GOL Cast: Double The Headache With Snakebird And TIS-100

So I heard you like puzzle games. Well, since relatively recently we have gotten two light-weight and relatively simple (as in, simple concept) puzzle games I decided to be more super productive and put them both in the same article. Enjoy the double first impressions!

Snakebird

Snakebird is a very colourful and simple looking puzzle game from Noumenon Games in which your job is to control the Snakebird. The Snakebird is, quite simply, a bird and a snake at the same time. Not that you fly around or anything but you have a snake's body and a bird's head. You need to get all of the fruit on the level and then find your way to the exit to complete the stage. Simple idea? Most definitely. Hard? You bet.


Even though the game looks like it's geared towards kids it most definitely deserves the “Difficult” tag it has on Steam. The looks and the objective are all deception. Figuring out the way to get to the fruit is surprisingly difficult and you can quite easily get stuck on a level by cornering yourself, falling into water or impaling yourself on spikes that are placed around the levels. Even after I had already beaten the five first levels of the game I had trouble with them when I went back to record the gameplay footage. Granted, I had not played the game in a couple of weeks but still.

The game's aesthetic is very colourful, happy and simple. And I think that balances out the frustration I had with the levels. I might just be extremely dumb but I have had immense amounts of trouble after reaching the fifth level of the game. And the game promises that there are over 50 of them so I'm stuck before the game has truly even started.

Probably the best part of the general aesthetic of the game are the faces the Snakebird makes when you try to complete the levels. Depending on the situation, the Snakebird might look tired/bored and kind of patronizing, scared by the spikes in the close proximity or happy when you are about to exit the level. Yes, I know, it's kind of childish but I genuinely enjoyed the “emotions” the Snakebird displayed and I was nearly laughing when after 10 minutes of intense puzzle-solving the Snakebird looked like it was about to say “Seriously, are you this stupid?”. Absolutely hilarious.

The game is quite difficult even early on. It also seems to slowly introduce new mechanics to the game, first of which were the spikes. The pace these mechanics are introduced also feels like it's nice, so you aren't spending much time actually learning them. Of course I haven't made it far enough to actually find the interesting sounding mechanics mentioned on the store page. Keep in mind that this is purely first impressions.

The game is overall quite nice and will probably interest those of you who are into these kinds of simple but hard puzzle games. I haven't had any actual issues with the game and based on my testing it should run basically everywhere. It's an easy game to pick up and play for a while and offers plenty of levels and difficulty to last quite a while. Just try not to get frustrated when you get stuck.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.