Review: Snack Match for iOS

I think Snack Match's narrative may just be the best video game story ever made. Unfortunately, being a casual game, it never really gets into the plot, so I'll outline it here.

You are Ralff, a fun-time party dog with a near-limitless selection of funky eyewear in his wardrobe, and who absolutely adores chowing down on snacks. Chicken drumsticks, steak chops, luminous green biscuit bones, and simple food in a blue bowl are just a few of his favourite things, and it's your job to give them to him.

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To do this you line up three or more of the same foodstuff to create a chain, which then removes them from play. These foodstuffs are to be found on a slowly moving play area that scrolls constantly to the right.

Unless you pick up a special icon like the alarm clock, of course, which halts the 60-second timer ticking away your session and impedes the progress of the play area. There's also a disco ball, which adds flashing lights and a score bonus, and a bomb that destroys nearby icons.

You can also pick up coins to spend on Buzz Ups. These change the way the game plays by tweaking the rules slightly. Score Charger increases how quickly you build your score, for example, and Lucky Moments will swap out the entire board for criminally simple rows of identical icons.

IAPs explained To Buzz Up costs coins. These are earned very slowly through play, or by straight-up paying for them. There's a Coin Doubler, too, and if you get really serious about the game, this is the IAP you'll definitely be wanting.

It is not, then, a game with a deep subject matter or highly complicated mechanics, but what it lacks in po-faced seriousness it makes up for in its ironic, Calvin Harris 'electro' hipster, faux-cool.

The game stars a dog with awesome glasses. Cool. A power-up comes in the form of generic disco. Cool. All the game icons are meat products. Cool.

Slow it down
The visuals are both clear and flashy enough to put a smile on your face. Ralff has the stylings of a future mobile icon: when he's not busy eating, he's sniffing the air, raising a knowing eyebrow at you, or making a "schlep schlep" sound with his mouth.

Menu design is streamlined beautifully, letting you jump straight into games as soon as you've booted the app up. Sadly, the boot times are less streamlines, and Snack Match would benefit from some technical improvement. Games last 60 seconds, but it takes a quarter of that just to get from home screen to title screen.

You've probably played a game like Snack Match before, and you probably played it a lot quicker than Snack Match will let you, but this effort's unique presentation and sense of fun make it a worthwhile download for fans of fast-paced puzzle games.