Review: Killing Pests Is Easy With Snails Reloaded

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Do you remember those carefree days when you were a kid, and you used to burn ants with a magnifying glass or (hang on.  If you are with PETA, please skip to the next paragraph)…even sometimes you would experiment with small firecrackers and watch tiny legs and antennae fly apart?  If you hold those kinds of fond childhood memories, then I have a game for you.  Most of you may recall PDAMill’s classic game, Snails, in which you control an army of snails in this turn based strategy game.  Well, apparently Snails was getting a bit out of date and maybe even tired, because PDAmill has completely updated (or “reloaded”) it with new graphics, new animation, new weapons, and more.  Whew.  I think we may need to kick this review up a notch and reload before we take a closer look.

Our journey with this game is going to take us to the farthest reaches of outer space, where we find the planet Schnoogie.  Life on Schnoogie has taken a different evolutionary turn than on Earth, and the dominant lifeform there is the snail.  In fact, there are three different snail races on Schnoogie: the blue shelled Moogums, the green shelled Lupeez, and the red shelled Nooginz.  Of course, these three snail races are not like any snails we may know.  These are vicious warrior snails, each bent upon total world domination.  And no, none of them would like to play a game of chess (though they all might enjoy a rousing game of thermonuclear war).

There are two ways to play.  First you can choose to complete the missions.  Each race of snail has three missions, as well as a final task (which always takes place in the sewers.)  At the end of each mission, you will be awarded a new weapon which you can use to annihilate more of your opponents.

While the gameplay from one mission to the next does not change significantly, the difficulty is controlled by the backgrounds which provide obstacles, as well as changing the number of snails on each team.  In a more difficult mission, for example, you may only start with two snails while your opponent has five.  Nonetheless, I was disappointed by the lack of disparity between the easy missions and the more difficult ones.  Regardless of the difficulty, the computer controlled team never seemed to increase in intelligence.  This meant that even though you may start with fewer snails than your opponent, the game was relatively easy, even at the highest difficulty level.

The best part about the missions, however, is the explanatory paragraph which appears at the beginning of each level.  This humorous introductions establish your goal for the mission (which is always to destroy the enemy), and give you a little insight into the personalities of each of the snails on your team.  All the while, they remaining extremely light and entertaining.

If simply blowing things up is more your speed, however, select death match.  Here, you can set the parameters for your snail army and battle against the computer, against another person in a head-to-head match, or even just let the computer take over and control both teams.

While I enjoyed playing both modes, it would have been nice to be able to connect two devices via bluetooth rather than swapping one device back and forth for multiplayer action.

Anyway, this is all well and good by way of background and story.  But it still doesn’t tell you what the heck this game is.  Well, I’ll tell you.  Snails Reloaded is a turn-based strategy game based upon a role playing engine.  Huh-wah?  Exactly.  What that means is you control an army of up to five snails, battling against another army of snails.  You each take turns lobbing munitions at one another until one army has been decimated.

Your turn is pretty simple, and it consists of two stages.  First, is the attack stage.  Here, you have sixty seconds to attack one time.  To do so, move your snail to the prime location, select a weapon, aim, and fire (and yes, that frog is a weapon.)  You then enter the hiding stage, when you have five seconds to move to a location which will provide the best defense fro the oncoming attack.  So, let’s take a closer look.

The first thing you will need to do is move your snail to the best position for your attack.  To do so, use the arrows beneath the picture to crawl, short hop, or long hop across the board.  Be careful, though, a long drop may damage your snail.  Of course, your selected snail may not be able to move into the correct position to attack.  In that case, you will want to switch to a different snail.  To do so, just tap your snail’s portrait on the bottom of the screen.   Repeatedly tapping the picture will allow you to scroll through all of the different snails in your army and select the one who will attack this round.

Once you have reached your attack point, select your weapon.  There are five categories of weapons:

• Guns
• Rockets
• Explosives
• Air-Strikes
• Bugs

Each category has five different weapons, for a total of 25.  Be careful, though, as you do not have an unlimited supply of all of these weapons, so your munitions may run low as the game continues.  You will also want to be sure to become familiar with how each category of weapons attacks.  Air-strikes, for example, will cause an object or attack to fall from the sky…including the hilarious anvil, fire hydrant, and even a truck, dropping on your enemy.

Another favorite was the nuclear bomb which will drop from the sky, destroying the equivalent of a city block in one quick blow.  In the above example, you can see three blue Moogums were destroyed with a single shot.

Once you have selected your weapon, aim it by dragging the red arrow.  Be careful of the wind, however (striped arrow in the upper left corner) as that can affect the trajectory of your attack, especially if you are using an air attack.

You will also notice that each snail has a colored bar over their heads.  This is their health bar.  If they take a hit, they lose some health.  Lose the whole bar and that snail is dead.  Each snail also has their own unique personality (and you can tell the folks at PDAmill had some fun with this one.)  So, when your snail takes his turn, gets hit, dies, or does just about anything, he will have a wisecrack for the enemy, many of which are hilarious.  I was really extremely impressed that PDAmill took the time to give each of the fifteen or so snails their own identities.  It really added quite a bit to my enjoyment of the game.

I found the gameplay in Snails Reloaded was extremely intuitive and easy to follow.  If you are at all familiar with this kind of strategy game, you will have no problem figuring this one out in a matter of seconds.

The fantastic gameplay was well complimented by the typically-PDAmill cartoon-like graphics.  Each of the fifteen locations adds to the difficulty of the game by presenting barriers both to your attacks, as well as your movements.  They also make the game a lot more enjoyable with their silliness.  All of the locations are also fully destructible, and you will want to destroy them all.  Not only is this fun, but there may also be a few hidden secrets behind some of those walls (and just watch what happens when you blast away at some other animal, such as the cow in the above screenshot.)

Of course, if you play the game enough, you may grow tired of seeing the same locations again and again.  For you, PDAmill also offers a customization option, which will allow you to build new worlds in which your snails can fight.  More information about that should be coming to the PDAmill forums soon.

You will also notice that the game playing area is quite a bit larger than your screen.  In fact, even though the game is always played in landscape mode, the gameplay surface is still about three times the length and slightly more than twice the height of your screen.  To navigate around the screen, you will notice a small map in the upper right hand corner.  Just drag the box around the map and your view of the screen will shift accordingly.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this game.  Granted, I am a huge fan of the genre, but it is one of the few artillery turn-based strategy games which does not take itself incredibly seriously.  In fact, I thought the real attraction to Snails Reloaded was the way it appeared to go out of its way to present itself as a silly distraction.  I mean, in the end, you are dropping nuclear bombs on highly evolved, root beer swilling, snails.  I just wish PDAmill had thought to include an M-80 among your arsenal of snail destroying weaponry.  So, get ready to blast the crap out of the Moogums, Lupeez, and Nooginz..even if you work for PETA.

What I Liked:

• Fantastic and fun graphics
• Fully destructible backgrounds
• Easy gameplay
• Just plain fun

What Needs Improvement:

• More weapons and weapon categories
• Use bluetooth to connect multiple devices
• Not enough difference between levels of difficulty.  Most of the game was just too easy

Vital Stats:

Name: Snails Reloaded

Developer: PDAmill

Test Platform: Windows Mobile 6

Also Available: Windows Mobile 2003 or higher.  Windows Mobile Smartphone coming soon

Where to buy: PDAmill

Price: $14.95

Trial: Limited number of missions and weapons.  No deathmatches.

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