Snood (video game)

Last updated

Snood
Snood Coverart.png
Game Boy Advance cover
Developer(s)
Publisher(s)
Programmer(s) Dave Dobson
Composer(s) Mark Cooksey (GBA)
Chris Brighton (GBA)
Platform(s) Mac OS, Windows, MS-DOS, Game Boy Advance, iOS, Android
ReleaseMac OS
MS-DOS, Windows
Game Boy Advance
  • NA: October 28, 2001
  • EU: November 30, 2001
iOS
  • WW: May 8, 2009
Genre(s) Puzzle
Mode(s) Single-player

Snood is a puzzle video game programmed by Dave Dobson. Snood was released for Mac OS in 1996 as shareware, then for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows in 1999. An adaptation for Game Boy Advance was developed by Rebellion Developments and released by Destination Software in 2001, and an iOS version was developed by Iron Galaxy and released by EA Mobile on May 8, 2009. Dobson founded Snood, LLC to sell the game.

Contents

As in Puzzle Bobble , connecting three or more identical Snoods makes them disappear from the board. When the board is cleared, the level advances. If the Snoods reach the bottom of the screen, a life is lost. Play is not time-limited in most game modes. [1]

A sequel, Snood 2: On Vacation , was developed by Gravity-i and released by Destination Software for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS in October and November 2005 respectively.

Gameplay

The pieces in the game are called Snoods. There are seven regular Snoods and four Special Snoods. The regular Snoods are Jake (Blue), Midoribe (Green), Mildred (Grey), Spike (Purple), Zod (Red), Geji (Light blue), and Sunny (Yellow).

Each turn, the player launches a Snood of randomly selected color into the playfield. If the Snood lands adjacent to two or more Snoods of the same color, all connecting Snoods of that color vanish and any pieces left unattached beneath the vanished Snoods drop down. The player's score increases with the number of Snoods eliminated. With each Snood launched, a Danger Meter increases and when it reaches the top, all the Snoods in play lower a level. If the Snoods drop past the lowest level of the playing field, the game is over. Releasing Snoods reduces the "Danger Meter".

The first special Snood is called Numbskull, which is shaped like a human skull and is the one type of Snood that is never launched into play, which means it cannot be joined with other Snoods except Wildcard. If Numbskulls are found at the start of a level, they will have to be isolated and dropped by the player to remove them from the board. If the player loses the game, all the Snoods will turn into Numbskulls, serving as a visual game over message.

The other three special Snood pieces may be launched, and appear at random (and infrequently). One is called Stone which is round and gray, and will always knock out the Snoods adjacent to where it lands. Another is called Wildcard which appears to cycle through all of the regular Snoods and Numbskull and may be used in place of any of them, but if it does not join any two or more identical pieces together, it would just drop, and if it joins more than one set of two or more identical pieces, even if each set has different piece from each other, all such sets would be eliminated. The last is called Rowbuilder, a diamond-shaped creature which will fill one row horizontally with like regular Snoods. In the registered game, users may control how frequently these special Snoods appear.

The premise is simple. Unlike Puzzle Bobble, there is no conventional time limit in Snood modes other than Time Attack, but players must eliminate Snoods efficiently enough to prevent the gradually descending ceiling from crushing them. Many levels also require Snoods to be ricocheted off of walls in order to get them in the appropriate spot, which can be tricky. Snood requires considerable skill at approximating angles as well as strategy.

Awards and recognition

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Inc., lists Snood as one of his favorite games. [2]

Jupiter Media Metrix found in 2001 that Snood was the ninth most-played game with 1.5 million unique users. This is most notable because most of the games on the list came with various versions of Windows (such as the top-ranked game, Solitaire , with 46.7 million users). [3] The "addictive" qualities of the game have been described in an article titled "Snood: At Least It's Not Crack". [4]

Snood received 2004 Shareware Industry Award for Best Game Action/Arcade on July 17. [5]

Snood has been used regularly by the Ronald McDonald House staff at Stanford University as a tool to teach seriously ill children. It has also been used as palliative for patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants and dialysis. [6]

Snood was voted "One of the Top 10 Things on the Web to make you happy", by the Daily News (New York) in April 2009. [7]

Related Research Articles

<i>Puzzle Bobble</i> 1994 video game

Puzzle Bobble, internationally known as Bust-A-Move, is a 1994 tile-matching puzzle arcade game developed and published by Taito. It is based on the 1986 arcade game Bubble Bobble, featuring characters and themes from that game. Its characteristically cute Japanese animation and music, along with its play mechanics and level designs, made it successful as an arcade title and spawned several sequels and ports to home gaming systems.

