Knights & Snails Review

Developer: Knights Digital
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 27
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Do you want more jousting games for iOS? Well, look no further than Knights & Snails. Although it has a strange title and some bizarre concepts, Knights & Snails is a quality experience that avoids almost all free-to-play ickiness. It doesn't always live up to its potential, but it's pretty awesome nonetheless.

The world of Knights & Snails is very cartoony and cheeky, with knights commenting on their breath and the use of a funny accent as a literary device. Weirdly enough, the actual mechanics also follow suit. Although the gameplay isn't particularly complicated, it's so abstract that it can be hard to explain. Essentially, players line up armies of knights into lanes, and the knights in those lanes face off with opposing knights. Once a joust is initiated players then play a mini-game where they have to tapFlappy Bird-style to try and land a meter marker inside the green, ideal portion of a meter. The outcomes of these jousts depends on the stats of each knight, the player's performance in the mini-game, and a little bit of luck. The ultimate goal is to earn more points in a battle than the opponent by the time the final round is over.

Each round plays out pretty similarly, but the addition of new mechanics, enemies, and power-ups keeps things interesting; plus the AI randomizes its tactics on each encounter. There are times when Knights & Snails feels a little unfair due to these random elements, and there is a limited amount of times players can fail a level before having to wait or pay to retry, but overall the strategy and tactics used can vary so much that replaying a level from the start doesn't feel as tedious as it should.

As players make progress in Knights & Snails, they unlock new knights with special abilities and face off against increasingly more difficult armies. To help ease the difficulty they can also spend in-game currency to unlock new knights, though they are rewarded through a randomized, gacha-style storefront. Also, this currency is rather hard to come by in significant amounts, though it can be purchased using real money. Other than that, Knights & Snails doesn't serve up ads and doesn't require an internet or data connection to play, which makes it a lot more tolerable.

Knights & Snails is a weird but fun strategy game. Even though the luck-based elements can be frustrating, it offers satisfying tactical gameplay without obtrusive or annoying free-to-play trappings.