As the title suggests, you will be guiding a man-snake in this bizarre 2D platformer in his mission to protect the earth from Grandiots who are plotting an invasion. Snake Man’s Adventure is where classic design meets modern touches where 90’s elements are integrated with today’s game tech, putting a strong focus on silly yet fun factors in a short playthrough time of approximately two hours.
If I could make a wild guess, the character models in this game seem to have been inspired by Rick and Morty. Or maybe not but it does really feel like it. And like Rick and Morty, it has an odd bunch of characters too. First, you have your character snake man, a snake with a human body; Sophia and her talking dog from Dog Planet, a snake professor from Snake Planet, and finally a human-looking dude from Count Planet. All are joined by their mission to help protect the earth from the intergalactic invasion of Grandiots whose genius plan for colonizing the earth is to dumb down all humans and animals with the dumb ray. Silly right? That’s what I meant when I said it gives off Rick and Morty vibe.
Moving on to gameplay, it is nothing more than a normal hopping on the platform, collecting the collectibles, and moving on to the next level platformer. It kind of reminds me of Super Mario when bopping on the head of moving mushrooms to eliminate them. The hardest enemy excluding bosses in this game would probably be the bats that follow you in any direction you move. And the hardest control scheme you will have to pull is probably when you are on a moving platform and you have to drop down before you get hit by the dangling spiders and then make the airborne jump to get back up to the platform. What I am trying to say is that there is no part of the game that can be considered even remotely hard and it sort of matches well with the comical theme of the story.
In the beginning, the snake man can only jump one time until the professor gives him the double jump cape. And you guessed it, it allows you to do a second jump while in the air. In the second level, he will give you a potion that lets you dash through the rock barricades and eliminate the bad creatures. The thing about those abilities is that they are given at the mid to late end of each level, so you will have to go back if you want to explore the areas and collect gems and gold coins that are only reachable using those abilities.
Gold coins and gems are redeemable items that you can trade for extra life and hit points. It’s simple, just collect 100 golds to get an extra life and each life has a certain number of hit points. There is not a major incentive to collect everything though so items are just sort of there. There are times when invisible walls can be a misleading too.
Snake Man’s Adventure is a unique platformer where tactics and precision are shrunk down to the minimum level and instead retro elements are the premier focus.