Ice Scream 5 Friends: Mike’s Adventures is a horror game developed by Keplerians, and is set immediately after the events of Ice Scream 4. You and your friends manage to escape the Control Room of Rod’s ice cream factory, but are now in different areas of the facility. Needless to say, reuniting them all is a challenge in itself, let alone escaping Rod’s clutches and stopping him from kidnapping more children.
For now, you are tasked with reuniting Mike, the player character of this game, with J, the player character of Ice Scream 4. Mike and J are in separate areas of the factory, and you (the player) can swap between them at a specific room in each area. Some of the tasks assigned to Mike will help J’s progress and ultimately reunite the two friends and vice versa, bringing them one step closer to escaping the factory. Of course, Rod and his mechanical minions will not make it easy.
Similar to Ice Scream 4, there are secrets that you can find which will expound on Rod’s backstory and why he turned out the way he did. For this walkthrough, we will focus primarily on reuniting Mike and J. We will, however, devote a part of our Ice Scream 5 walkthrough to these secrets. In the meantime, stay with us to learn how to escape from Rod’s chilling grasp!
Misleading The Mini-Rods
For those unfamiliar with Keplerians’ previous titles, Ice Scream 5 has you finding a way to bring Mike and J back together while staying out of Rod’s gaze, solving puzzles and hiding from Rod’s mechanical Mini-Rods. You will have to solve various puzzles and find needed components in order to progress.
Though you can only carry one thing at a time, the factory has spaces that Mike or J can enter by crouching, preventing Rod from capturing them or at least keeping themselves hidden. Both Mike and J start with a single trap each that will stun any enemy that walks on it for a minute, but you will have to watch an ad in order to gain more traps.
Compared to the previous game, the maps of Ice Scream 5 are smaller in terms of area, relying more on vertical space to separate objectives. Part of Mike’s segment does feature a maze, but it is much smaller compared to the maze back in Ice Scream 4. In addition, J’s segment focuses on a different area of the factory, with the first floor effectively blocked off (for starters, the hole Boris fell through has been boarded up).
Ice Scream 5 has four difficulty modes you can select before starting a game:
- Ghost: the easiest difficulty, neither Rod nor the Mini-Rods will acknowledge your existence. Though they may react to suspicious noises, they will not bother to capture you. To balance this out, an ad will interrupt your gameplay every few minutes. You can get around the ads by disabling any internet connections on your mobile device before starting Ice Scream 5, though the game will still warn you, regardless.
- Easy: the first difficulty where you can actually lose, Rod and his goons will chase you if they spot you, though they do not move fast. You have three tries before losing.
- Normal: Similar to easy, but Rod and company move faster and have more sensitive hearing. You still have three tries as before.
- Hard: Rod and the Min-Rods move at their fastest while their hearing is at their finest, and you only get one try before a game over.
On Easy difficulty onwards, the Mini-Rods themselves pose no direct threat but as soon as they spot you, they will signal the alarm and chase the player in an attempt to stun them, effectively drawing Rod to your location while you are defenseless.
During this time, the attacking Mini-Rod becomes inert for a while before reactivating. You have to tap the screen quickly to recover from the stun and hopefully run from Rod before he gets close. There are wardrobes scattered around the factory that you can hide in, opening the doors just enough to see enemies passing by before jumping out of them.
The Perils Of Perfect Flavor
Mike’s segment starts in the factory’s engine room, having traveled through a pipe from the control room upstairs. From where you start, there should be a wardrobe in front of you and if you look to your right, you should see a ladder leading to the floor above. There should be an open door to your left, so head on out, though be careful of the Mini-Rod patrolling the engine room.
Out of the starting room, there should be three paths: two directly in front of you and one veering to the right. The paths in front lead to another room with a locked gate. That room is Mike’s ultimate destination, as it has another pipe leading back into the control room.
How it leads there despite being downstairs is unknown, but regardless there is no obvious way to unlock the door. Next to that room are three valves, colored red, blue, and green, that are missing their hand wheels. Take note of them for now and head to the path going towards the right, which should fork into two more paths.
The path on the right leads to the ladder you saw in the starting area, and two things of interest nearby. The first thing should be a metal bar on a worktop near the ladder, and if it is not there, it should be on another worktop a short distance away, or lying on a counter further in.
