Review: Sneaky Sneaky

Generally, stealth games tend to be dark and kind of depressing. Thief and Dishonored feature protagonists always clad in black, and murdering people. They always move around at night, in cities with a lot of sick people. Having a fun stealth game is rare. There is the occasional chicken suit and clown costume, but those are weird in any genre.

Sneaky Sneaky, a stealth-puzzle game, shows the player a different side of stealth games. It’s bright, colourful and adorable with no dark cities or brooding antiheroes. It takes place in bright woods, sunny deserts and clean, shiny towns. All of these characteristics and its overall cutesy presentation make this a nice introductory stealth game for a younger audience.

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There isn’t really that much of a story. You play Sneaky, a cute little thief who stole some rubies from the sultan and got thrown in jail for it. You’re now breaking out of jail and getting all of your rubies back. Each stage has three of those rubies for you to find. If you find all of the items, you’re awarded bonus points at the end. The other ways to get points is to kill enemies without being detected, back-stabbing them and just killing them. Not killing enemies in a level will not get you points, so get the sword out and paint it red. I personally think this mechanic is out of place in a game aimed at a younger audience, finishing an area without disposing of the enemy is harder in some of them and should be rewarded accordingly.

Your hero doesn’t have to get his loot back without support. Your buddy Squeaky, a mouse, helps you out by running a shop so you can buy helpful items. These range from potions, to refill health and action points, to bait-meat and a barrel to hide in. To buy all these goodies, you’ll need some money. It’s either lying around the level or the enemies drop some, after you dispose of them.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you will be detected by enemies. If this happens, the game changes into s turn-based combat challenge. If the enemy spots you first, he will have the first turn, if you, however, engage the combat, you will get the first turn. You can either choose to run away or fight. During your turn, you have actions – these can be raised by either drinking from ponds or drinking some potions.

For the hero to get his precious loot in the end, he has to go through three areas. The Impwood, the Cursed Canyon and the Summer Kingdom. All the different locations feature a variety of enemies and new environments for the player. Through this, the game makes you rethink strategies you’ve learned in prior levels. The Cursed Canyon, for example, features deep sand in a lot of its levels. Your hero moves significantly slower when moving through the sand. This means you have to lay traps for the enemy to walk past, while you are hidden or you throw some meat on the floor to distract them.

Although the game is called Sneaky Sneaky, and you’re playing a thief, the game isn’t actually that much about sneaking. Every situation you come across is a little puzzle. As you are aware where most enemies are going, their field of view, finding the right position to kill them is most of the game. As there are a lot of different enemies, you have to rethink your approach in almost every level. During some instances you can kill enemies by luring them into traps. These little puzzles break up the gameplay a bit, so that it varies from the remaining game. There are some levels which are quite difficult – in these you are often facing a large number of enemies or you don’t have a lot of cover options. But these situations are rare and easily forgiven. For each difficult area, there’s an easy one right around the corner. Tackling these areas multiple times won’t mess up your score that much. The game doesn’t really have penalties for retries, just a small bonus at the end for no retries. These extra points don’t really matter that much, as you can easily get high scores.

Playing Sneaky Sneaky on a phone works great. The touch-controls work splendidly and the interface is not too small. However, enjoying the graphics properly is a tad bit difficult on a mobile device. Everything in this game looks beautiful. The animations are fluid, the environment looks like it was taken out of a storybook and the enemies find the balance between looking cute and menacing. All in all the look for the game is fantastic and accomplishes to set the tone instantly.

Sneaky Sneaky is the perfect game if you want your children to get into stealth and puzzle games. The look and the sound make it perfect for them. It’s not violent at all, as enemies just disappear into a puff of smoke.

Tags: chicken suit, iOS, Mac, PC, Sneaky, Sneaky Sneaky, Squeaky