A game where you are a snake, in a jungle world with a soundtrack by David Wise, best
known for making the tunes for Donkey Kong Country.
That had me sold, but Snake Pass by Sumo Digital didn’t just rest on their laurels of having
David Wise as its composer.
Starting off, how does one play as a snake?
No, you don’t sneak around in a box.
Noodle the vegetarian snake, no M rating here, moves forward around with the ZR trigger button.
Slither from side to side to get a bit of a speed boost.
Reach upwards by pressing A and use ZL to coil around objects tighter and even lock
yourself in place.
This fairly simply button scheme ends up being able to get a lot done in the game world setup
chock full of large bamboo poles to wind around.
Some of these bamboo pole structures are friendly, others treacherous and a few of seem downright
impossible at first.
A big part of Snake Pass for me, was going back to replay old levels and see if I could
tackle challenges that I couldn’t handle before.
I was able to zip through levels that before I would be extremely cautious on.
Snake Pass is pretty forgiving about physics and it really does help to have momentum to
power through obstacles.
This snake does have an ace up his, er, somewhere, for when you’re in trouble.
You can call your hummingbird buddy to pick up your tail, which is helpful in situations
to give that final little boost over a ledge.
Not necessary most of the time, and sometimes won’t save you, but it is handy on occasion.
There’s even a water world to put a new twist on controls, filled with aquatic ambience
from what was my favourite David Wise track in the game.
…*pause for music*…
Yeah, there’s no mistaking who composed that.
What Snake Pass manages to pull off is really incredible from a technical and gameplay perspective.
I don’t know if Unreal Engine 4 is simply that good or if some programmer is a genius
at Sumo Digital but they made wrapping around objects look easy.
With a game like this, I’d expect the snake to become some sort of garbled glitchy mess
with tons of clipping errors, but nope, Snake Pass is solid.
The closest game I could think of is Noby Noby Boy and looking back, that was far more
floaty.
Snake pass is only floaty while Noodle is falling, to perhaps give the player more of
a chance for recovery.
In addition, Noodle can traverse on almost all of the world’s geometry with the exception
of some trees and thin hanging branches.
There aren’t any invisible walls and barriers, although that may benefit from the levels
being composed of large floating islands.
For the most part, if you see something, you can work your way to it, OR you can make it
to certain points or collectibles in a way that wasn’t necessarily intended.
It was very, very rare that I got stuck on any geometry.
This is the sort of freedom I loved in Mario 64 way back when, and what we have also seen
in Breath of the Wild more recently.
I played Snake Pass with a pro controller, but I did try playing a few levels with joy-cons
also.
And well, I found using that middle-aligned right analog stick to move around the camera
isn’t so comfortable.
If you only have joy-cons and want to leave that right analog stick alone, the camera
does do decent job most of the time and you can center it with the left trigger.
However, lining up the camera in tough spots does come in handy at avoid accidental falls.
Simply put: I would highly recommend getting a pro controller.
There are 15 levels, and I was thinking I was in for a really short game based off how
quick the first two or three levels went.
However, those levels are mainly there only to show you the ropes and do a really good
job at teaching what you can do the rest of the game.
Later levels are pretty sizeable and generally in a manageable three part structure for each
keystone that you have to recover, especially thanks to their beacons of light.
And fortunately, Doodle the hummingbird sidekick keeps quiet from hand-holding at that point
onwards.
Snake Pass really encourages exploration and I found levels designed in a way that really
communicated well about when to expect a hidden item nearby.
Like when you just know a block is going to have a mushroom in Mario, Snake Pass manages
to do similar things in a new series.
Clever tricks like having a gap in the middle of a slide, or a subtle bit of bamboo sticking
over a ledge help hint at these.
Not all of the 5 gatekeeper coins or 20 blue orbs in each level are hinted at though, some
you have spend time exploring or work your way backwards through the level to see, and
others are visible in plain sight but just plain tough to get.
In Snake Pass, it’s one thing to go out on a ledge and get a collectible, it’s another
thing coming back alive.
And what I came to realize is that it was best to practice “checkpoint management”
to immediately hit a checkpoint after collecting a tough coin or orb to avoid having to do
it again.
This part wasn’t the best short-term but after finishing a level, the game takes note
of which orbs and coins you did get, so you don’t have to collect them ever again.
Also in levels, It’s not just purely winding your way through them; Some levels have levers
or spools to wind around as a trigger to start an event or rotate part of it to access new
areas.
It’s worth noting that while the game’s frame rate is mostly smooth, it did chug from
time to time when large distant areas were visible.
Hopefully Unreal Engine 4 will continue to be more optimized for Nintendo Switch in the
future, and Snake Pass ended up looking pretty darn good after all.
One of the weaker points of the game was the story.
While the game did give a reason to why the 3 keystones in each level were out of place,
I felt that I was getting half the game’s story and lore through messages on the loading
screen before each level.
Could the game have gone without a story?
Probably could, but it did hint an end encounter that might encourage players to slither on.
On the plus side, any cutscenes were quick to get through and then it’s right back
to gameplay.
Some of my main issues with Snake Pass were not with the game itself but with presentation
that normally I take for granted.
I found out Snake Pass wasn’t auto saving my game progress after finishing each level
when one time my pro controller and all its buttons stopped detecting in-game but worked
still on the Switch via the home button.
I had to restart the game and lost 8 levels of progress.
I’m guessing at some point there will be an update to fix this if it hasn’t already,
there wasn’t a save button in the menu so to get around this, I had to go back to the
main game screen and from there it would auto-save.
And here’s one that fooled me the first time, note how the buttons on the screen don’t
reflect the layout of the Switch controller.
Small issues aside, in the end I was impressed by how well Snake Pass played.
Overall, I’d say I “liked” Snake Pass’ mostly relaxing gameplay experience that made
me think of new ways to get around in a game.
Sure there were some tough parts for collectibles that were frustrating but the game’s system
allowed me to leave them and come back later when I was better at the game.
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