The second thing you should take note of is a discharged battery, which can spawn in two locations: on the latter worktop we mentioned earlier, or in a small room further down the hall, on a tray next to a console. That room also has a crawlspace you can use in case you get spotted, and it leads to the other side of the engine room.
Meanwhile, the path on the left leads to another ladder that is essentially at the opposite corner of the engine room, and a door with a green telephone symbol on it. That door leads to a room where the player can switch control from Mike to J. Once you enter it, Mike will lock the door and you can use the phone inside to contact J, switching to him back upstairs.
There is also a computer asking you to choose your desired waste service, where you can type down whatever you want, but as far as we know it seems to have no purpose gameplay-wise. Lastly, across that room is a bunch of pipes blowing hot steam, blocking off a part of the engine room until you can switch the steam off.
Now that you know the basic layout of the engine room, pick up the metal bar and take either ladder, where you will find the hydroelectric power plant that keeps Rod’s factory running. This area spans two floors and has a red pipe in the middle of the plant. On this floor, you might notice a small room with a refrigerator that is caged off, and this is where Rod sends Mike if he catches him. To leave this room, just push the refrigerator aside to reveal a vent, which Mike can crawl through in order to escape.
If you entered the power plant via the ladder close to the start, you should be near a metal shelf next to the walls and a door leading to a break room. The shelf may have the red hand wheel resting on it, and if it is not there it might be on the second floor stowed away in a wardrobe. Take note of where the wheel is, head towards the wall where the cage is located, and look for a bunch of pipes in a wall recess.
The blue hand wheel should be behind those pipes, but Mike cannot reach it even with the bar. Instead, look for a generator with a switchbox in the corner. The generator should have a pair of supports where you can place the metal bar on. Put the metal bar there, head back to the red hand wheel, and bring that to the red valve so you do not have to worry about it later.
If you entered the power plant through the ladder close to the telephone room, you should find yourself in a raised part of the room, with the generator in front of you and the cage at the opposite wall.
The second floor of the power plant can be reached via the stairs, either those in the first floor itself or through the break room. This should lead to some catwalks that enclose the inner perimeter of the power plant along with a path in the middle. Most of the points of interest are at the corners of the catwalks:
- At the corner close to the recess in the wall, there should be a locker with Keplerians’ logo and a blue padlock securing it;
- On the catwalk directly above the metal shelf, there is a control panel with a charging station for the battery in the engine room. There should also be a worktable with a blank blueprint in the nearby corner;
- Between the worktable and the locker is a door leading to the breakroom stairs. The most important thing there is a door inside the hallway that is secured with an electronic lock; and
- At the corner opposite the worktable is a switch for the factory’s waste system.
The first thing you should do is head to the waste system switch and turn it on, which will come in handy during J’s segment. Next, head to the worktable and interact with it, and Mike will draw up plans for a “microwave gun.” The gun needs three components to build it: a charged battery, a piece of wood for the grip, and a microwave’s transformer.
Head back to the engine room to pick up the battery and place it in the charging station nearby. The charging process is surprisingly faster than you would think but it requires Mike to stay put as the battery is powered up. Do not attempt to charge the battery if Rod or his robots are in pursuit. Once the battery is powered up, place it onto the worktable.
The piece of wood and the microwave transformer can both be found in the break room; we will focus on the wood first. You can find the wood stowed away in one of the break room lockers, in a cabinet near the door with the electronic lock, or in one of the bathroom stalls. Either way, bring the wood to the worktable, and go to the first floor of the break room to find the microwave.
The microwave should be on a countertop, and you will have to break it in order to get the transformer. Throwing it to the ground will not be enough to break it open, but dropping the microwave from the second floor will be more than enough. Head to the second floor and throw the microwave, but be warned: it will make noise that will attract Rod to its location so be sure to hide until he leaves the area.
Once Rod and the Mini-Rods are out of sight, sift through the microwave wreckage to pick up the transformer. Bring it to the worktable and Mike should assemble the microwave gun, picking it up as soon as it is finished.
Despite its name, the microwave gun behaves more like the electrogun from Ice Scream 4: it stuns Rod for about a minute but only holds two shots, though you can watch an ad to reload the gun. The real purpose of the microwave gun is to unlock that locked door in the break room. Bring the microwave gun to that door, aim at the lock, and open fire.
