Snake Man’s Adventure – Review
Back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you’d sometimes get simple games for kids when buying a box of corn flakes. Other companies also did this, even going back further, that these games were actually put on floppy disks, with a game that was less than 1MB in size. These games were often simple platformers, or mini-games where you needed to catch a specific number of items in order to gain a better high score. After playing Snake Man’s Adventure we were actually craving for one of those experiences in order to wash down the sour aftertaste of this one.
Story
The game has a simple plot, namely, you are Snake Man from Snake Planet, and you now find yourself on Earth, protecting the human race against the Grandiots. This villainous race has a contraption that emits a ‘dumb ray’, turning everyone it hits into mindless animals. That’s basically it. In a later stage, it also delves into time travel and five minutes later you’re on the moon. It’s a nice afterthought, but it also feels like it was invented by a drunk toddler. You’ll get snippets of text here and there, and that’s basically it.
Graphics
We have no clue where to start when it comes to the graphics. The game utilizes a bunch of random assets, which were seemingly made by a five-year-old who was holding their crayon upside down. The game does have a few original ideas, and with some care and love (and a proper artist), these could actually be made into something appealing for kids. Now, things feel random, especially with all the 2D assets being present in the game, for you to be bombarded with a massive out-of-proportion 3D spaceship that was clearly designed by someone else. The textures are horribly done, certain enemies just undergo an asset flip and there is just absolutely nothing to look at in this game.
Sound
The sound design is bland and boring. What’s there is functional, but that’s basically it. The backdrop will not really annoy you, but that might be because you can finish the game in about half an hour, if you’re somewhat capable of doing easy platforming, and getting past the annoying World Eater sequence where you are chased by a massive dragon-like snake.
Gameplay
Snake Man’s Adventure is a classic platformer with very straightforward mechanics. The game only has four levels to beat, and these can all be done in roughly ten minutes each. The game will only present you with two abilities, these being double jump and dash. The first speaks for itself, with the second being the ability to break through walls. That being said, the game has very floaty controls, poorly worked out mechanics, and extremely crappy hit-boxes. There is not even a small second of invulnerability if you get hit, making it so that during certain parts of the game you can literally lose two hearts in a second’s time.
This is one of those rare occasions that we do not really have much more to say about a game. The game lacks any content, the enemies are boring, the end boss does not make any sense, as you can dash into him, also showing the animation that he takes damage, without it actually being the case. You’ll actually have to jump on the headrest of his floating chair, while you can also jump on him, which also shows the damage animation, but you’ll also get damaged in the process. Jumping does not feel precise and you sometimes get hit by just walking close to enemies. Platforms that fall down upon contact actually fall quicker than you, making the game register you’re falling, so you cannot jump to the next one. You stay suspended in the air extremely long, making it feel like you’re always playing with a ‘low gravity’ mod turned on. It’s just one hot mess from start to finish. The game has only about 30 to 40 minutes of content, which can only be stretched by revisiting levels to find all the collectibles. This also proves to be pointless, as you can just buy extra lives or more hearts with these. Even the end boss gives you an extra heart, even though the game is finished. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Conclusion
While we don’t really disklike Snake Man’s Adventure concept, it just feels like a random high school project that made it onto Steam. The game just feels like an asset dump, rather than a coherent whole. The overall characters and theme do have something likable, but it’s all overshadowed by the game’s shoddy quality. This game will take you less than an hour to beat; if you even manage to spend that long with the game. Even with the price drop the developer has promised, this is absolutely not worth investing any money in.
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