Sneezies: Sneeze, and you’ll start a Chain Reaction!

Posted on December 28th, 2008. Written by Arron.

Developed by Antair Games, published by Chillingo Ltd and with it’s latest update released on December 20th, Sneezies is a well designed, cutely put together chain reaction puzzler for iPhone and iPod touch …

Played in landscape, and taking it’s concept from Bugz, Sneezies sees you trying to start a chain reaction of … sneezing. Unlike Bugz, Sneezies puts a more visually pleasing twist on things – ultimately making you want to play it for longer periods of time.

Gameplay
In Sneezies [App Store] your presented with a screen full of cute little creatures trapped in bubbles, called Sneezies. Tapping anywhere on the screen will sprinkle a cloud of ‘sneezing dust’ which will make the sneezies sneeze. The Sneezies sneezing will cause their bubble to pop and them to parachute to the safety of the ground below. Your aim is to release your sneezing dust just at the right time in order to cause a huge chain reaction of sneezing between the sneezies, and save as many of the sneezies as possible.

The game sees you playing in two modes. Classic and Challenge. In classic mode you’ll play through 45 levels. With your one fist-full of sneezing powder, you’ll aim to free as many Sneezies as possible, while also ensuring that you meet the minimum requirement, to progress to the next level. This is also a good time to point out that in ‘Classic’ mode each level will have a goal amount of Sneezies you need to free in order to progress. If you fail to meet this number, you’ll have to play the level you failed on again, until you succeed. The amount of sneezies on screen is shown in the bottom right, along the amount of sneezies you’ve already managed to free. Your current score is displayed in the top right of the screen.

Challenge mode see’s you take on something entirely different. Sneezing through 15 levels, with a limited amount of sneeze powder, you’ll aim to free as many of the sneezies as possible. If you manage to clear roughly 75% of the screen of sneezies, and you’ll earn more sneezing dust. Run out of dust before you finish the level and you’ll have to play that level again. Levels get progressively harder, to the point were you may be seeing yourself playing a level 4, 5 or even 6 times to meet the popping requirement.

Visuals
Cute and adorable. Fluffy and charismatic. It’s clear a lot of thought has gone into the presentation and layout of this title. Each level has a different visual backdrop accompanying it. Ranging from festive to halloween to streams and meadows, and actually they seem to really round the game off. Once the sneezies requirement is met for each level, these backdrops will become brighter for a second or two, to symbolise your success and the level’s competition.

Latest update
The update released on Dec 20th by Antair Games brought ‘Classic’ mode up from 30 levels to 45, and added a further 5 levels to ‘Challenge’ mode bringing that up from 10 to a satisfactory 15 levels. Also, the game now supports the playing of music from iPod.app. Simply start your music before launching Sneezies.

Overall
Sneezies is a cute, addictive puzzler and consequentially has that of high replay value. At 0.59p it’s affordable to almost everyone, and definitely passes the time away. Having said that we would like to see the future addition of online play, as well as a global leader board. This is bound to give the game more depth, and well as generate more interest worldwide.

Current status: Recommended

Reviewed at: v1.1
Reviewed on Firmware: 2.2
Download size: 5.8MB
Released on: 20th Dec 2008
Retails for: £0.59 / $0.99

Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G