<i>Bubble Bobble</i> 1986 video game

Bubble Bobble is a 1986 platform game developed and published by Taito for arcades. It was distributed in the United States by Romstar, and in Europe by Electrocoin. Players control Bub and Bob, two dragons that set out to save their girlfriends from a world known as the Cave of Monsters. In each level, Bub and Bob must defeat each enemy present by trapping them in bubbles and popping, who turn into bonus items when they hit the ground. There are 100 levels total, each becoming progressively more difficult.

<i>Zoop</i> 1995 video game

Zoop is a puzzle video game originally developed by Hookstone and published by Viacom New Media in 1995 for the Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, MS-DOS, Macintosh, PlayStation, Game Gear, and Game Boy, then in 1996 for the Saturn and Jaguar. Zoop has similarities to Taito's 1989 arcade video game Plotting, but Zoop runs in real-time instead. Players are tasked with eliminating pieces that spawn from one of the sides of the screen before they reach the center of the playfield. By pointing at a piece and shooting it, the player can either swap it with the current player color and thus arrange the same color pieces in a row or column, or match the color.

<i>Descent</i> (video game) 1995 first-person shooter game

Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.

<i>Wetrix</i> 1998 video game

Wetrix is a 3D puzzle video game developed by Zed Two, the studio of brothers Ste and John Pickford, for the Nintendo 64 and personal computers in 1998, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 1999. The player's goal is to hold water bubbles falling on a 3D isometric landscape. To do this, enclosures are created with Uppers, which fall in a similar manner to Tetris blocks, that raise the ground. While water can be evaporated with fireballs, hazards such as Mines, Ice Cubes, and earthquakes also fall and ruin the player's construction.

<i>Anticipation</i> (video game) 1988 video game

Anticipation is a video board game developed by Rare and released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988. It is playable in either single-player or multiplayer mode, with up to four players competing against each other and/or computer-controlled opponents.

<i>Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo</i> 1996 video game

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, released in Japan as Super Puzzle Fighter II X, is a tile-matching puzzle video game released in 1996 for the CP System II (CPS2) arcade board, by Capcom and its Capcom Coin-Op division. The game's title is a play on Super Street Fighter II Turbo, as there were no other Puzzle Fighter games at the time, and the game includes music and interface elements spoofing the Street Fighter Alpha and Darkstalkers games. It was a response to Sega's Puyo Puyo 2 that had been sweeping the Japanese arcade scene.

<i>Bust-a-Move Pocket</i> 1999 video game

Bust-A-Move Pocket, also called Puzzle Bobble Mini, is a Neo Geo Pocket Color version of the Puzzle Bobble (Bust-A-Move) series of puzzle video games. It was released on the Neo Geo Pocket Color by SNK in 1999.

<i>Puzzle Bobble 2</i> 1995 video game

Puzzle Bobble 2 is a tile-matching video game by Taito. The first sequel to Puzzle Bobble, it is also known in Europe and North America as Bust-A-Move Again for arcades and Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition for home consoles. Released into the arcades in 1995, home conversions followed for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, and Windows platforms. The game was included in Taito Legends 2, but the US arcade version was included on the US PS2 version instead. Further ports for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One were released by City Connection alongside Puzzle Bobble 3 in February 2023.

Dynomite! is a PC game developed by Raptisoft Games and published by PopCap Games. Its gameplay is largely similar to that of the Puzzle Bobble series, but it has several unique differences.

