Of Nintendo’s first party offerings, Snipperclips has gotten perhaps the least amount of attention, which is a shame. Because it may end up being the game that has the greatest potential to offer the strongest case among mainstream gamers to invest in the Nintendo Switch hardware.
Snipperclips is a cooperative puzzle game in which two players assume shapes. To solve puzzles, players must cut away at each other. Objectives include simply conforming to a specified shape, or producing a goal that will accommodate an action, that again will achieve the level’s objective. Cutting is done by overlapping the characters. To produce fine tune angles, players need to rotate their character as well. You can always make up for mistakes like cutting away too much, with a press of a button, which brings the player character to a default state. You can also move your character and jump, like in a traditional platformer.
One challenge involved reaching a platform to push a button that would release a basketball. The ultimate goal is to get the ball in the hoop. The button is hard to reach, so first I had the other character cut away at me, enough so there was just a thin sliver left to reach the button. Since the basketball falls from above, I also had to cut away at my partner, as to catch the ball as it fell down. It took numerous attempts, and lots of coordination, but eventually we caught the ball.
Though then my partner had trouble getting the ball in the hoop instead of jumping to the make the shot, she accidentally reformed herself, causing to lose the ball. It was quite the challenge (the entire demo was no cake walk), but never frustrating. Perhaps Snipperclips could also be done on a tablet or smart phone, but required precision that only buttons can help make happen, again makes this a very strong case for the Switch.
