SNIPER DAN
When I was a young lad, we had games that were all about silly fun. It was before the ascendant age of the Movie Game. Of the cinematic experiences, realism as the milestone to reach. Games, back then in the beautiful Nostalgialand of Yore, were not meant to compete with movies, but instead focused on delivering pure fun particles into the bloodstream. Things like APE ESCAPE or VIGILANTE 8. Like CEL DAMAGE or MISTER MOSQUITO. I am not saying that these games lacked vision, had no narratives or had no desire to have a lasting impact… More just that the core of their existence was to be as exhilarating to play as humanely possible!
SNIPER DAN made me smile in reminiscence of those times. It is a simple game. It is a game in a genre that requires possibly the least amount of work to be functional - a hidden object game. And I don’t want it to sound like an insult, perish the thought! But we have to admit that, at its core, you can make a hidden object game with a static picture and code an ability to point and click on it, done and cooked. What makes SNIPER DAN such a stellar example of the genre and the harkening back to the whole “games were meant to be fun first and foremost” notion is its silly premise and firm dedication to goofy, outlandish comedy in its every nook and cranny.
As the title suggest, you’re a sniper for hire. But you’re a peaceful gunman, a problem solver and not a ruthless killer! You will use your scope and rifle for the good of mankind. As you go to your jobs you will scope around a hefty stage, littered with confuzzled folks, cutesy animals and a heap of ongoing shenanigans. Your goal is to clear some jobs, which often are little puzzles to solve. Find your targets, clean’em up! It can be a variety of silly things - shoot off the pumpkins of the landing lane before a plane lands. Shoot off a rope mooring a boat just to watch it promptly sink down. Remove silly hats from people and enjoy how their expression instantly sours when they are rendered hatless. Each stage is packed with details, comedic mishaps and tiny scenarios of utter, Pythonesque nonsense.
But that’s not even the whole thing! What I appreciate about this title, more even than its well crafted stages, is the dedication to the bit. Your menu is you sitting behind your desk, shooting at things to trigger than. You can unlock and by new decorations for your office, minigames to kill time… Bah, even when you go into the shop, Dan just flips into a shooting basket to shoot at the goods he wants to acquire. You know it is a good - and very serious! - game, when one of the first purchases available was to replace the gunfire sounds for my rifle with a variety of rather moist sounding farts. Excellent stuff, no further comments.
There isn’t really much more I can write about SNIPER DAN. It is, at its core, a simple game and experience. You fetch a stage, bask in the scenery of crowded pockets of wordless storytelling and little mishaps and go to work. It’s relaxing, it’s hilarious, it pleases the brain. It helps that there is some dynamicity to the stages - not just motion, no, but jobs coming in via your phone to add a little bit of zest into the proceedings. Boss fights, if you can call them that. And each stage also offers a set of additional little challenges, like cleaning banana peels, setting off fireworks or finding non-trademarked knockoff Waldo.
And so, it is always a bit of good time to just jump into SNIPER DAN and have a short sesh of finding things, shooting them down and hoping for another goofy interaction to reveal itself on the screen. It’s a delightfully mindless fun, pure and asking nothing of you but for your attention. Even fi you’re a hardcore hidden object games nut, I think you can find a solid bit of enjoyment here. It’s that good stuff that I will happily see more off sitting in my STEAM library, waiting for its time to shine.
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