Frictionless Ice

A Stock Video Game Puzzle. In a Slippy-Slidey Ice World, the hero traverses the inevitable arctic cave to pass through the Mountains of Freezing Doom. Snow crunching under his boots, he arrives at the edge of a pond, thoroughly frozen over and surrounded by high walls, save for a single exit point on the other side, one step to the left and straight across. With a careful step, he plants his boot on the ice - and immediately goes flying to the other end of the pond. As he hits the opposing wall and notices the various rocky protrusions, a realization grips him.

Ice has absolutely no friction.

When this trope is invoked, ice is not merely slippery; it's a physics-defying miracle lubricant that renders characters unable to make the slightest change in direction until the inevitable collision with an obstacle or wall, or in more malevolent circumstances, until the character is sent hurtling down a bottomless pit. So much as a single step of forward momentum is enough to send the character, puzzle block or otherwise significant object sliding three screens in that direction. Of course, there is no diagonal.

When the designer is benevolent, this will only apply to objects pushed along ice in classic block puzzle fashion. In less benevolent instances, the main character himself is subject to this, and it becomes something of a puzzle, trying to slide from obstacle to obstacle to reach the opening that's just one step to the left of the section of wall you hit. This even holds true in ancient temples and dungeons with the ice theme.

If there are enemies on the ice, don't expect them to share your lack of friction.

This trope does not include instances in games where ice simply hinders movement or reduces friction, but rather situations where the main character is unable to alter his course of movement once he's hit a patch of ice.

Examples of Frictionless Ice include:

Action Adventure

• Many of The Legend of Zelda games, though not being direct examples of this trope, will use a less severe version, where the frictionless status applies only to blocks in a block puzzle. Otherwise, ice will merely hinder Link's movement.
  • Alundra also has this kind of ice block/character movement separation.
• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Oracle caves. Frictionless ice combined with obstacles that give a recoil effect upon contact along with an obligatory "being hit" noise. You can pinball Kain through a short corridor by luck.
• In the Ice Room of Okamiden, there is one room with frictionless ice. You can move, but it's effectively just an idle animation until you're off the ice.

Action Game

• The ice in the little-known Lucasarts game Big Sky Trooper is frictionless. It is entirely possible to get stuck in a permanent loop of bouncing on one planet; after about three minutes, your ship's A.I. declares that it must pull you out and teleports you back to the ship.
• Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! has at least one battle arena which is notorious for this, yet appears far more sci-fi than a Slippy-Slidey Ice World. It's just one reason why Survival Challenge Level 4 is That One Level. Even worse, your inertia still applies even after hitting a wall or object, which means you have to cancel THAT out before you can run away from that bomb right next to you! Can you say Scrappy Level?
• Level 10 of the web game Sky Serpents is a colossus made entirely out of ice (except its weak points) so when the character hits one of its spikes they're sent flying off the creature if there's nothing behind them to stop them.

MMORPGs

• RuneScape had a cavern filled with these puzzles as part of a Christmas quest.
  • In the low-level Dungeoneering dungeons, there are occasionally rooms filled with this, as well as a boss battle in a room coated in ice. It's not as difficult as it sounds, thankfully. Thankfully diagonals do exist, or the puzzles would be unsolveable, but the player has to click in the right spot to move along them.
• Beneficial to the savvy player in Korean golf MMO Pangya: on certain courses, there are lengthy ramps of Frictionless Ice which players can use to generate ridiculous amounts of Pang Points (on tee shots, every yard the ball rolls over your maximum drive earns 1 point of Over Drive; if you use a power shot, hit your maximum power, and hit Pangya, you get the Super Pangya bonus which doubles this.) For this reason, Ice Cannon and Ice Spa are very popular courses for pang-farming; even novice players can earn over 1500 pang points in a round.
• Any ice encountered as part of the environment in the late lamented City of Heroes/City of Villains, such as in the infamous lair of FrostFire, or when Atlas Park was dressed up for the holiday season -- or in the special areas in which the holiday-specific missions occur. Oh, and the "skiing" track near Pocket D. Players with ice powers usually had at least one area effect which coated the ground with ice and made enemies (but not allies or neutrals) slip and fall.

Platform Game

• Commander Keen has two kinds of ice. One is only a little bit slippery, but the other is so slippery that the only way to change direction on it is with Jump Physics.
• The Spyro the Dragon series had a variation of this trope; while stepping on ice only hinders the titular character's movements, that also includes jumping, which is virtually impossible until you get on non-icy surfaces.
• Due to an engine trick that can make a Frictionless Hill flat, some users of Tomb Raider Level Editor texture it as a patch of ice and then recreate this puzzle. At least Lara can still jump while sliding on it.
• In the Japanese-only Megadrive/Genesis title Monster World IV, one dungeon is an Ice Pyramid. There are slippery bits inside where main character Asha tries to skate across. She can still swing her sword and shield (which is good, as there are enemies on some stretches of ice), but trying to jump will cause Asha to slip and fall, skidding helplessly the rest of the way.
• Ice in Wario Land The Shake Dimension has no friction, pushed objects like blocks and Wario when frozen will literally slide across the entire area until they hit a wall.
  • In Wario Land games in general, this is the entire point of Frozen Wario. When he gets frozen, he flies backwards like on this type of ice until he hits a wall. It's usually used to bypass spikes and obstacles, since he's invincible when frozen and enemies die on contact, but it's also used as an annoyance in the ice levels.
• Many of the platforms in the Graveyard of the Giants in La-Mulana. As the game says: "The ice is slippery. There's nothing you can do about that!"
• Ristar simply can't balance on ice. He slides along it uncontrollably... well, almost uncontrollably. He can still jump. Also, sadly, he can't grab the ice, which means he can't do his grabbing-climbing thing on the ice planet.
• The final level of Marble Madness has this, as well as sticky and slippery (but not frictionless) floors.
• The second level of the Slippy-Slidey Ice World in the TurboGrafx-16 version of Impossamole has frictionless ice sections.

