LogFAQs > #966558805

#31: SNKRX

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/0/8/AAA-H0AADc08.png

Oh my god, I played this game for HOW many hours? 244 hours??? Why? How could this happen? Why didn't anyone STOP me?

SNKRX is an incredibly addictive game, and against all odds, somehow my 3rd-most played game of the last two years. I had a run of games on this list with beautifully crafted worlds and thoughtful game design, but sometimes what I want is some dots moving around on the screen that shoot dots at other dots and make numbers and my seratonin go up. SNKRX is one of these.

SNKRX combines the idea of Snake with a tower defense game, all with some roguelite mechanics. Your snake, which you turn left or right as it constantly moves forward, is made up of colorful little dots that you buy in a shop, each one with its own attack pattern or special ability. You build a snake out of these and you take it through a series of increasingly challenging levels where you have your dots shoot at some ovals, who also have their own special abilities. You get permanent upgrades along the way as well as better dots. That's the whole game. Yay!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/0/AAA-H0AADc0-.png

There's a surprising amount of depth to this otherwise incredibly simple game. The various different 'characters' that you can add to your snake, themed after your basic RPG classes (ranger, wizard, etc), all have surprisingly interesting and varied abilities, and they all belong to a 'class', and adding more characters of the same class gives you set bonuses, which gives you quite a bit to think about when constructing your snake. And the items that you get every few levels add a lot to the game too - there's a lot of variety there and you can get some pretty fun builds going.

It's pretty challenging, too. It took me a fair number of attempts to get a winning run, and the game really cranks up the addiction level by giving you a Spire-like ascension mode, where the enemies gradually get more hp but you also get more slots for your snake with each run. There is what seems to be a glitch in this game where your difficulty level can go higher than intended, as well, and I've had a lot of fun trying to fight through like - I think I got up to NG+8 when the game is supposed to cap at NG+5? It gets pretty wild. At sufficient difficulty levels, this game gets downright sadistic, and playing it well gets really fun and exciting. Again, there's a truly surprising amount of depth to this game. It doesn't have a lot to it, but what's here surprisingly passed the test as far as roguelites go, for me. If I play a roguelite for more than 50 hours, it's a good one. You can take that to the bank. (The bank doesn't accept # of hours spent playing a roguelite, I tried.)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/1/AAA-H0AADc0_.png

This was, for a time, the game that I would just boot up and play to keep my hands and my brain busy while watching a youtube video or a twitch stream or something. It's a terrible habit of mine, I waste a lot of time doing this, but sometimes it's also what keeps me sane day-to-day. Apparently SNKRX was this game for a while - it feels like I played it for months, but I guess I unlocked every achievement in about two weeks. I haven't really picked it up in a while since, which makes a game like this hard to rank. Extremely addictive and ate over 200 hours of my life, but not really fascinating enough for me to return to and keep playing once I'm done with it. It's a hard one to judge.

I was very disappointed to learn that plans to expand this game and implement some changes were canceled. I completely support the dev's decision to do this, as it sounds like he had overscoped on the project, was burnt out and struggling to keep a timetable for it, and badly needed to move on, and that's completely reasonable. The game, as it is, is already largely complete, though there are a few things I would have liked (the fact that the game doesn't tell you how much HP each character has is maddening, it's an important stat that the game makes opaque for no reason). Mostly I was just hoping that an update would give me a chance to come back to this game and experience it one more time, and maybe add a little bit more depth to this game, but it is what it is, and this is the game's final state, I suppose. If you want a snake roguelite that's about driving dots around to shoot other dots and you want to waste a few hours, this is like 3 bucks, I think it's probably worth it. Don't do what I did and play it for 244 hours though. Find something else to do! Don't be lured in by SNKRX's hypnotic charms and promises of one more run!

Fun fact: This is the first game where I took my own screenshots of the game instead of using google image search. The pics of this game I found by searching were all garbage.

Next up: Okay, this is a fun one. At least one major publication named this next game as their Game of the Year.