Clid the Snail

I've been pretty eagerly following Clid the Snail over the past year. The game, which was developed by Weird Beluga Studio, a small team of five friends from Spain, started as a student project, and after winning in a couple of categories at the PlayStation Talents Awards a few years ago, received funding from Sony to grow into the game it is today. This success caught my attention, and following a chance to get hands-on and preview the game a few months ago, I've been pretty excited to play Clid in its entirety. But, after spending a weekend experiencing Clid's journey, that anticipation has been met with disappointment, as despite its peaks, Weird Beluga's inaugural project can be challenging to appreciate.

Clid the Snail is a top-down twin-stick shooter where you play as a snail in a world where human civilization has crumbled allowing garden creatures to thrive. In this post-apocalyptic world, species have grouped together into citadels, small communities of the same species that live together harmoniously, to survive the harsh landscape that is plagued by certain animals that have drastically multiplied, and are using their collective size to crush any other creature that gets in their way. These nasty blighters are the slugs - vicious savages that seek only war - creatures that Clid takes pride in exterminating despite the snails being a learned and wise species that avoids warmongering. Needless to say, Clid's approach to the slugs is one that doesn't sit right with the snails, leading them to exile Clid from their citadel, which in turn sends our protagonist on a journey into the wilds where he meets a group of outcasts who use their unique abilities to help species in need, fighting back against the slugs every step of the way.

Clid is also an irritable and arrogant creature (which is also very uncommon for a snail) and seemingly fights the slugs for the sake of fighting, just as much as he does in the name of what is just and right. With this in mind, Clid isn't a picture perfect hero, in reality he's an unlikable character with only one true friend, the firefly Belu who follows him around and teases him every step of the way. The way that Weird Beluga manages to make you connect and understand a character that is truly unlikable from a personality perspective is pretty impressive, and the narrative, as strange as it is, does make you want to continue playing.

And, this is something that is truly elevated by the world and environmental design, as Weird Beluga has crafted a world that is gorgeous and genuinely interesting. Whether you are on snowy peaks, in arid deserts, or pushing through muddy undergrowth, the world of Clid the Snail is an absolute highlight, bolstered by the small puzzles that are dotted around that get your mind whirring as to how to solve them.

There are heights to this game that give me a lot of hope for it and the future for Weird Beluga, but then there are areas that worry me, areas that make Clid into an absolute chore to play - and they're as far reaching as simply the gameplay.

Clid the Snail was a game that I previewed on PC, using mouse and keyboard, and on that platform, it felt great, fluid, and engaging. But due to the PlayStation 4 exclusivity of the game, launch has occurred first on the PS4 console, meaning a DualShock 4/DualSense controller is the expected way to play, and Clid doesn't hold up with a controller at all. It feels sluggish, challenging and exhausting to aim, and it turns a top-down shooter into an actual headache.

Then to make matters worse, there's the weapons and difficulty, which is punishing and unfulfilling. Your guns are far from effective against slugs, in fact the only weapon that comes with infinite ammunition, the Blaster, has to charge up a shot (which takes around 3-4 seconds) to be able to instantly kill a single slug. Sure you can fire single shots with this weapon, but it does such a measly amount of damage that it's barely worth wasting time with. Other weapons are far more effective, but the game is designed in a way that you have to be a little more conservative with your ammo, so unleashing a continuous wave of flamethrower damage, for example, isn't exactly an option.

All these issues are so prominent that it directly affects how you enjoy Clid the Snail. The game has been designed to prioritise strategy in its gunplay, so much so that you're not expected to shoot your way through every encounter, but that's not always an option, especially when it's your duty to defend an objective from waves of oncoming slugs as an example.

I really, really want to like this game, but it's so challenging to enjoy, due to its grim feeling mechanics. It's so upsetting since Clid the Snail looks amazing, has a genuinely interesting storyline, and showed so much promise during the preview, but this isn't what has been delivered with this PS4 version, and it's actually hard to recommend Clid right now. Hopefully this will be a different story when the PC version launches, ideally in a few months, but until then it's hard to feel anything other than disappointed.