This should fry the lock and open the door, leading to an otherwise unremarkable storeroom. There should be a freezer at the far end of the storeroom with a block of ice inside, and within that block is the green handwheel. Pick it up and head to the engine room. There is also a painting near the storeroom door you can interact with, but we will get back to that later.
Back at the engine room, bring the ice cube to the blasting steam and drop it in its path to melt the cube and obtain the green hand wheel. This will take some time. At this point, Mike has done all he can do, so head to the phone room to call J. J’s segment will provide plenty of time to melt the cube.
Before making that call, double check if you have completed the following;
- Picked up the red turn wheel and screwed it back onto the red valve;
- Found the metal bar in the engine room and placed it onto the generator near the blue turn wheel;
- Activated the waste system; and
- Found the ice cube with the green turn wheel and placed it in the path of the hot steam outside.
If you have done all these, you can call J and start his segment.
Wandering Into Waste
J starts in the control room where we last found him in Ice Scream 4, and just like Mike he has locked the door to prevent Rod and his thugs from capturing him. You start off with the electrogun nearby, but aside from self-defense it serves no purpose with regard to puzzle solving.
Much of the explorable area from Ice Scream 4 has been blocked off, though if Rod catches J, he will be sent back to Quality Control. You can escape Quality Control by locating a crowbar inside the room and using it to force open a vent, leading back to the offices.
Leave the control room and look for two things: an empty tub of ice cream and a door handle. The tub can be found in the offices which should be near the control room, while the door handle is back in the garage. The tub can spawn in one of three places:
- In the office closest to the vent, inside an empty file cabinet that is slightly ajar;
- In the storeroom at the bend, placed on a metal shelf; or
- In the office closest to the garage, resting on a shorter file cabinet.
Take note of its location and head to the garage to find the door handle. It should be at the ground floor, either on a worktable under the stairs or on a nearby shelf. Be aware that Rod will most likely be working on his truck. Keep out of sight and pick up the handle, then head back to the hallway.
There should be a door labeled “Dump” leading to the factory’s waste disposal system, and if Mike turned it on, you should see trash buckets (labeled as “trash transporters,” in-game) delivering garbage for disposal via a rail system. J can ride these transporters, but for now look for an open pipe large enough for J to fit through. This will transport you to a new part of the factory, just outside the power plant.
After leaving the pipe, you should find yourself in a room. Outside the room are several stalls on the ground floor separated by tarpaulin, as well as the waste disposal system hanging overhead. Be mindful of the Mini-Rod patrolling the stalls and head downstairs.
Some of the stalls have doors, and one of those doors is missing a handle. Insert the handle you found in the garage so you can open the door, leading to a pipe with a stopcock valve.
The stopcock is stuck in place so we will need something to loosen it up. There should also be another stall you can enter that has a pneumatic tube system that does not seem to be working. It will come in handy later. For now, return to the main building via the pipe.
Back in the main building, locate the ice cream tub and bring it with you to the trash buckets. Anything you are carrying in your hands will be stored in the trash bucket as you travel to the waste disposal system, and with good reason, as you will be throwing garbage at an unfortunate Mini-Rod.
As you travel on the rail, there will be a Mini-Rod cleaning the windows outside, and you have to throw garbage bags at the windows to lure the Mini-Rod to its ultimate destination. There will be various obstacles in the way, such as scaffolding and lamps, so the subsequent path will have multiple bends. You have around 20 bags of garbage at most, though you can watch an ad in the event you run out.
Note that watching ads may prove useful as getting the right angle can be tricky especially since you are on the move. The Mini-Rod’s “goal” is a window rather close to a ventilation fan, which sucks the unfortunate robot in and shreds him to pieces, leaving his characteristic nose near the stalls below. By this point, you should be at the end of your “ride,” though J thankfully jumps off before getting dumped out by force.
The factory’s waste disposal is manned by a lone Mini-Rod, looking far more run-down than his colleagues. This Mini-Rod is shoveling garbage into the furnace, and close to the furnace should be a pipe leaking oil. That should work great with the stuck stopcock, so use the ice cream tub to collect some of that oil.
