iPhone Games Review: Snake XT Review

Snake XT Gameplay (4 out of 5)

Like the old Snake game in Nokia mobile phones, Snake XT requires you to grab pellets that randomly appears on the field and every pellet that you able to get extends the Snake’s length. The game offers two game modes - arcade and challenge.

Arcade Mode consists of 28 game levels. When you start the game, you immediately see a counter on top of your iPhone screen indicating how many pellets you still need to collect to finish the level. There is also a heart counter indicating how many turns you have left before the game is over.

You might think at first that Snake XT is a boring and repetitive pellet grabbing game. But if you manage to get through the initial levels and advance to the higher levels, you’ll soon noticed that the difficulty is also somewhat increasing. You’ll encounter more obstacles that would crash the snake’s head if you bumped onto them, the speed of the snake becomes faster making it difficult for you to maneuver the Snake towards the pellets, and the number of pellets that you need to collect also increases.

As you play through the game, you’ll also encounter various bonus items such as extra lives, fish, ladybugs and a shield that would make your life as a snake a little easier. However, these items appear and disappear very quickly, so you must immediately get them when they appear.

If you find the arcade mode easy to finish, you might want to play the Challenge mode. In this game mode, all you need to do is extend the Snake as long as possible before you run out of lives. The longer the snake, the higher your scores.

Snake XT Graphics, Sound and Control (3 out of 5)

Snake XT is a beautified version of the old Nokia game. The game developers were able to transform the black and gray Snake game into colorful and more engaging version for the iPhone. It’s not really the best looking iPhone game, but with a not-so-colorful predecessor to follow, Snake XT is definitely better than the old Snake game.

There is nothing spectacular about the sound, though. It’s plain and simple cutesy sound effects, but even this is better than the old Snake game.

Fortunately, the game does not employ the iPhone’s accelerometer to control the Snake’s direction. The game utilizes the touch screen function of the iPhone. You just need to tap once on the direction you want the snake to go and it will automatically tilt its head towards that direction. Interestingly, this does not eliminate the difficulty factor of the game. In fact, the higher levels can become very difficult, thanks to the small screen of the iPhone and increasing length of the snake. Controlling the snake after you have collected 140 pellets seems impossible. But it is still conquerable.

Our Verdict (4 out of 5)

The funny thing is, I thought I wouldn’t really enjoy this game. I never enjoyed the old Snake game in my Nokia phones before. But seeing the game and playing its modernized version on my iPhone makes me like the game more. Snake XT is currently sold at the Apps Store for $.99. Hurry up and download the game before it goes back to its original selling price of $2.99

Image credit:

Screenshots of Snake XT by Sookie Solutions.