I first became acquainted with Snood last year, when I discovered that
most of the members of the school's newspaper staff were addicted to
this odd-looking game. Whenever an editor was late to a meeting, a
fellow editor would announce, "Oh, they're probably playing Snood."
Sometimes the game would even find its way into the meeting via
someone's laptop.
I viewed this phenomenon with some
bemusement, not entirely understanding the obsession but still itching
ever so slightly to try it myself. Imagine my surprise when I returned
home from my overseas travels to find that my brother had installed it
on my computer in my absence.
"Wow," I thought. "This is that game that everyone at school is so obsessed with. I ought to give it a shot."
And so I did. I just started playing and figured it out as I went
along. When I was younger, I used to spend hours playing Tetris. Now I
found myself doing the same thing. Snood is quite a bit different from
Tetris, but it still operates under the basic premise that keeping the
board as clear as you can is a good thing.
In Tetris, you must
navigate oddly shaped blocks into recesses of the same shape. When you
complete a solid line, that line disappears. The goal is not to let the
blocks touch the top. As an added frustration, you have a limited amount
of time in which to rotate and maneuver each block.
In Snood,
each object you are working with is a single unit whose shape and face
depends upon its color. The blue Snood is a small circle that looks like
Mr. Bill. The red one is roughly the same size and has a less definite
shape. It resembles some sort of demon. The orange Snood is a large
sun-like circle, green is a large square, purple is a triangle, and
light blue is a square-like shape surrounded with fringes. Time is not
an issue. You can take as long as you want to launch that Snood. Try to
line it up with another of the same color, or start a new color group.
In order to latch on to harder-to-reach Snoods, try ricocheting off of
the side. You'll have less control over where it goes, but it might just
lead you to eliminate a whole string of Snoods.
This is a
game of strategy. You have to line Snoods up in groups of three.
Sometimes a group much larger than that will be there when the level
begins, and all you need to do in order to disperse it is attach a Snood
to the whole lot. The bigger the group the better, and the more Snoods
are supported by it the better. You get the highest points by dispersing
large clusters of Snoods with several random Snoods attached to them
with nothing left to cling to.
Snood comes in five basic
levels: Child, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Evil. I started out always
playing Journey, which takes you through the levels until you are unable
to clear one, but now I stick to Evil, which is very populous, moves
down towards the bottom of the screen very quickly, and includes many
skulls, which are dead Snoods that can only be removed by shooting down
the Snood clusters that support them. An additional option is Puzzle, in
which Snoods are not laid out in rows but are arranged in a strange
pattern. I've only played this a couple times. It's pretty tough.
Snood involves only the motion of waving around a mouse and clicking
it. It can become monotonous, and if you've been staring at the screen
for a couple hours playing it your arm will probably start to hurt and
your eyes will start to water. The problem is that this game is so darn
addictive! You get on your computer to do your homework and say "Oh,
I'll just play a quick game of Snood before I write my paper." There is
no such thing as a quick game of Snood. One leads to another, which
leads to another, which leads to another... Don't let it happen. Be
warned, Snood will grab hold of you and will not let you go willingly.
Be prepared to fight back. If you try Snood, just know what you're
getting yourself into...
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