SNAILS is a thoroughly bizarre PS1 styled 3rd person horror beat ‘em up where you control a seven year old girl who fights a horde of mutant snails from outer space.
In SNAILS you take control of Dora Ditze, a seven year old girl who is bedridden with flu, when all of a sudden hordes of alien snails invade the neighborhood and eat the majority of its inhabitants. She then attempts to seek refuge in the local elementary school whilst beating up the massive monstrous snails on the way.
The visual design and gameplay in SNAILS is very much paying homage to the PS1 era, with meshes, crude cutscenes, low polygon counts, an incredible amount of pop-in and unwieldy tank controls. The retro visual design works really well and the cutscenes are surprisingly scary (thanks largely to the excellent audio design), but at the moment the actual gameplay isn’t great.
Unfortunately at the moment the combat and tank controls are too unwieldy to make the game fun. Tank controls are okay in a shooter but in a beat ‘em up you really need to be able to move. Also, the combat is very unresponsive and laggy – there can be huge delays between pressing the attack button and actually doing an attack, often feeling like you’re waiting for a stamina bar to fill up (but there’s no stamina bar in sight).
If the devs can manage to whip the control system and combat into shape then SNAILS could be a very enjoyable retro beat ‘em up horror romp. The visual design is great and the massive snails can be pretty menacing (particularly when attacking in numbers). It’s just a shame that SNAILS has such sluggish controls…
Download The SNAILS Alpha Demo Here (Windows)