Meet Snip and Clip, papery characters that became the unlikely stars of the Nintendo Switch launch line-up ever since we first saw them mischievously cut each other out. While Link’s open-air adventure has rightfully received critical acclaim and largely dominated the spotlight, Snipperclips: Cut it out together! is a game that wholeheartedly exemplifies everything that the portable console is about.
This colourful action-puzzler can be played solo, but really comes into its own when teamwork is thrown into the mix. Whether playing with two, three or even four friends, it is an experience that results in near continuous laughter as you try to coordinate your geometrically-shaped characters to solve the conundrums that developer SFB Games has concocted.
That’s a perfect match for the Joy-Con, then, which can see a controller quickly passed to a friend, family member or unsuspecting stranger, as you playfully snip each other’s character into different shapes to solve the puzzle scenarios that you find yourselves in. Snip and Clip can crouch, stretch and rotate, but the solutions will largely come from trimming each other’s papery goodness into specific shapes.
Depending on the puzzle, that can see your character mercilessly carved to create a sharp point to burst balloons or push buttons, become curved to carry a spherical object or act as a ramp, and, in others, cut each other to fit into a specified outline to fill a meter. Whether sharpening pencils, nudging a basketball into a hoop or rolling eggs to a certain location, Snipperclips isn’t short on surprising ways in which its unique mechanics are put to use.
Where a majority of games have become caught up in making us compete against one another, Snipperclips stands proudly as a game that would rather encourage communication – players working together to collectively feel rewarded upon a puzzle’s completion.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t competitive elements. Where Party mode expands on the puzzles seen in World mode, Blitz splits players into two teams to take each other on. However, there are only three choices here. Hoops will see you race to score baskets the quickest, Hockey similarly sees you try to sling a puck in your rival’s net which is played air hockey-style, and, with even more hilarious consequences, Dojo will see you try to cut each other’s team out. These never fail to raise a smile but are clearly more suited to short burst play.
Snip and Clip’s reactions to each other are particularly charming with the game being particularly well characterised, and the soundtrack playfully accompanies what amounts to a truly magical experience that’s bursting with personality. Where it stumbles is in brevity, in not really packing enough content to keep you returning over time. But, given the game’s quirky charm, there is certainly plenty of fun to be found in introducing it to whoever you can.
Snipperclips revels as a hilarious social experience, making you feel young at heart as you uncontrollably giggle when you spend time with it. Always better with friends involved, it is an early must-have hit for the Nintendo Switch.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Nintendo
