Snapshot [Review by Uzzbuzz]Snapshot is a 2D puzzle platformer where the player must control a little golden robot through various scenarios to get to a goal by means of using photography to move objects and forces around. There are four chapters, each with nine levels, each level with 3 parts. Brings the total to a game with 9*3*4 = 108 levels. So it’s not a small game, and if you are going for a full completion, it could take a few days.
Mechanics/Gameplay - The main mechanic is simple enough. Players use the left mouse button to take ‘snapshots’ of various objects and things in the level to capture them. You can store a total of three snapshots at once, and they can contain as many objects as you can fit in the rectangular capture bounds. Right clicking allows the player to paste the snapshots back into the game, effectively allowing the player to take objects with them throughout the level. The object can be rotated before being placed and I have to say that this part of the mechanic is the most consistently used throughout the game out of all the little quirks, but I’ll get to that shortly. Objects captured keep whatever momentum and properties they had when captured, so say the player is pushing a crate while they capture it into the snapshot storage. When they place the crate back into the world, it will move with a little bit of force, which is whatever speed it was moving at while being pushed. Using gravity to constantly catch and place objects to go faster and faster and then using the objects to hit certain things, including yourself, is but one of the innovative ways to use this ability. Besides basic platforming after all, this is all the player has to use. One little bit I did not like about the mechanics is that the developer seemed to introduce almost a new feature every level. Even the third last level introduces a feature of the main mechanic that has been the sole concept of entire games! This is alright by me, except for the fact that since they add so much sub features of the main mechanic, they are often abandoned and never seen again on any other level but the one. At least levels have three parts, so in most cases, the player gets to learn the mechanic in the first part, use it in the second, and prove their mastery and forget about it in the third. The game did not have too many major bugs. The wind forces used later on had the potential to cause a lot of lag (and believe me, I tapped into that potential). There was also a problematic bug where sometimes loading a level, I would not be able to move, pause, or do anything but listen to the sounds of the game. I had to then close and reopen the game, and this happened a few dozen times in my time playing this game. After I got the hang of some advanced tricks with the mechanic, I was solving the puzzles left and right without ever really thinking of using a guide. The challenge never seems to grow though from world to world (internally in the levels it progresses a bit), and the game just feels like a bunch of concepts of levels thrown together 7/10
Fun Factor - I raged a bit playing this game. Some people can vouch that it seemed like I did not enjoy it, and at times it was pretty frustrating to deal with. As I started going farther and farther into the game though, I started to appreciate it more. Although there wasn’t much challenge, I still felt good about completing the puzzles and doing the speedruns. A lot of times there were awkward parts and unfair deaths such as jumping on a box next to another box only to go right in between them and land on spikes. This is when there was practically a no pixel gap in between the two boxes. That brings me to the instant deaths. With no checkpoints or anything like that, the unfair instant deaths can be frustrating. Each level has four ‘goals’: Completing the level, speedrunning it, collecting all the stars (collectibles) and taking a picture of a ‘special item’. The special item is usually found by doing something you wouldn’t do to beat the level, and to go out of the way for. The problem is that there’s almost always stars there, so you might as well do the collectibles at the same time as the picture of the special item, making either one kind of redundant. The special item leaves the player with only 2 slots for taking pictures though, adding a bit more challenge as well. Using magnets to cross spike gaps was a bit finicky as well and I did not enjoy that, and some of the features I did enjoy, such as making platforms with needles shot at the player, were rarely expanded upon. I had fun a bit, but it wasn’t as much as I thought it could be. 5/10
Graphics/Animation - Really not much to complain about here. The cutesy graphics really caught the image of the game. It all looks very nice, and the animation was really smooth, except for the holding onto ledges animation would sometimes glitch out. I also really liked how you could see capturable objects behind other objects by putting the mouse over the area as they’d highlight in yellow. The only bug I saw with this is that when exploding objects hit a wall, the particles could be seen in the wall behind and in front of it, looking quite jarring. This is only when moused over though, so usually it wasn’t a problem. Usually the game was pretty warm feeling, and always seemed happy, which was fitting as the only enemies were cute cannon things as well as giant hippos that spit at you basically. Even in the coldness of the lab area, it still felt warm because of the cute character sprite. Pasting the pictures onto the world did look a bit odd sometimes, and I get the feel that the developers were going for, but it still didn’t feel right. 7/10
