Review: Killer Snake for iOS

You know that feeling you get when you know your friend or partner is hiding behind the door, waiting to jump out at you?

Or when you're playing slapsies (look it up) and you just know a stinging blow is coming your way?

Knowing that such mildly unpleasant experiences are coming does nothing to lessen your jitteriness. In fact, if anything it makes it all the more thrilling.

In Killer Snake, Copenhagen Creators has built en entire game around this simple psychological fact.

Gets you rattled

Here it's not a mischievous acquaintance or a playground game that's handing out the thrills - it's a bunch of the world's most deadly snakes.

As you trawl the world's creepy crawly hotspots, from North America to Australia, you must tempt fate by dragging your finger across the undergrowth. When you encounter a snake you have to keep your finger on the screen, tempting it into making a move.

When the snake finally strikes, it's a cue to remove your finger from the screen post-haste.

This is made extremely tense and tricky by the fact that the snakes move around and feint. Like, y'know, snakes. Lift off early and you'll be branded a chicken, losing points into the bargain.

Doesn't quite adder up

That's pretty much it for Killer Snake. There are no clever transit systems, and no additional mechanics. Just drag and lift in the right spots.

In fact, underneath the solid (if somewhat murky) 3D representations of its creatures and various arbitrary points systems, Killer Snake is really more like one of those gimmicky 'tests' you see at fairs and end-of-pier arcades. Only rather than testing your strength you're testing your reaction speed.

IAPs explained Killer Snake is a freemium game, so it's been constructed to shake some pennies out of you a little way into the game. You can grind your way to the second continent with just a couple of replays of the first available continent, but you'll need a little more grinding to get to the third. Or, of course, you could purchase 1,000 coins for 69p. Annoyingly, it doesn't seem to be possible to quit out of the IAP menu without exiting the app.

It's as limited as it sounds. One continent is much like the next, only with slightly different foliage and quicker snakes.

You'll probably lose interest within an hour, as we did, although there's every chance that you'll drag the game out from time to time to show your non-gaming friends and family. It's one of those apps.

Killer Snake has a menacing look and sharp teeth, then, but it's not particularly intoxicating.