Game: The Snake King
Genre: Action, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer|Publisher: YeTa Games
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US E
Price: UK £7.19 | EU € 7,99 | US $7.99
Release Date: September 10th, 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to YeTa Games
Mobile Tales
My very first mobile was an old Nokia. It had an ariel and a monochrome screen that you could call people or text people with. Yes, kids there was once a time phones were used to ring people. But I guess the thing that blew my mind as a youngster was the fact that I could play a little game called Snake on it. This was a simple game where you move a black line around the screen collecting power ups. As you collect these your line gets bigger and bigger making the game more challenging as you try avoid the walls as well as your own growing tail. If you hit yourself or the wall once the game is over. Very simple yet highly entertaining.
This game would of course see releases on future mobile phones even the new fancy ones today. You can even play the game for free in browser on PC. As someone who doesn’t really like mobile games, Snake kinda holds a special place in my old gaming heart. The Snake King brings the addictive gameplay of old to Switch but is it enough or should you just dig out your old mobile from the loft?
An Apple a Day
The Snake King has you play as a giant yellow snake as you manoeuvre your way around levels collecting apples. As you collect the apples the snake increases in size by a block. When you collect all the apples in the room the door unlocks and you move on to another room, where you repeat the process until a portal unlocks in the final room and you finish the level. Generally speaking it’s pretty fun to start with. It’s the Snake gameplay I remember from back in the day only the game looks significantly better than the mobile version.
The trouble was the novelty wore off rather quickly. The levels become incredibly repetitive to the extent that I saw the placements of apples in rooms to be the same as levels I had played prior. The Snake King prides itself in having over 150 levels which doesn’t seem like a praise worthy achievement when all the levels feel very similar. Even the rooms you enter all look similar with a typical tiled floor with only minor changes to the colour pallet to provide a semblance of a different environment. The only gameplay variants I would see is the game would occasional drop a new power up such as one that would reduce your speed or size of the snake.
Constantly On the Move
The Snake King is constantly moving you use the directional buttons to alter it’s path but as you get longer you need to be careful to not end up biting your own body. You can also use a boost button to speed things up as well as smash through pots and boxes that may get in your way. The directional controls feel quite stiff. I felt you really needed to hold the directional button down to ensure the snake would commit to moving in a desired direction since the soft approach often meant the serpent just would not respond. This stiffness became more apparent when things start to get hectic. If you fail you restart the level right from the start which was often quite far back. It felt more boring than frustrating as the game isn’t particularly hard.
Stuck in the Past
It seems odd the developers would not add any more game modes to the experience. You can replay levels again but there feels little incentive or point to this as there are no unlockables, secrets, score or even time trial. Retro games like Space Invaders and Tetris have been resurrected countless times with new modes or spins on the original formula. The Snake Kings sadly keeps its gameplay stuck in the past with little evolution which is a shame.
It’s Hard Being the King
Just like the original Snake on the old mobile phones The Snake King offers some novelty fun in small gaming bursts. But lots of repetitive levels and lack of gameplay variation make this a hard one to recommend. A shame really as there was a lot of room here to build on the gameplay. Instead we have a rather hollow experience that’s feels like the original game its based on but with a new lick of paint and nothing more.
Final Verdict: I’m not Sure
