How to play
Snowman Yard is a calm snowman game. Every button is a picture, and a friendly voice says what to do. There is no losing, no clock and no hurry.
First, roll a snowball. Drag a little ball around the snowy yard with a finger or the mouse, and it grows as it rolls. It leaves a trail where it has picked the snow up, so it grows fastest when rolled in big loops through fresh snow. A dashed ring shows how big the ball needs to grow. When it is ready, it gives a happy plop and rolls into place by itself. There are three balls to make, a big one, a middle one and a small one, and they stack themselves.
Then dress the snowman. Along the bottom are big pictures: coal eyes, a carrot nose, a mouth, stick arms, mittens, buttons, a scarf and a hat, which can be a bobble hat, a top hat or a saucepan. Drag a thing onto the snowman or just tap it, and it always goes in the right place. Once the snowman has eyes and a nose, it wakes up: it blinks, waves a stick arm and giggles when tapped. The finished snowman does a little dance, and a bullfinch lands on its hat.
Last, take a picture of the finished snowman with the camera button. The picture goes into your own album, and the yard waits for the next snowman: sometimes by day, sometimes at dusk by the light of snow lanterns, and sometimes under the northern lights.
There is also a Build your own mode. There, the finished balls stay in the yard, and you drag them wherever you like: on top of each other, crooked or side by side, even a small ball under a big one. Things stay exactly where they are dropped, on a ball or on the snow, and there can be more eyes or buttons than usual. Drag a thing back to the bottom to take it off. A picture can be taken as soon as one ball is done.
In Challenges, a picture card shows which snowman to make. The first ones have three balls, a carrot nose and a red scarf; later ones ask for a crooked tower, a snowman standing upside down, one lying down or a tiny snowman on a big one. The card stays small in the corner all along, and a tap shows it big. When the snowman is ready, press the done button. The snowman is compared with the picture part by part: the balls and their sizes, and each thing, its colour and its place. Every challenge gives one to three stars, never none.
The stars bring new things: a crown, sunglasses, a moustache, a party hat, a teddy bear hat, a birdhouse, a magic wand, an umbrella, a balloon, a mug of cocoa, a bow tie, pine-cone buttons and many more, 32 in all. At the bottom the things are sorted into five groups: face, head, neck, hands and body. The stars also open new places: a frozen lake where a fish jumps out of the ice hole, a forest clearing where a fox peeks out of a bush, a Christmas market, the fells with reindeer and the northern lights, a ski slope with its chair lift, and the elves’ workshop. The new things and places are in Build your own too.
Scoring
The score is the number of snowmen in the album. Every snowman photographed is one more, those made in the challenges too, and the album stays even if the page is closed in between. The challenges’ stars show on the challenges’ path and bring new things and places.
Tips
- Roll the ball in big loops around the yard. A ball rolled back and forth in one spot grows more slowly, because the snow there is already picked up.
- The hat and the scarf can be swapped: drag a new one on and it replaces the old one.
- The buttons are counted out loud: one, two, three!
- In Build your own, drop a ball a little off the middle of another and the tower stays crooked and wobbles.
- In Challenges, a tap on a thing puts it in the same place as in the picture. When the snowman would earn three stars, the done button wiggles.
