Brute Forcing Snipperclips: Turning an Intelligent Game into Madness

The fantastically designed, Switch Exclusive puzzle-game, Snipperclips, has met its match.

I’m sure Snipperclips is a bastion for creative puzzle-solving that rewards intelligent problem-solving and outside the box thinking.

I’m neither out of the box or intelligent, and so my co-operative puzzle-solving tactics are direct.

To illustrate, one of Snipperclips’ early puzzles tasks players with catching a pencil vertically, taking it across the stage, and pushing it horizontally into the pencil-sharpener. Press videos suggest the smart thing to do is to cut a pencil-width hole into your friend (to do which your friend needs to first cut you into a pencil-width stencil), catch the pencil, and then carry it to the other side.

Press videos made it look like too much work, so my brother and I did what any other ape would do in our situation: we forwent the “solution” aspect of puzzle-solving. The pencil delivery was a balancing act- to start. One of us would drop the pencil from its starting position, and the other would attempt to catch it on his untouched, fully-formed head. The following seconds were a mad dash to try and take the precariously balanced pencil to the other side. Invariably, the other one of us would somehow get in the way, tossing the mobile pencil out of bounds.

After several minutes of this, we didn’t do what any sane person would do and change our approach. We certainly didn’t use the game’s primary tool for problem-solving (namely, the snipping mechanic). We jumped harder, I suppose: with more vigor, more tenacity, and more, evidently, success. At last, we managed to push the pencil into the pencil sharpener.

A later stage tasks players with catching fish. Perhaps carving a fish bowl shape into your friend might help you get them from the pond into the goal. Maybe a scoop shape would similarly suffice.

We neither cut nor scooped. But in the end, we made it happen all the same.

Certainly, most of the game’s stages do require at least some cutting and thinking. Not everything can be beaten mindlessly. There are plentiful moments where it becomes apparent that the right snipping and clipping will result in a fantastic solution, when we conjure some idea that makes us feel like the evolved species that we are.

And for all of those, there are moments too where the snipping and clipping turns hostile and the puzzle ends up solved by accidental, abstract shapes that are more the result of a nasty battle than a thoughtful approach.

 

Check back later in the week for more on Snipperclips, including further impressions on its primary and secondary modes, and our verdict on whether or not the game is worth a purchase  (spoiler: it is).