Snake Deluxe Review

Snake Deluxe is a first of its kind game for the Palm OS. Taking up all of the Zodiac screen, the bright colors, long snake, and robust level design will all leave you fascinated. SD is a next-generation iteration of the classic PC game, known by most as Snake. In fact, I used to play it on my grandmother’s Packard Bell, which has been discontinued in the United States for years.

In SD, you attempt a difficult procedure of clearing the board of all of the fruit. X amounts of apples, cherries, and grapes will have to be collected before moving on to the next level. As you eat fruit, your snake will grow in length, making the task of collecting fruit more difficult, due to limited maneuverability.

Controlling the snake’s route, you must be aware of hazards, such as trees, fences, etc., which will “kill� your snake if hit. The playing area is laid out in squares, where your snake can maneuver going up, down, left, and right. Once in a position, the optional moves are limited to three. While playing with a Zodiac, controlling the snake can be done with the joystick, hard keys, or the stylus. The most responsive of all of them, for me, was the hard keys.

The bottom of the screen will display the all-important meters. Health bar, amount of fruit left to collect, time, score, and bonus meters are all displayed on the bottom of the screen. Everything above and around it is the playing field and the background, which varies by level.

Speaking of levels, there are a jam-packed five levels in each of the game’s four worlds, making a total of twenty levels. Once you include the game’s four boss levels, which appear at the end of each world, you have a grand total of twenty four levels to master and create high-scores for.

SD is setup so that you must go level-by-level before being able to play each and every level. Once you beat the first level, in the first world, you can move on to level two and so on. Playing the Adventure mode will unlock maps and complete the story. In the Easy and Hard modes, you can choose from the maps that you have unlocked in Adventure.

Aside from the fruit, your snake can eat other items. A heart gives your snake an extra life, which is needed in many cases. Meat will add to your snake’s size and give you bonus points. If your snake is too large, which is all-too-common sometimes, a pop can will reduce the size of your snake. The clock will give you bonus time to reach a single fruit; unfortunately, this time doesn’t go over to the next fruit. The final item is the present, which is what you need to gain more bonus points, by completing the word “bonus�. Next to the bonus meter, you see an “x1�, “x2�, so on. This means your points are multiplied by that.

All in all, Snake Deluxe is one of the best games that I’ve played this spring. The release came at a slow juncture in the Zodiac’s life, so it is a relief to finally be able to cover something. This is yet another example of Crazy Soft’s continued dedication to quality Zodiac gaming.