When it comes to picking the design of characters, there are a lot of options to go with. When this list of options expands to animals and creatures, the options can almost be overwhelming. Luckily for the developers at Weird Beluga Studio, the choice was obvious. A snail is an obvious candidate for their games hero and publisher Koch Media agreed. Thus, we now have the top-down action-adventure game Clid the Snail. Now I am sure you have some skepticism just as I did when I first heard of the game, but I am happy that I gave it a chance.

Story

After being kicked out of his home citadel, Clid finds himself with a rag-tag team of outcasts that have formed a sort of mercenary group. Taking on jobs as a for-hire fighter, Clid ends up helping the group earn their funding for expansion and growth - with a bit of disdain, of course. However, things within the group start to seem a bit off, like someone is hiding something. While trying to fight against some crazy slug invasion that is happening everywhere to multiple citadels, trying to get to the bottom of a plague issue, and find the truth behind this group, the list of issues need to be prioritized and handled.

Gameplay

Giving a top-down view and twin-stick style controls, this game puts your control to the test. The starting weapon has a small range when it comes to how wide the actual blast is, so if you aren’t aiming at your target or you slightly flick to the side of your enemy when releasing the shot, then you will miss. Luckily, it is one that has infinite ammo and can be charged to make a stronger attack, so you can take your time to line up your shot and it’d be beneficial to do so.

As you progress, you will be given more weapons to cycle through. You can also purchase different weapons from the weaponsmith. Guns don’t have any upgrade options, so once you have the weapon it is all about keeping ammo stocked up for it. Your gun choices range from SMG, Rocket Launcher, Shotgun, and more. But even if you run out of ammo, you can always revert back to your base energy blaster weapon that you start with. Don’t forget to keep your grenades and proxy mines stocked up as well because they are really handy when it comes to horde handling.

Another thing you can get is different shells. The first one is practically given to you and offers a defense option, but you can purchase different ones that do different things. I was personally fond of the offensive-based missile launching shell choice but to each their own with this one. Again, no upgrade options, but you can always change your shell choice at any shop once you own it.

Making your way through levels each comes with their own experience. Some levels are all about a linear path where you are just trying to reach a specific destination and to get there you have to fight your way through. Then you will start to see some puzzle elements are thrown in, such as switching around energy beam blockades. Of course, that means you will come across the hefty puzzles as well that will require a lot of brainpower to solve, so get ready for some of those. Most of these are optional, luckily enough, but they will give you another seed.

Those seeds are very useful collectibles as well. For every four seeds you find, your maximum health will increase. From what I could tell, there aren’t four in each level, but I did not actually find every seed. That said, I wasn’t missing enough for there to have been four in each level either, so I believe they are just scattered around throughout the general game progression. Other than seeds, the other collectibles are quest items and the crystals used for purchasing ammo, health items, and more.

While you will come across a variety of different enemies, this game definitely loves throwing you against a horde sent in waves. It happens more often than it should honestly, but it is a good way to test what weapons are best to use against which enemies. Smaller guys are only worth the energy blaster, shielders deserve a shotgun blast, big boys get big explosions, and so on.

Boss battles were a mixture of good and annoying. While I enjoyed that some boss fights were against actual opponents and other boss fights were just taking out a horde in waves in order to destroy their nest, I do wish they changed the order up a bit. I found each boss fight style to be entertaining but hated handling nest after nest with no variation between them.

Visuals and Audio

Unfortunately, neither of these aspects were very well set up in this game. The music and sound effects they used were pretty standard. There was nothing too great or special to these audio tracks, but they did get the job done at the least.

While the graphics took on a solid art style that would typically work in these types of games, Clid is gray and most of the enemies are gray. This didn’t just make it hard to see enemies at times, but it just didn’t give off a visually appealing effect as you would expect from an adventure game. The world itself had plenty of color to it, even with the gloom-style art used to give it a solid environment, but the main character and the enemies were rather “blah.”

What Could Be Better

It would have been a nice touch to have actual voice acting done. It was obvious they put effort into the fake language they voiced for the game as it had emotion and emphasis put into it like the characters were really talking. I even noticed that some of the fake words were being reused for the same thing, so they even had defining words in there. But why not just put that effort into at least one real language? Localization is only truly needed for subtitles, which they needed to do anyway, so I didn’t understand this strange effort.

Boss battles, as I mentioned above, should have been spaced out a bit better. They gave us a real boss first and then had us take out nest after nest to the point it was just tedious and boring. Nest fights are always horde style and in between the nest fights there would be random horde fights. It just wasn’t a great setup for the overall gameplay experience.

Conclusion

Clid The Snail was a surprisingly entertaining title, but it had plenty of faults in it as well. I definitely think it is a good title and that plenty of players will truly enjoy the experience, but it would have been better if it had a better linear structure to it. That said, there were also aspects of the game that were underwhelming, which was a shame since I kept finding myself wanting to get back into the action. Just a mixture of great and bad aspects throughout. In the end, though, it is a game I would recommend actually considering if you want a good story, straightforward gameplay, and an annoying dragonfly friend to accompany you throughout.