Snaked – $.99, App Store

GIVEAWAY OVER – CONGRATS TO DANNYRODRI

Remember the good old days of owing a cheap little Nokia? Remember playing Snake on it? When searching for a straight-up snake game for my iPhone, I came across Snaked, which is available in the App Store for $.99. This beautifully designed game will give you hours of near-endless gameplay wherever you go (for a small fee). With 3 different game modes and several environments, you will definitely be please with this particular game of snake.

The main menu is very straightforward and stylish. You have 5 options-New Game, Scores, Options, Help, News.

The News menu will allow you to view news from Broken Thumbs Apps, as well as some of their other apps and credits for this particular app.

The Help menu will tell you how to play the game and more. If you come across a problem with the app, you can submit an issue from right within the application.

Choosing Gameplay from the Help menu will tell you all about the different game modes. There are 3, with 2 of them being documented. These mods are explained in the screenshot above and under the screenshot below.

Now, the first thing I personally check first in a game is the options/settings menu, just to see if I can find anything to play around with.

The first option lets you change the game mode (Snaked, Classic, or Out of Cage).

The Classic game mode is just a basic game of snake, where you navigate your snake to various pieces of fruit (or a rat if you wish). Your snake gets longer on each bite, so you have to eat as much as possible without running into a barrier or your own snake.

The Snaked game mode is the same as Classic, but adds two extra objects. The red one adds to the length of your snake, and make it go in the opposite direction it was originally going in. The gold one adds to the length of your snake, and gives you double the points of the normal green object.

Out of Cage is the same thing as Snaked, but it gets rid of the borders around the world (so you can go on and on).

The rest of the options are pretty self-explanatory. You can enter in your name (that you want to show up when submitting scores), turn sounds on or off, change the environment/backdrop/background, change the food type (fruit or rat), and to choose whether or not you want your scores automatically submitted to the online leaderboard. At the complete bottom, you can enter in your Twitter username and password. At the end of each round (or after the game is over), you will have the option of posting your score through Twitter or through Facebook.

The game modes selection screen.

The environment selection screen.

The next menu is the Scores menu, where you can check up on your scores through all 3 game modes. You can also challenge a friend by sending them an email. If you’re curious as to what other people are scoring, you can view the global leaderboard. Optionally, you can clear out all f your scores by tapping the ‘Clear Scores’ button.

The New Game menu is where you’ll probably be spending all of your time at. From here, you can select the overall speed of the game and the control scheme.

There are three different speeds-Slow, Medium, Fast. Slow is a bit too slow, and fast is a bit too fast, so medium is probably the safest and more entertaining way to play.

There are also three different control schemes-Plus, Swipe, Tilt. You can see what the control will look like by looking at the bottom of the screen. Plus gives you a basic D-pad that you find on normal game console controllers (my personal favorite way of controlling the game). Swipe gives you a little ‘trackpad’ area, where you can swipe in the direction that you want your snake to travel in. Tilt uses the accelerometer in your device to navigate the snake. This mode is a bit ‘iffy’, but still fun when you can master it. If you want to get right into a game without looking goofy, Plus is the way to go. If you want more of a challenge, then give Swipe a try. If you’re all-out nuts, go for Tilt.

When you’re ready to play, tap on the “Hatch”/start button. Your snake will hatch itself and begin roaming in its environment.

This is what the Swipe controller looks like.

Tilt will give you an arrow of the way your device is tilted.

Now we’re at the good stuff! Looking for your object (fruit or rat) can be a little bit hard (due to their small sizes), but this will become an easy and instant task after a few rounds. You can pause the game or disable sounds while playing. Tapping the blue ‘<’ button will take you back to the main menu, to where you will not be able to resume the game.

Again, we recommend playing with the Plus controller. It’s the most fun and rewarding, as it’s easier to use.

When you hurt yourself, you will be taken to the game over screen, where you can view your score, restart the game, view all of your scores, or go back to the main menu. Remember the Twitter information in Options earlier? This is where it will come to play, since you can tweet your score. The tweet will look like this:

I got 200 points playing Snaked! Play #Snaked today!http://bit.ly/aRjAa

You can also share the same thing on Facebook.

As for the gameplay itself, it is very fun. Whether or not you like snake, it doesn’t matter. You will enjoy playing this app. By adding two extra objects, it makes the game more challenging and even more enjoyable than it already is. The only con that I can think about for this game is the mediocre sound effects; they’re too corny. Hopefully they will be changed in the next version. After thinking about it, the corny sounds are pretty funny .

So that about does it! This is a very fun app with an elegant interface and cute graphics that will catch the attention of anyone. Whether or not you like playing snake, you will like playing Snaked. As it is only ninety-nine cents in the App Store, you have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Check it out today.

GIVEAWAY TIME!

We’ve received one (1) promo code to give away (more may be on the way). To enter, just leave a comment to this post. We will assign all participants with a number. We will then use a random number generator to pick the winner. Contest ends tomorrow at 8:00PM EST (Sunday, January 10, 2010). Good luck!