I had heard of this game called Snakebird, and I wanted to give it a shot. The art looked goofy in a good way, and I was drawn into the brief video of the mechanics. But I read the reviews on Steam…
Luckily, this last comment introduced me to Snakebird Primer, which is what I bought and played on my phone. As predicted, the art is dorky but lovable, and it makes the game look deceivingly pre-schooler-friendly. Even the Primer version was challenging, and I’m at most 20% of the way through the game (probably less, because the puzzles will likely get harder). When I started playing, I found that the there are some delightfully silly sound effects to go along with the art, with the snakebirds making scoot noises that aren’t too far from a fart.
The general dorkiness of the game’s art and sounds matches the premise; you play as a “snakebird,” a linked set of squares that can hover as long as at least one part of its body touches the ground.
Consume fruit to grow in length, and eating all fruit is usually required to pass the level. Well scaffolded to be easy at first, this was my first stumper:
I want to move to the right side of the world, but if I try to move down, Snakebird gets stuck with their head in the hole and no way to move. The solution is to move upwards, causing the bottom square of snakebird to fall into the whole, leaving the head to move freely. This was also the first puzzle that really helped me get an idea of how “goofy” the mechanics of the game feel. On one hand, the mechanics of moving the bird are easily understandable and I easily grasp the logic of it too. On the other hand, it’s hilarious; it’s a snake that “flies,” kind of, with visuals like this:
The next one I had an absolute blast with was this:
In order to win this level, one of the snakebirds must get to the grapes at the top of the screen. However, unlike the other levels where there were many blocks to support the snakebirds moving around, there is no path to get up to the grapes. I tried making a staircase of snakebirds, but it doesn’t go high enough. The revelation came when I realized the snakebirds could push each other upwards, leading me to align the snakebirds with this pattern:
Which resolves to…
The high I got from solving this puzzle was fantastic, but I was also laughing at the silliness of it again. Snakebird is fascinating to me because the mechanics (supported by the visuals and sounds) actually made the experience of playing and solving the puzzles funny. Which is something I didn’t think was possible, but I’m loving it.