Puzzle Game

• PC puzzle game Chip's Challenge has this trope as a major element of gameplay. There are even curves that cause you to change direction 90 degrees. It also causes you to move twice as quickly. However, if you're wearing the ice skates, you can walk on ice as if it were regular ground (with no speed bonus).
• Three of the puzzles in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box are based around this concept, where you have to get from point A to point B.
• Kickle Cubicle is a surprising aversion, given that every playable area is a Slippy-Slidey Ice World. The game does feature "slippery ice," but all it means is areas where Noggles can't walk across and Kickle can't make ice pillars.

Racing

• Ando Prime in Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer has a frictionless frozen lake.
• Some tracks in the F-Zero series have this.

Role-Playing Game

• Pokémon is a prime offender. Every version from Pokémon Gold and Silver through Pokémon Black and White seems to have some form of arctic area, and, with it, patches of inescapably slippery ice.
  • The Snowpoint City Gym in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has fun with this by playing the "frictionless" part straight, but avoids outright defying the conservation of energy: the Gym has multiple levels separated by ramps, and you can only go up them if you went down a ramp of an equal or higher level first.
  • There's even an area in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire where polished floors will send you sliding around in the same way. It's rather confusing and sometimes a tad frustrating, but it's thankfully optional.
  • HeartGold and SoulSilver avert this when a Kimono girl gets her sandals stuck on the ice.
• Tales of Symphonia includes a lake of Frictionless Ice in one of its temples.
  • A later dungeon takes place in a really tall tower, and the parts that allegedly have no gravity work like this. Apparently the programmers can't tell the difference between gravity and friction, since gravity works just fine in the puzzle rooms but friction is missing.
  • Amusingly averted in the sequel, in which the party revisits the aforementioned temple and it seems as if the player will have to go through the whole annoying process of freezing the lake and sliding around on it again, until the party suddenly remembers that they just happen to be carrying an item that allows them to walk on water.
• Soul Blazer is another game that has this effect. You can cancel the effect by wearing the Mushroom Shoes given to you by a kid you've rescued.
• Golden Sun's Tundaria Tower and Mars Lighthouse feature this heavily.
  • And in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Harapa Ruins and Phantasmal Bog. Also, the green Zol Blocks have no friction when pushed.
    • Then again, Zol stones are literal Green Rocks which float in midair and can support the weight of a human when placed in an air current.
• In the Boktai series, not only does this apply to slippery ground, this applies to ice blocks as well, even in places where it would be very improbable for them to do so. Some puzzles require manipulation of ice blocks over the slippery ground, and sometimes require melting of the ice blocks to get anywhere.
• Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard more or less has an entire stratum dedicated to this, including the obligatory "bounce from obstacle to obstacle in a convoluted path to reach the other side" movement puzzles.
• Subverted in Final Fantasy VII in the Cosmo Canyon cave where some sort of slippery substance (looks like grease?) exists, but only if you run on it. If you walk instead, the areas provide no obstacle.
• Frictionless Ice makes for the majority of the Waterworks network in Mega Man Battle Network. Also, in later games in the series, ice panels may appear in battle which cause the slippery-slide effect.
  • This makes no sense in battle because MegaMan.EXE teleports to move anywhere.
• In Ultima Underworld II, one of the alternate dimensions had large sections of ice that reduced all control and was pretty much a luck-based maneuvering game. You had virtually no control though you could jump in place to reset your momentum (only worked sometimes). If you crashed into the walls at too high a speed, you took damage. In fact, the hint booklet you could buy for the game literally referred to it as Frictionless Ice.
• Shining the Holy Ark forced you to navigate one of these puzzles from a first-person viewpoint. It went as well as you might expect.
• The ice palace in Faerie Lea in Dragon Quest V.
  • And Everfrost Grotto in Dragon Quest VI.
• This happens in Brain Lord, although you eventually get an item which stops your sliding.
• Sweet Home has Frictionless Ice for some reason but also provides a Pick item that you can use to stabilize your party when they walk over it; otherwise, they'll break party rank and slide across the room helplessly until they reach a damage field depicted by corpses. The Pick, though, was originally used to solve a water puzzle that behaved exactly like the Frictionless Ice. You can also use the Pick to wade through lava safety, another situation just like the water and ice. Yeah.
• The Ice Park of Noltia in Ys Book I and II has ice ramps where you must equip the Stone Shoes to walk up them.

Sports

• Nintendo's Ice Hockey has a cheat code that makes the puck frictionless. It doesn't affect the players, though.
• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: The DS version of winter olympics has a town mission in which you have to use Mario to get a mini mushroom to traverse a lake without the ice shattering, then build a bridge out of it by pushing blocks in the same style found in the Legend of Zelda games (only the blocks are frictionless when pushed: Mario himself merely has slighty more slippery controls).

Turn-Based Strategy

• While not restricted to ice, low friction is one of the most irritating terrain effects in Phantom Brave. It makes positioning characters very difficult and can easily result in someone falling off the map. On the other hand, attacks that move the character into position for you ignore this entirely. It is also possible to abuse this by only moving your characters a little bit at a time, allowing you to reach the other end of the map in one turn.

Real Life

• Superfluids, and possibly supersolids, are entirely frictionless. (Of course, if you're in an area cold enough for superfluids to even exist, the lack of friction is the least of your problems.)