The Snowman
A downloadable game for Windows
In this festive adventure, based on the 1984 ZX Spectrum game—originally inspired by Raymond Briggs’ book, your goal is to build and protect a Snowman across four increasingly tricky stages. In Stage One, you’ll collect six pieces of snow, earning points as you drop each into place. Watch out for gas flames—they’ll melt your snow unless you’ve grabbed an Ice Lolly, which temporarily lets you freeze flames and rack up bonus points. Flashing Christmas items like Crackers, Presents, and Trees offer extra rewards, while food like Turkey and Christmas Pudding replenishes your energy.
Stages Two and Three involve gathering the Snowman’s accessories—from scarf and smile to trousers and torch—while dodging Sleep Monsters that try to knock you out. Alarm Clocks help neutralize them, just like Ice Lollies do with flames. In Stage Four, you’ll collect Ice Cubes to stop your Snowman from melting, once again avoiding gas flames. Flashing objects and food continue to boost your score and stamina throughout. Complete all four stages, and you’ll unlock a fresh new layout for the next part of the game.
The game offers display options including full colour or classic Spectrum palette, optional scanlines, and a choice between fullscreen or windowed mode.
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About to review this on my channel, but I notice when you lose your lives and start again, you start with 0 lives so it's literally one chance to do the level upon restarting.
Cheers for spotting that. I just fixed the error and uploaded a new version
Nice conversion, but the controls are clunky. Apparently, you have to press two buttons simultaneously (hold down the horizontal arrow key while) while moving downwards to avoid falling and losing a life. This makes the game quite frustrating. Our German-language review can be found at 07:21:14. English subtitles are also available. Subscribing to our YouTube and Twitch channels is welcome.
I always preferred that way - it was like that on Chuckie Egg. If I didn't have the two-key thing then you would have to line yourself up perfectly on the platforms which makes the original Spectrum version so frustrating.
Lovely.
Can confirm, this works through Gamehub again, on my Android device, Richard.
Another oddity with this one, was if you set frame-limiter to anything higher than 35 fps, it makes the game run at a snails pace, but set it to 35 or 30 fps, full speed game.
Automatically worked with the handhelds (Odin 2 Pro) builtin controls, except keyboard setting for C, to change to ZX-Spectrum graphics.
I can't say, i have ever played this before on the Spectrum.
Quite a hard game, managed to get to Level 2, but can't get the snowman's buttons, without dying.
Hope you have a great Xmas, and happy new year 2026.
Hi Paul. In most of my games I don't usually set a specific frame rate, but I have in this and a couple of others as without it, it runs far too fast.
I'm likely to use F for fullscreen/Window, H for Pause and C to switch to Spectrum colours (if available) in future, so are there keys you would rather I use?
While we're here - here's a little tip that might make the game a little easier: You can go right to the bottom of the screen and run along the bottom. The baddies can't go down there so you're safe! I never knew this until I started playing the original game non-stop for this remake!
Oh no, i wasn't complaining Richard, i can easily configure a special key mapping using this device for all special keys.
Not a problem.
Ahhhhhh so there is a secret way of collecting the parts, thank you.
All the best.
In my desktop after unzip and run crashes at first run, installed, start running... appears The Langford Productions Screen, plays a bit of music and bumb!
A W11 black screen while making an horrible buzzer sound, only a super hard reset that I only can managed unplugging the PC's power cord.
I a second try in a Legion Go, runs nice! great work
Definitely give it another go - four people have tested it and at least two of those are on Windows 11, as am I. It's definitely not a very resource-intensive game either. Did you definitely unzip it first and not try and run it from the zip folder?
Works fine for me too, also Win 11 👍
Yes Mr. Langford! Check and runs in a Legion Go under Windows 11, almost perfect (no keyboard, only cursors the d-pad that isn't too precise movements, that are part of this kind of games) Before, in my workstation I ran after unzip.