Snail Bob

Looking for Another Puzzle Game? Try Snail Bob!

Snail Bob is an original and relatively simple puzzle game for all ages. The cute animation style and harmless subject matter clearly targets a younger audience, but, as with any mobile puzzle game, Snail Bob is an enjoyable time-sink for anyone who enjoys the genre. The game opens with a slide show (which you can skip if you like) of a snail, presumably named Bob, minding his own business, when a construction crew mercilessly destroys his home. The puzzles of the game are based around helping Bob navigate a construction site. One assumes that he is searching for a new home, but he may be simply trying to escape the chaos, with various hazards constantly pushing him into ever more dangerous work zones.

Snail Bob does a good job of walking the player through various control options, operated either through a click of a mouse or tapping your touch screen, and each progressively more difficult puzzle builds on previous solutions in fairly intuitive ways. In each level, the goal is to move Bob from one side of the map to the other. Obstacles are wide ranging from simple pits and walls to hot plates and pretty lady snails who make bob crawl in the wrong direction. Generally, in order to make it through the level, the player is manipulating different parts of the map to create bridges, move walls and elevators, and change Bob's direction. The player can also change Bob's speed. At the beginning of a level, a timer starts counting down from 300, and the player's score is based on where the timer ends upon completion of the level.

The game progresses from step-by-step solutions to time sensitive solutions in a way that keeps the challenge rating from going stale, but not so quickly that less capable puzzle lovers can't keep up. Additionally, the time-based scoring system makes easier levels fun to go back to in order to get a better score. One thing missing from the game that's pretty common to games in this style, though, is other ways to increase your score, such as having additional objectives to pick up on the way to the exit or alternate ways to navigate the maze. All in all, though, Snail Bob is a good way to kill some time on you mobile phone!