<i>Ka-Glom!</i> 2006 video game

Ka-Glom! is a puzzle video game created and published by mobile developer Magmic. Originally developed for BlackBerry in 2006, it has since been ported to Java, Windows Mobile, and iOS devices. It is similar to Puyo Puyo which was originally released in 1991 by Compile for the MSX2.

<i>Space Bust-a-Move</i> 2008 video game

Space Bust-A-Move is a puzzle video game developed by Lancarse and published by Taito in Japan, and Square Enix worldwide for the Nintendo DS. It was first released in Japan under the title Space Puzzle Bobble on December 18, 2008. It was later released in North America under the title Space Bust-A-Move on July 28, 2009, and in Europe under the title Puzzle Bobble Galaxy on August 28, 2009. As with Arkanoid DS, Space Invaders Extreme and Space Invaders Extreme 2, the game is compatible with Taito's paddle controller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tile-matching video game</span> Type of puzzle video game

A tile-matching video game is a type of puzzle video game where the player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. In many tile-matching games, that criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. That number is often three, and these games are called match-three games.

<i>Crimsonland</i> 2003 shooter video game

Crimsonland is a top-down dual stick arena shooter video game with role-playing elements. It was developed by Finnish studio 10tons Entertainment and published by Reflexive Entertainment in 2003. In 2014 a re-release through digital distribution followed.

<i>Angry Birds POP!</i> 2015 tile-matching video game

Angry Birds POP! is a tile matching game co-developed by Rovio Entertainment and Outplay Entertainment that was soft launched for iOS in Canada in December 2014 and released worldwide for iOS and Android devices in March 2015. The game was originally the second game in the Angry Birds Stella series.

<i>Puzzle Fighter</i> (2017 video game) 2017 video game

Puzzle Fighter was a free-to-play competitive puzzle video game for Android and iOS devices, which is developed by Capcom Vancouver and published by Capcom. It is the successor to 1996's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and features playable characters from various Capcom franchises. The game launched in November 2017 and was discontinued in July 2018.

<i>Touhou Spell Bubble</i> 2020 video game

Touhou Spell Bubble is a rhythm based competitive arcade puzzle game developed in 2020 by Taito as an officially licensed spin-off in the Touhou Project series. The gameplay is similar to that of the Puzzle Bobble series, which Taito also developed. The company has referred to the game as "Puzzle Bobble meets Touhou Project," implying that they consider it to also be a spinoff of both series.

<i>Delbo</i> 2009 video game

Delbo is a puzzle video game developed and published by Japanese studio Beyond Interactive. Originally released as a Flash game in 2009, Delbo was later released for Nintendo DSi's DSiWare download service in 2010. Versions for Android and iOS devices were released in 2013. The objective of the game is to survive by shooting multi-colored orbs to make them crash into other orbs on the playfield.

<i>Snood 2: On Vacation</i> 2005 video game

Snood 2: On Vacation is a 2005 puzzle video game developed by Gravity-i and published by Destination Software in the United States for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS and Cybiko for mobile phones. Gameplay consists of clearing patterns of 'snoods' by matching pieces of the same color, in a manner similar to Puzzle Bobble or Bust-a-Move. The game is a sequel to the 1996 title Snood, ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2001. Upon release, Snood 2 met a mixed reception from critics, with praise directed to the game's variety of modes and criticism of its presentation and lack of originality.

References

  1. ↑ Download.com staff (November 9, 2008). "Snood for Mac". Download.com . CNET . Retrieved August 8, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Features – Woz Was Here – Steve Wozniak On His Gaming Past". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on June 12, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  3. ↑ Top 50 Computer Games of 2001 [ dead link ]
  4. ↑ John Meehan. "Snood: At Least It's Not Crack – Forum – CUA Tower – Catholic University of America". The Tower Newspaper. Retrieved July 12, 2013.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. ↑ "Shareware Awards Announced « Dvorak News Blog". Dvorak.org. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  6. ↑ ""Snood": New Game Fad Smiles Upon America". Computing With Kids. February 15, 2002. Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  7. ↑ Archived April 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.