Temple of Snek

Indiana Jones may hate them, but I love snakes. At least when it comes to video games. I don’t care if it’s Snake Rattle ‘N Roll in the 1990s or the more recent Snake Pass, slithering around the stages opens up a lot of awesome possibilities for developers. Temple of Snek is the newest game to celebrate the greatness of snakes. It’s a brain-teasing adventure game that takes that classic Snake game we all played on old school cell phones and mixes it with a Metroidvania-inspired dungeon crawler. The result is a fun, original and surprisingly violent puzzle that continues the snake winning streak. This is my review of Temple of Snek.

Have you ever seen a movie or read a book where a temple full of valuable treasures is being protected by a giant, man-eating snake? Well, in Temple of Snek, you are that snake. It’s your job to work your way through the puzzle-filled labyrinth in an effort to munch on all of the pesky humans and, if you’re lucky, find a way out of here.

There are two things you need to know about Snek – she moves to the beat of the music and hates it when you smash into a wall, spike trap or even her own tail. In a lot of ways, the standard rules of that old school Snake game apply in this brand-new dungeon crawler update. The big change is that Snek’s tail will now grow every time she feeds on human flesh, a constant reminder that you’re the apex predator in this scenario.

It's important that Snek continues to grow her tail, as you’ll quickly discover that the puzzles become bigger and more elaborate the further into the temple you get. A common situation will have Snek use her expanding tail to cover a series of buttons to open a gate to the next part of the dungeon. Of course, it’s not always that easy, as you’ll need to navigate around all kinds of temple-themed obstacles and death traps. You’ll also find that not every human wants to be eaten. So much of the game comes down to figuring out all the different ways you can use Snek’s limited body to solve puzzles and advance the quest.

What proves to be the game’s biggest strength (and perhaps it’s biggest weakness), a lot of Temple of Snek is about exploring that temple. The game isn’t nearly as linear as it first appears, with paths that loop back around, dungeons with multiple exits and humans you can devour in whatever order you wish. The more you investigate the map, the more impressed you’ll be by both the level and puzzle designs. This is the kind of game that could spiral out of control in a thousand different ways, yet PixelJam Games absolutely nails the size and scope of this ambitious adventure.

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It helps that each chapter offers something new to contend with. In one part of the temple, you’ll get caught up in a bunch of narrow pipes that restrict Snek’s movement. Just a few chapters later, the biggest obstacle is water, something the snake can very easily fall into if not careful. You’ll also discover that our slithering hero can climb up to higher levels in order to explore even more of the temple. The game is good about individually introducing these ideas and then slowly incorporating them into all of the puzzle designs going forward.

I found that my appreciation for the level design grew at the same rate as Snek’s tail. The longer her body became, the more impressed I was by the way the temple was laid out. It’s one thing when your tail is no more than five or six spaces long, but when you’ve eaten fourty or fifty humans, you’ll have a tail that is sometimes in three different puzzles at the same time. Simple things like turning around or correcting a stupid mistake can be nearly impossible with a body that size.

I imagine that this is one of the reasons why the game was in Early Access for two years. With temple this large and explorable, you need a lot of people making sure that you aren’t constantly getting stuck in areas you can’t escape. You can see the developer trying their hardest to find a way around this problem by giving you the option to revert back the last seven checkpoints. This will usually be enough to get you out of trouble, but it’s not perfect. I got myself hopelessly stuck in my first playthrough due to the size of Snek’s tail. Even after reverting back seven checkpoints, I was stuck. I was forced to start over, learning an important lesson about being very careful.

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While I’m on the subject of things that frustrated me about Temple of Snek, I don’t like how often the puzzles require trial and error. A lot of the later stages will feature long and elaborate puzzles with multiple moving parts, a lot of which you’ll need to figure out by dying over and over. There are also times when the camera angle will make it hard for you to see an obstacle, especially when you’re transitioning from one room to the next. The game expects you to have cat-like reflexes to dodge some of the death traps, but you’re not a cat, you’re a really big snake. The game is expecting too much.

Thankfully, everything else about this game is fantastic. I like the look and atmosphere of the temple, and how much the visuals will change as we explore its many rooms. I’m also a big fan of the obstacles and how they are incorporated into the level designs. Best of all, Temple of Snek has a catchy procedural soundtrack that changes are you play. There are also a number of secrets to uncover, fun ways to customize the snake and a classic mode that is all about eating and growing your score. In other words, there’s a lot to like about Temple of Snek, even if you don’t share my love for virtual snakes.