Clid the Snail

Backlog Impressions (Demo) - Clid the Snail.png

In a world devoid of humans, animal/human hybrids have now taken over. But each species has separated themselves into various factions that don't always get along. Clid is a troublemaker in the snail citadel and got himself ostracized because of it. Now he and his chatty firefly companion are left to find their place in this war torn world fraught with a massive Slug infestation. Armed with a laser rifle and a snarky attitude, Clid is in for one shell of a time.

First and foremost those graphics straight up blew me away. The depth of detail and all the atmospheric coloring made me do a double take to see if this actually was an indie game. Seriously, they are triple A levels I’m talking about here. DANG!! I explored the heck out of each place just to take in all the scenery! I loved seeing all the leftover “relics'' left behind by the giants (humans) peppered throughout the landscape. It added an interesting scope of vision to Clid’s world that I don’t think I would have had otherwise. He’s still a normal sized snail traversing through a human sized world after all.

Now, I’m not generally a person that needs or appreciates a lot of hand holding within a game but for demos I think in order to get the most out of the short amount of time you are given, some direction is necessary. I made it through most of the demo before I realized I had access to a bunch of different gun types, as well as different grenades and even a special missile attack. I don’t know if in the full game you start with this full arsenal, but since you do in the demo version a heads up would have definitely been nice.

Other than that the game handles nicely with twin-stick style controls and full controller support. The various guns (once I discovered their existence and started over) all brought a different flavor to the party which really spiced up the gameplay. It was fun seeing what worked best for each situation and I’m pretty sure I used everything I had access to when it came to the end boss.

I’d say what was given in the demo was a decent taste of what you could expect to experience in the full game. You were shown a small part of each element and it absolutely piqued my interest for the rest. You got to see a small bit of story, some world exploration, a few collectables, what to expect when fighting enemies, and even a boss fight. I’d say this demo really gave the whole package experience..

Also, nothing was blocked off or visibly unfinished so it really felt like you were just playing a chunk of the full game. The story left on a nice and intriguing cliffhanger so as soon as that “Thanks for playing” screen popped up I was definitely left looking for more..

The game is already finished and fully released for the PS4/PS5 and due to be released in full on Steam sometime this year. This is absolutely a wishlist game for me. I don’t have any immediate complaints for anything I encountered during the demo. There’s nothing I think needs changing or fixing other than I hope there are at least a few helpful tips in the beginning of the game for those not in the know. The gameplay is fairly straightforward and simple but certainly not without challenge. So having a bit of help with your starting loadout would definitely be helpful. That’s not a deal breaker by any means though and I’ll absolutely be keeping my ear to the ground for the upcoming Steam release.

If you’d like to take this game for a test drive you can find the free demo here on Steam. You can also jump right into the full release version on the PlayStation.