Once upon a time, people used their phones to call people. It was a dark era, one without games - until
Snakes punctured the darkness with a shining ray of light. That day, over a decade ago, helped convince us that our phones could do more than just make calls.
How sweet, then, for this retro reptile to be making new twists and turns in
SnakeGalaxy. Out go the walls and flat, 2D plains of the original, replaced by spheres and changeable hazards.
Modifications or not, the actual gameplay hasn't been altered much in this re-imagining. Playing on various themed planets, you guide a small snake around each globe picking up nuggets of brightly coloured food that grow your tail just that little bit longer. Your serpent even takes on the style of each planet, including a button with string for a tail and a star followed by a trail of sparkling dust.
Survival is the only goal. Any contact with your own tail or any of the objects that begin the litter each sphere spells instant death. Fortunately, the touchscreen provides ease of control: touch and the snake follows.
But there are other temptations. Given that your primary target is to finish with the highest possible score, making sure you've gotten enough bang for your buck by journey's end is essential.
While your score naturally ticks upward as time passes, the biggest boosts come from picking up as many food parcels as you can. The more you pick up in quick time increases the score multiplier, meaning each ration sends your score just that little bit more skywards.
This makes play just as much a question of pace as it is prudence. Rushing into things, bolting off towards food without a second thought, may reward you with a few momentary point surges, but it will also lead you into trouble.
SnakeGalaxy calls for prudence between picking up points and survival.
It's not a soft touch, either. Even the first level - a fairly large, open sphere with no obstacles other than yourself - eventually becomes a tough task. You become as much an obstacle to your own success as any object on these miniature planets, your tail obscured from view as it snakes into the dark side of the sphere. With each passing level, set objects make space a real commodity on these small spheres.
When you then consider that nearly every planet has to be unlocked by reaching an ever-increasing score target, you can understand that
SnakeGalaxy is keen to lengthen its stay on your iPhone. It's a nifty tactic, given that picking up play is so familiar.
Even so,
SnakeGalaxy still has that fresh feel that even the most hardened of
Snake stalwarts will appreciate. Bringing something new to the table whilst also entertaining the old is no easy task, but it manages to do both with enough style to suggest it could well go on.
