As vehicular nomenclature goes, 'Snakeybus' is just about as apt as 'Boaty McBoatface'. Your primary means of locomotion in Snakeybus is a bus that's well and truly snake-like. It's a snakey-bus. Not that it eats mice or hisses at you or anything. Rather, your physics-defying vehicle stretches out to improbable, city-enveloping lengths as you pick up fares and deposit them at their designated drop-off points.
It's a rare driving game where you have to worry about where you've been as much as where you're going. Just like the classic mobile phone game Snake, from which Snakeybus clearly draws an awful lot of inspiration, you run the increasing risk of running into your own tail the longer your run lasts. While that doesn't mean instant death, it does threaten to stop you in your tracks. And like the film Speed, this bus has to keep moving to stay alive.
Thankfully, the controls are super-simple. Your bus (or whatever form of locomotion you unlock and select) auto-accelerates, but you can add extra impetus with ZR, and brake with ZL. B will supply a handbrake-turn effect, while L serves as a jump when on the floor and a vertical rocket boost in the air.
Snakeybus isn't a graphically rich game by any means. The textures are basic, and there are noticeable instances of pop-in. The physics are similarly prosaic, with a discernible degree of jank to every clipped edge and congested alley.
Even with these technical limitations, though, the game has a surprising capacity to make you go 'ooh'. There's something about doubling back on yourself and witnessing your hyper-extended tail looping over a city vista that's undeniably impressive. It's even more impressive that the action doesn't slow to a crawl, either in docked or handheld. Sure, the frame rate chugs a little, but not calamitously so.
That said, this is a game that looks and plays much better in docked mode. When you're hooning around a busy Paris or Miami street, looking for that next pick-up or tight turn on the horizon, the extra resolution and detail really helps.
You get a modest scattering of levels here, but they offer a pleasing degree of variation. The first miniaturised level is arguably one of the trickiest (or at least the most annoying) thanks to its tight nature, full of snagging chair legs and dead-end corners. Rainy Seattle, by contrast, is all orderly grid systems and run-preserving escape ramps. The modern art museum resembles a giant skate park, with a Möbius strip shape and a central drop off point making it great for high scores.
Indeed, there's a casual, unhurried feel to Snakeybus in general (Time Race mode aside) that makes it the ideal game for switching off your brain and zoning out. It's the kind of undemanding, uplifting experience many of us could use right now.
Comments 11
This sounds awesome, I loved Snake on my old Nokia
From the half an hour-ish that I've seen of the game, that's a bit higher than I expected.
This is a really fun game. I think a 7 is fair. It’s game I enjoy and my 5 year old likes to play too. May not have a ton of depth, but I’ll keep coming back to it from time to time!
Thought I’d get this and it’s a lockdown perfection game!
Might pick this up, it looks like Snake meets Crazy Taxi
I've heard good things about this game from a few big gaming youtubers. I intend to buy it when I get paid on thursday!
Sadly I wasn’t impressed with this. It’s a really great idea but it falls down in execution. I think it needed an actual level progression system with targets to hit before moving onto the next level rather than being a simple high score chaser. I’ve never been particularly fond of games that go on forever until you make a mistake as it means no matter how well you play the game always ends in failure.
I consider this a spiritual follow up to Clustertruck, you can't tell me otherwise.
Now with superior technology at our fingertips, I doubt that anybody is particularly yearning for the likes of Snake, Pong, and/or Bounce, and those who say they are nostalgic are misattributing the pleasure of the experience (relative to whatever tedium the games served to distract them from) with the actual quality of the games.
I've played Bounce to death on my old Nokia back in the day, but God knows that I would have discarded it at the sight of something better (I never had a handheld console growing up, so I took what I could get).
@Silly_G
I had a Gameboy at the same time that Snake was a thing. I still played snake. Hell, I'd play Snake at home where I had a Playstation to play. It was a very enjoyable game with an addictive "one more game" high score chasing gameplay loop.
Slither.io was one of the most popular mobile games of 2016. It's still pretty popular to this day. Why? Certainly not nostalgia as my nephew who loved it has never seen a phone that doesn't have a touch screen. Given that Snake as a concept is still popular today your assertion that it's only out of a lack of options doesn't hold water.
Lumping it in with the likes of Bounce just because they share a platform doesn't work either. Are Space Invaders or Tank on the 2600 suddenly no longer fun games because they're on the same platform as E.T? No, you judge them on their own merits.
I might pick this up. It looks super fun from the single markiplier video i've watched.
Tap here to load 11 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...