Once the tub is filled up, use the trash buckets to return to the main building. At this point you can skip the whole sequence via a button at the top of the screen, so you do not have to wait through the whole ride. Once you are back at the main building, return to the pipe and head to the tarpaulin stalls.
Use the tub of oil to loosen the stopcock and switch it off; that valve has stopped the blowing steam back in the engine room so Mike can safely pick up the green hand wheel. Before you switch back to Mike, pick up the nose of the Mini-Rod you trashed earlier, and place it in the pneumatic tube. It will not be delivered for now, but Mike should be able to fix it.
Before switching back to Mike, double check that you have done the following:
- Switched off the stopcock after oiling it, turning off the steam in the engine room; and
- Recovered the nose of the window-washing Mini-Rod and placed it in the pneumatic tube.
If you have completed both tasks, return to the control room and switch back to Mike.
Copper Conduction
Back in the engine room, that ice cube you left to melt should be gone, leaving the green hand wheel behind. Pick it up and place on the green valve. The steam was blocking a small room with a desk, and on the desk is a roll of copper wire. Pick up the wire and head back up to the power plant.
Remember that generator where you placed the metal bar? Mike will use the copper wire on the bar to create a makeshift magnet, drawing the blue hand wheel out of the pipes. Wrap the wire around the bar and switch the generator on, where it should easily pull the hand wheel before the generator shuts off. Now that you have the blue hand wheel, return to the engine room and place the hand wheel on the blue valve.
With all three valves ready to go, use them to shut off the flow of steam. As it turns out, the steam was preventing the pneumatic tube system from working, and if you placed the Mini-Rod’s nose beforehand, it will be delivered straight to the engine room, right next to the valves.
There should a switch that would not work before the valves were shut off, and with the steam gone you can flip the switch, sending the nose flying into a switch that opens up access to the control room upstairs.
Enter it, and Mike and J are reunited. Congratulations, you have beaten Ice Scream 5!
Sweet Secrets
Now, back in the power plant, you may have noticed a painting you can interact with, detailing the story of Rod’s life when he was younger, as well as why he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. There are three such interactable things scattered across the map and as a clue, one of them is in the dumps so only J can use it. Perhaps it might show a way to unlock that locker with Keplerians’ logo?
In addition, you might also find marshmallows scattered around the factory which Mike and J can eat, often in rather unsanitary locations. There are ten marshmallows in total, and we are curious as to what those marshmallows are hiding. They are not evenly split between the two boys so expect some serious scouring to find them all.
And that concludes our walkthrough guide for Ice Scream 5. Will Mike and J find the rest of their friends before Rod gets to them first? Only future games will tell. If you have any secrets or strategies to share with us, please let us know in the comment area below! Have fun, and game on!
Brianna Hansen
Saturday 6th of November 2021
I don't have a question, but a theory! Why didn't they show all four friends, and if you look back in the title, it say's friends, and this probably makes you wonder why? Well first if you like any of the two that is not Mike or J be prepared 'cause, I'm going to say maybe they're not friends! Dun dun duh, because if you've noticed in the first Ice Scream's ending, it almost looks like the boy is fake smiling, and in Ice Scream 2's first cutscene, after J opens the window, the girl is being a little brat towards the Ice Scream man, without knowing what he was actually doing first before she actually did that, but then smiles and say's "Oh, hi J," so this could mean the two that were not in Ice Scream 5 are actually evil. Think about it in the 3rd one when they were both brought to the back of the truck, they both could've at least helped out through the rest of the game without hiding. Secondly, have you noticed the girl and boy, probably were the ones that got them caught, because, well I don't exactly remember, but I think they brought up Mike and J to scream when they both started to scream yay J you did it, knowing that Rod is in the front seat driving, and he would probably hear them, so there the reason the three were caught and not J, so that they could let J save them, without J and Mike getting suspicious. Lastly, I think anyone who's already noticed can guess this, but I think Mike has feelings for the girl! 'Cause in the 2nd game when he asked for something pretty, he'd give J the knob after he gives him something pretty, and when he threw that perfume, there was a tag on the perfume that had the writings "To:" and the girl's name on it, so he threw it, thinking that she was never coming back so it wasn't worth it! Please, reply back to me, if you have another theory about the Ice Scream games!!!