Sandlot Games: Snail Mail iPhone
You’re a snail with the tedious task of delivering mail through the universe. Your life is made difficult by the fact that you must collet the parcels during your travels, while avoiding salt, aliens, and near-certain death. Sound like you’re kind of fun?
Snail Mail is a racing adventure game that features Turbo the Snail, who you must guide through an interplanetary obstacle course to make package deliveries. Through a combination of cell-shaded and 3D graphics, solid control responses, and terrific replay value, Snail Mail delivers big gaming fun.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
SNAIL MAIL
Episode 1: A New Recruit Episode 1: A New Recruit
There is turmoil within the Republic. The SLUG PIRATES have established trade barriers all along the Intergalactic Highway barring all package delivery. Fearful of the Slugs’ wrath, the Galaxy Postal Service has gone on strike. Meanwhile, on planet Earth a young snail named TURBO has come of age and is ready to join the ranks of SNAIL MAIL, the fastest delivery service in the known universe. Now TURBO will have to brave great dangers to collect, protect, and deliver the packages that we rely upon…
Snail Mail features three different modes of play — postal adventure, time trial, and challenge mode. The objective is to guide Turbo the Snail along a racecourse from start to finish, picking up as many packages as possible before reaching the end. Of course Turbo must face obstacles along the way, including spiky slug enemies and salt blobs and enemy fire that will injure Turbo. Playing in postal adventure mode will take you through increasingly difficult levels, while time trial and challenge mode lets you revisit levels you’ve already played and attempt to beat the high score.
Snail Mail exhibits all the qualities of a great adventure game, including weapon power ups that Turbo can use to defend himself against enemy objects and health pickups to prolong his life. What’s great about Snail Mail is that solid game play is coupled with a strong replay value. The option to change control settings from tilt to touch appeases a wider variety of users and actually comes in handy for the more challenging courses. You also have the option of checking out the built-in tutorial, which thoroughly explains game play, or jumping right in on your own.
From a technical standpoint, the game is stable, runs at a very smooth frame rate, and has only one load time when it is started up. The game itself is a blast to play with each course offering enough of a varied challenge to be worth playing over and over again. The tilt controls are the best I’ve seen in an iPhone game and really set this apart from other games which sometimes feel like a chore to control, especially on the subway. The game exudes great personality, and is quite easy to pick up and play on the go.
The colorful combination of cell shading and 3D graphics make Snail Mail visually appealing and the sound effects are pretty solid as well. This game gets a round of applause and my strongest recommendation especially at the price of $1.99!
