace error for me, and the web store tells me I have to sign into my microsoft account on my phone to be able to install it...

I'm actually not expecting it this year. Halfbrick doesn't even update their games on android. I would pay practically any amount to play the game on my 920 today, but I just have little hope.

I saw Dan R. Comment on one of the forums that its actually just stuck in Xbox certification so its Microsofts fault

Man this 73MB is killing me here in Greenland. I can even imagine what I will do if there is a 1.5GB game! It took me 5 attempts and 30 minutes to download the 5MB HERE transit update! Someone kill me!

Nope. Not where I am. In the middle of the ice sheet. only one internet. provided by USA government via satellite. and it is terrible....
Yeah my screename actually related to my cat that died about 10 years ago now. My dad has just built a deck at our home our of pressure treated lumber. My cat at the time acquired a taste for the coating on the wood (which is arsenic). She had a tough death about two months later. MY gamertag honors her misserable existence.

I'm sorry, I love animals but your cat story had me laughing so hard I pissed my pants. Does that make me evil or what?

They should just call it Nokia Windows Phone 8....I had an 8x and after seeing all the exclusive stuff going to Nokia, and the crap that HTC calls exclusive, why would anyone wanting a WP8 device want a non Nokia device. We sit with Galaxy Note 2 until Verizon gets around to gracing us with the Nokia Lumia 928

Cannot download this game. Same error message I received before noon today with Indigo. What's up at the store?

All of Gameloft's multiplayer WP8 games say that in their store descriptions, but so far none of them actually support it.

You are so mistaken. Not everyone cares about games. The OS is awesome; games or no games. Games add additional interest for people who use the device for entertainment only.

exactly...if someone wants a million apps and games on their phone to just kill their time doing nothing, they should get android.
WP Rocks!!

"Sid the sitcom mammoth" --- Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth...not that I've seen the movies or anything

Free achivements ? Hmmm...Is this like Bug Villiage where you needed to play the game for like 2 months to get one achivement ? (took me 2 days because there was a hack for fully unlocked WP7.5 devices but, anyway).
I'l try it, if I hate it, I'll dump it..

Free game that's only for WP8 users makes me a sad WP7 user. When I have the chance will 2014. Till then, colour me sad

WP7 is 3 years old. A lot of "new games" in iOS are not compatible with 3GS either. Hope you can upgrade soon.

Good game, better than most of the games of this kind. Free achievement is not hard! I've only been playing for a few hours and I'm level 10 now with 21 Xbox points earned

Free achievements! But the easiest game to get achievements is Shark Dash hands down. I'm at the last level (4-27) and am stuck forever. Anyone beat it by any chance......

 I appreciate the free game, but I couldn't play it for more than a couple minutes. Not a fan of those freemium "Farmville-esque" games. But keep up the good work, Gameloft!