Iron Snout

Iron Snout feels like a better presented version of one of those crappy LCD games Tiger Electronics used to make that your aunts would get you for Christmas because she heard you like video games. Not the borderline-quality stuff like Game & Watch (of which I’ve reviewed a tribute to as well) I’m not kidding about that even a little bit. Here, you wait in the center of the screen for wolves to get within striking range. Then, mashing the arrow keys, you attack them until they die. Occasionally the wolves will throw stuff at you, which you can duck or try to knock it back at them. There’s two stages, both with different sets of enemies, and a multiplayer mode that I didn’t get to try out. And uh, yeah, that’s about it.

Hey, look Kris and Jesse, I finally threw a Dragon Punch!

I know for a fact you can take those shitty LCD games and make something fun with them. I know this because Nintendo did it a few times with their Game & Watch Gallery series. I don’t know for sure if those were the inspiration for Iron Snout. All I know is Iron Snout is incredibly boring. Despite the developers giving you a somewhat decent variety of moves, everything is still done with just the arrow keys and it feels limiting. Not to mention that some of the enemies are sort of fickle as to what constitutes a hit and what doesn’t. I struggled greatly with the timing of hitting the rocket wolves and the wrecking ball wolves, where sometimes it damaged me and sometimes it didn’t. Even though it looked like I was timing it right. I’m sure with enough time, I could be more consistent, but thing is, I don’t really want to put time into a game I’m not having any fun at all with. It’s not broken or anything. It’s just painfully dull. Give me a game failing in a hilarious way to being a slog any day of the week.

Once upon a time, I cringed every time an indie had something that resembled a Nintendo intellectual property in their game as a “tribute.” It seemed like it was poking the hornet’s nest. After all, this is a company that once sued a user on a porn site for listing Zelda as an interest. But, it would seem Nintendo has lightened up a bit. I hope. I didn’t like Iron Snout but I don’t want it or ANY indies getting sued. I haven’t played a single King.com game since the Banner Saga fiasco, and I never will. We should all stand in solidarity on stuff like this, no matter how you feel about the quality of the games.

I put thirty minutes into Iron Snout and never once had even a little bit of fun, and so it doesn’t really matter if the game is free or not. I know Iron Snout has its fans, but I’m not among them. I did get nine achievements with almost no effort, which I’m guessing is the point. We live in an era where people will play a terrible game, even pay for it, if it means getting easy achievements, even ones no self-respecting gamer could possibly want. Some people call them participation trophies. But that’s not accurate. I think of them more as Halloween costumes. “TRICK OR TREAT!” “Oh look at the little gamer all dressed up with his Iron Snout and Super Duper Flying Genocide achievements. That’s adorable.”

Iron Snout was developed by Snout Up

Free to play on Steam