By Matt
The last of the games available in the Pokemon Dream World is the one titled “Scoop Ice Cream!”. It is the only one that requires Berries, the currency of the Dream World, to play. When you encounter a Pokemon that wants you to play this game, it will say in red print that you need one Berry of any kind to play. If you don’t, you will have to leave and go back for that Pokemon later. The game of scooping ice cream is very easy to play, as well as being addicting. You have a certain amount of time to scoop three kinds of ice cream into the bowl at the center of the screen. The ice cream must pile up and reach the target of 20 inches if you want to befriend the Pokemon. Like a physics-based game, the ice cream will slide off if it isn’t balanced properly, so watch out for that.
The kind of Berry you select is also dependent on the kinds of ice cream you will get. They are arranged by stickiness and its ability to be scooped easily. The trend is that rarer Berries produce ice cream that are easier to use, while the common ones create ice cream tougher to pile up. Of course, it’s your choice; I always use Oran Berries, since I have piled them up. The icon on the right side shows the kind of scoop the Pokemon likes. If you can match that by scooping up ice cream with the same size (with a mouse-click), you can get bonus points. The heart counter on the top-right measures how many scoops you have made that matched the desired size that stayed. At the end, you will get a higher multiplier, up to two. Balancing ice cream is also the key to high scores; the multiplier will be at its max (x2) if you balance each flavor equally.
Finally, the height of the ice cream will determine your score: the higher the ice cream, the more points you will get. It is a safe strategy to pile up ice cream only to the minimum of twenty inches, but for the more aggressive, it’s exciting to build up as high as you can. With persistence, you can build up to totals of even one hundred inches (like I did once). Another good strategy (but more variable) requires looking for a Berry that will give you ice cream that has good stickiness values (tables like that can be found on sites like Bulbapedia). If you’re not really serious about the game, try to fill the whole bowl up with one scoop, and try to pile up ice cream after that. You won’t hit twenty with that scoop; the challenge is try to pile up ice cream so it can. This game is actually one of the easier to play, and it’s very interactive, letting you choose the outcome of your ice cream. Too bad you can’t eat it; what happens in the Dream World, stays in the Dream World.
Tags: Nintendo DS