Penguin-flicking contest Ice Cool crowned Children’s Game of the Year

Ice Cool is living up to its name, collecting this year’s Kinderspiel des Jahres prize for the Children’s Game of the Year.

A sibling award to the lauded Spiel des Jahres accolade for Game of the Year (which will be awarded in July), the Kinderspiel des Jahres looks specifically at games aimed at younger players aged six and up.

This year’s contenders included swashbuckling treasure hunt adventure Captain Silver and fantasy memory challenge The Mysterious Forest, which was inspired by the eponymous graphic novel.

Yet it was Ice Cool that ultimately scooped the win for its amusing physical gameplay, which sees players flicking penguins around an icy school to flee a chasing Hall Monitor penguin and collect fish over each doorway faster than their rivals.

The wibbly-wobbly flightless birds can be curved and even jump if flicked just right, making the simple game surprisingly tough to master.

Ice Cool’s creator, Brian Gomez, is actually a collective of four designers from Latvia – a fact that was apparently unknown to the game’s publisher Amigo Spiel for two years.

Das Kinderspiel des Jahres 2017 ist Icecool! #KinderSdJ17

— Spiel des Jahres (@SpieldesJahres) 19 June 2017