Apple picker In March of this year, the Czech-Slovak developer game studio "Alda Games" was founded in Brno. The studio didn't wait for anything and released the first game with the name after only a few months Save the snail. And as you can see from this game, Alda Games develops games of really high quality. They are currently working on another game which is still a secret. I think that after the great success of "Save the Snail", we have a lot to look forward to. For a long time, the game was at the top of both Czech and foreign App Stores.
What is the idea of the whole game? It's about saving the smiling snail from falling stones or the sun's rays. This puzzle game forces you to figure out how to combine the things at your disposal. In the first rounds it is of course simple, you grab a pencil and cover the snail with the pencil so that it is safe. Over time, you'll reach levels where you only have a button and a coin, for example. Only here comes the real fun of the puzzle game.
The game is free without annoying purchases, without ads, in Czech and beautifully hand-drawn. We rarely see these benefits in a game that is offered for free. There are 24 levels at your disposal, and their difficulty gradually increases with each subsequent one. At higher levels, you will also come across traps in the playing field. You often have to think first about which direction you will lead the snail in order to lead it to safety as quickly as possible. But watch out! The game evaluates, among other things, how long it takes you to solve the puzzle with the snail. Therefore, it is desirable to act as quickly as possible. If you don't manage to save the snail the first time, nothing happens, you just repeat the level.
I didn't find any major issue or bug while playing Save the Snail. The game is really great and I can recommend it to everyone. Both the little ones and the bigger ones. While playing, I was impressed by the beautifully drawn playing fields. In some levels, so much so that it was an experience and a pleasure for me to succeed in them. The only thing I missed in the game was the background music. However, I consider this to be a minor problem that could not in any way deprive me of the joy of playing this game.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/zachran-sneka/id657768533?mt=8″]
When I was tasked with writing this review, I thought I'd like to ask the developers at Alda Games a few questions. I asked Matěj Brendza about them and he willingly answered.
How did you get started? What was your first "baby"? How did your development team actually come to be?
We got together as a group of friends who have been in the gaming world for a long time. Several members of the team worked on the well-known game portal Raketka.cz or other projects related to virtual entertainment. The idea of founding our own studio and developing games came from Aleš Kříž, the main developer and producer of the Alda Games studio, who united us and kicked us off right :)
Save the snail is our absolute priority. We learned a lot while working on the title and it confirmed that this is the way we want to continue. The development of Šnek took 3 months, and immediately after its publication we started another interesting venture. For now, I can tell you that it's going to be something massive… multiplayer and online.
So how many of you are there? Do you somehow divide your functions or does everyone do everything?
As Alda Games is gradually expanding, I cannot tell you the definitive number at the moment. However, the core of the studio consists of 6 people who have assigned competencies - in short, they do what they do best. However, we all work together to be creative or come up with concepts.
Who gave your game a visual face?
Two very skilled artists participated in the visual side of the game. Nela Vadlejchová created the illustrations and Adam Štěpánek took care of the design.
What do you use for app development?
All development takes place in the Unity 3D game engine environment. This solution fully suits us and offers sufficient options for our needs.
You offer the game for free. Is this your promo?
Saving the snail has a special meaning for us, which is why we decided to provide the title to Czech and Slovak players completely free of charge. We are supporters of the idea that games should be made for fun and not for money, so we will approach payment models very carefully in our future titles as well.
There are relatively few iOS devices in our country. Why did you decide to develop for this platform?
We decided on iOS primarily because of the excellent compatibility of Apple devices. In addition, we are mostly "apple lovers" in this regard, so there was nothing to worry about. In the meantime, however, we compiled the game for Android as well, but due to the large variety of mobile devices with this system, we spent a lot of time on optimization and subsequent testing.
Whose idea is the snail?
Um... why did we focus on the unfortunate fate of the snail? It came spontaneously. We knew we wanted to save something, brainstorming started and a small smiling snail was saved.
Thanks for the interview!
I tried a few introductory levels. The idea is almost 100% stolen from the games Cover Orange 1 and 2, which have been on the App Store for a very long time.
Jesus and a million similar games existed even before that orange. :-) It's fashion again, to call inspiration theft.
But this is free and very successful, there are enough levels and it's more than good fun.