Over time I’ve come to wonder what the purpose of the Game Pile even is. I know that it’s slowly morphed from being a sort of diary listing of the videogames I’ve played in my digital collections, then straight-up reviews to slowly morphing to where it is now where I try to use each game as a launching point to talk about something interesting a game does while still giving useful information about whether or not people might want to play it. A sort of consumer advocacy coupled with artistic analysis, which really is what most reviews are but on a much tighter time scale.
Some games don’t really merit a lot of deep talk though? Some games are just unremarkably good or acceptable or decent?
And speaking of Unremarkably Good: Snakebird!
#fff, 1px -1px 0 #fff, -1px 1px 0 #fff, 1px 1px 0 #fff; -webkit-text-stroke: 1px white; padding: 30px;">Recognising Goodness
Snakebird is a puzzle game with a slightly hard to describe mechanism: The player controls one (or more) of the game’s titular snake birds. They are birds, because they can somewhat maintain themselves in the air. They are snakes, because they move in the four orthogonal directions in a videogame space, as real snakes do. Snakebirds can push other snakebirds, they eat fruit – as all good and noble videogame animals do – and … that’s it. The whole game is built around this simple puzzle set and… yeah, yeah that’s it. Is that two hundred words?
There’s nothing much to say about Snakebird because Snakebird is just really good and above my skill grade. For all I know around puzzle thirty, Snakebird is just fireworks and boobs, but I have no idea, because it’s really hard!
I’m not good at puzzle games.
Nonetheless, Snakebird does have one particular thing about it I’d like to point out: The game has an adorable interface quirk. In Snakebird, the birds have faces, faces that react to how you’re doing. You can turn and shift your snakebird and when it gets near fruit, it gets excited. Repeat too many actions? The snakebird gets kinda bored.
There’s so little to say about this game, just because it’s really good? And that’s … really all there is to it? It’s got good cloud saves on Steam? Which is… nice?
#fff, 1px -1px 0 #fff, -1px 1px 0 #fff, 1px 1px 0 #fff; -webkit-text-stroke: 1px white; padding: 30px;">Verdict
You can get Snakebird on Steam.
Verdict
Get it if:
- You want something cute and harmless
- You want something portable with good cloud saving
- You want a really renewable puzzle
Avoid it if:
- You’re on a tight budget and don’t expect to get a lot of mileage out of a puzzle you might not be good at