Music/Sound - The music was pleasant, as were the sounds. Nice new type of retro tracks filled the levels, which was an interesting choice but it worked well. There was a good use of directional sounds too, so when you dropped a box for example way on the left of the screen, you’d hear it in the left headphone. This was also a nice way of saying that the goal is nearby, even though you can usually see it before you can hear it anyways. The snapshot noises are what I should be focusing on, because the game focuses on that. I never once felt annoyed hearing that sound despite how many time I captured objects, so that’s a plus. There was one level that was so brutally bad on my ears though, that it warrants this section at a 7 rather than a 7.5. It was a level with three cannon enemies, and for some reason, once you get to a certain point in the level, the sounds just seem to keep layering and layering and it’s a type of unnerving scratching noises that nobody ever wants to hear, especially late at night. I wasn’t expecting to play a horror game! I just wanted to beat that level, and do the speedrun, and get out of there as fast as I could. Luckily nothing like that happened in any other levels. 7/10
Replayability - The way I played this game, as an achievement hunter, I did the photo and collectibles the first run of a level, then the speedrun the second time. If I was just playing through the game normally, I feel like I’d have no desire to replay the levels once I had beaten them. Not even to try and get a faster time, although I have to admit something. At first I was skeptical of there being speedrun challenges in a puzzle platformer like this, but it actually worked out quite nicely. I could usually get the speedrun times the first time I replayed the level though, and there isn’t much in the way of leaderboards. In short, there is not much replayability here, even though if you plan on getting 100%, it will take a while, but it is pretty tedious in a lot of cases. I did like to go to levels I skipped the first time I played through though, to see what kind of new twist they would add to the mechanic or what new obstacle there would be. As for replaying levels I have already done, not so much fun. 4/10
Level Design - The level design was done alright, and fairly straightforward. I almost always knew what I was going to try for the puzzle, and it never took much time to scout out the majority of the level. I still had to think about what I had to do though. The only time the level design was not clear was when I first had to figure out that I had to capture an object with momentum and then rotate it to change its’ direction in order to solve a puzzle. That could have been done in a tutorial manner a little better. Once I solved that though, I started to manipulate the levels by using things that hurt me to launch me over certain obstacles, or jumping off of a spring, capturing it, placing it under me as I start to fall, and then capturing it again, in order to jump infinitely. It takes some mastery to that, but it made speedrun challenges a lot more interesting. There are also levels that have two doors that you can essentially teleport between. You can use these doors as great shortcuts in some levels if used not how you think they should be, and the game seems to really be open to thinking of creative solutions to beating levels faster in order to get the speedruns. The puzzles however, were often tame and never got much harder as the game progressed. I never really felt challenged after the first chapter or two. As I said before though, the deaths in this game never really felt fair. There was one level with a wind gust right above my head at the start and when speedrunning I often forgot not to jump in that area and it just blew me off the map. 6/10
Achievements - Ahhh, I always love talking about achievements! These achievements were terrible and bland for the most part. Terrible in the sense that the way to unlock them is completely counter intuitive and glitchy, and bland for being well, bland. There were only about three different achievements that were anything besides just completing stuff in the game. These achievements were for moving really fast, for capturing something that’s moving really fast, and for using the infinite jump method I mentioned earlier. I really did enjoy these three achievements because they highlighted some advanced tactics of the game that seemed so weird that I did not think it was intentionally supposed to be like that, until I found puzzles that needed these skills. All the other achievements were completely standard, and had to do with getting the four medals types in every level of the world. There was an achievement per world for each of the following: Completing every level, capturing every special picture, getting all the stars, and doing all the speedruns. Boooring. Now I talk about the glitchiness. Holy hell it was a nightmare. First off, there are achievements for finishing the game with 25,35,45,55,65,75, and 100% completion. You would think that completing the game at 100% would give you them all right? Nope. You have to watch the end credits at each percentage threshold. I was aware of this before I started playing, so I skipped as many levels as I could and came out at 29% at the end, getting the first achievement. Since there was no way I found of checking percentage in game, I had to constantly go and watch the credits every few levels completed to make sure I did not miss a percentage threshold. That was my major problem with the achievements, luckily though they all are attainable. There was also a rather annoying bug where upon loading the game after beating the first chapter to completion, I was instantly awarded the speedrun achievements for the other three chapters. Sort of frustrating, and I still had to do all the speedruns for 100% anyways. Getting 100% completion in this game did take me a while, but that’s because I did not want to do very many levels at once. It did not really challenge me, especially since I’m rather weak in puzzle platformers compared to other genres. The speedruns and some collectible levels were tough and took a few tries, but in the end it really did not take much. I think the achievements are under earned, but really I just think that is because people got tired of the game after a few hours, and not everyone is a completionist. 3/10
Pros:+ Nice music and sounds
+ Levels were well designed
+ Solid core mechanic
+ Consistent, well toned art style
Cons:- Froze quite often
- Buggy Achievements
- Little challenge
- Obnoxious deaths / no checkpoints
- Too many gimmicks, not enough expanding
Overall Score: 5.6/10 3.0