Snakebird Primer 4+

Keeps crashing on the later levels. It only seems to crash when a snakebird dies.

The basic mechanics of snakebird allow for the potential of insanely well designed puzzles. I could write an essay about how beautifully designed these puzzles are, but in short they all contribute their own ideas, there’s no filler, and many of the puzzles have unexpected solutions that require lots of thinking and problem solving to come up with.

Many levels also seem impossible at first, and when you finally see the solution clearly you get that marvelous “Ah-Ha!” moment. Level 67 is my favorite level in the game because no matter what you try, it seems that there’s no way to get the short blue snake get over to the other snakes. Not without putting the longest snake in a situation where the next move brings certain death, anyways. But after a few minutes of scratching my head I realized there was a clever trick I could use to successfully bring over the blue snake without killing the long one. What was once seemingly impossible became obvious once that awesomely clever trick was discovered in that super satisfying “Ah-Ha!” moment, making the player feel really smart.

Most of the levels are really easy though, at least for me, but still fun. I wish it was a bit tougher or a bit longer, because it went by quite quickly. Still, I recommend this and the original version, especially to any other puzzle enthusiasts :)

Tl:dr Not worth the $8 if you enjoyed the difficulty of the original, way too easy and simplified.

I’ve been waiting for more Snakebird for a while and excited to see a new version. Even with the steep price I wanted to pay to support good puzzles. Unfortunately the levels are scaled way down in difficulty. Very few have more than one tricky sequence to figure out unlike the bigger complex levels of the original. After enjoying the first and spending hours to solve all the levels, this basic version took less than an hour to complete all 70 levels. Disappointing to have paid for a second game that was basically a extended tutorial version of the first version.