By about the age of 5 or so everyone has played at least 3 essential games – or a generic version of them. Tetris, Pac Man, and Snake. If you don’t remember, Snake is that game where you move around the screen, eating apples, growing larger and can’t run into yourself. Tron light cycles is a take-off of the game play. Sometimes You has released a snake / puzzle game that breathes new life into the genre. Grab the Bottle will keep you twisting and turning as you try to reach your goal.
The game has a simple if not odd premise – you are a person with elastic arms and you want your bottle. As a baby it is milk, and as you grow it becomes soda then then hard stuff. The object is to stretch your arm out, avoid hitting solid objects in the room and grab your bottle. To make it more interesting, as you progress you will have to grab pacifiers or other objects before you can grab the bottle, open doors, or clear the way to your prize. Once you grab onto something your arm will retract until you drop it.
The true heart of this game lays in the puzzles. If it was just a simple game of snake it would get boring fairly quickly. But there are dozens of levels for you to conquer, each with its own trials. As you try to complete each level, you can only run into your arm or other objects in the level a total of 3 times before you have to start again. This can be a bit frustrating as you get further along in the game, but if you fail several times you will have the option of seeing the solution or getting a boxing glove that will protect you as you finish the level. Either of these choices will make earning some of the achievements harder. But once you know the solution, you can redo the level and hopefully not die.
The graphics in the game remind me a lot of Sunday newspaper cartoons. Many of the levels are comprised of a single screen there are a few that do scroll. The scenes are well done and you will learn quickly which areas you can move through and which are solid. The music is original, but gets repetitive, especially if you get stuck on some of the harder levels. After a while you will probably mute the music to concentrate on the puzzles or put on your own tunes.
Grab the Bottle is out now and available on XB1, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Steam. You can add it to your collection for around $5. It is a fun game that you can play for a few minutes or a few hours. While a fun twist on the original snake game, the puzzles can get a bit frustrating as you get further into it which detracts from the fun. The title will test your ability to maneuver in tight spaces and figure out which order things need to be done in.
