As established developers realise the potential of the Zodiac they are slowly but surely producing enhanced versions of their games. These means we are seeing more and more high quality games appear for the Zodiac – games which have a professional polish and are really worth parting with your cash for.

Snails is one such game, it is to Worms what Warfare Incorporated is to Command & Conquer – bringing us yet another hugely popular game to the mobile environment which we would otherwise never get the pleasure to play.

Snails is, without a doubt, the most polished looking game I have played on the Zodiac to date. It has a professional and quality air about it and would surely be at home on the shelves in any high street store. The interface is cartoonish and very attractive; I have yet to find fault in it. As I have not played the original version of Snails it is hard to spot some of the more subtle enhancements. I do know however that several new levels (About 6) have been introduced, these include; Ancient Ruins and Slimazon Jungle. Another obvious enhancement is the icons, which correspond to the hardware buttons on the Zodiac, you will notice these in the screen shots. The options are laid out to correspond with the buttons and make navigating through the menus very easy and intuitive.

The game includes a mission-based single player mode with 3 separate stories each relating to a different difficulty level. Within each story there are 3 missions, which have on average 3 levels making a total of around 27. It also has various death match options Computer life, Robot hunt and Swap and Kick. These are better known as Computer VS Computer, Player VS Computer and Player VS Player. There is currently no Bluetooth/network multiplayer so the Swap and Kick game mode is played by passing your Zodiac back and forth between you and a friend. Why on earth the Computer Life game mode was included I don’t know – Snails is not the kind of game you can learn to play by watching the computer duke it out with itself, it is still a laugh to watch though.

The graphics, as mentioned before, are cartoon styled and any Worms player will be familiar with them. There are 15 Deathmatch levels, each handcrafted and themed and each one looks fantastic. There is currently no facility to randomly generate levels, this would be a nice addition as it is easy to tire of the existing levels in deathmatch mode. Explosions and weapons yield some nice special effects and the animation is excellent. Snails have idle animations and, quite to my surprise, enemy Snails actually stare at you and even duck when you approach, there are also different death animations and, of course, the traditional wind direction animation which can be anything from falling leaves to snow.

Snails makes full use of the Zodiac controls, the shoulder buttons allow you to switch between Snails which can be done at any time. The stick lets you move, select weapons, aim up/down and increase/decrease the launch power of your weapon – it is, however, a lot easier to use the stylus for aiming. The red, blue, yellow and green buttons are assigned to various actions related to the mode you are currently in (look, move or aim).

Sound wise Snails is not on par with Worms, but Worms had a PC hard drive at its disposal to store all the necessary wav files. The sound in general is great, even though there are no funny voices, and the sheer clarity suggests it has all been optimised for the Zodiac. There are 7 music tracks including the one for menu screens, these tend to be a little repetitive but nevertheless add to the professional polish of the game.

Lack of sound variety is made up for with funny expressions which appear at the start of each turn (you will see some of these in the screen shots) reminiscent of those from Worms but far funnier.

Game-play wise Snails is not quite up to standard it follows the same basic style as Worms, you take it in turns with your opponent to move your snails around, aim and launch a plethora of weapons at the enemy snails, however each Snail is pretty tough (or maybe the weapons are weak) making for long drawn out battles which can get irritating. I much prefer the Worms approach, which lets you get some very skilful and often comical kills. There are, however, plenty of weapons to dispatch the tough buggers with, about 25 in total; these vary from the traditional Bazooka and Handgun to Frogs, Worms and Crickets.

Overall Snails is a must have game and definitely the most polished and professional looking game I have seen for the Zodiac. It would be at home on your desktop PC or PS2 and whatever they charge for it on release will most likely be a fraction of what it’s worth. A few little control quirks and the drawn out battles tend to irk me, but I should imagine most anyone could forgive these and get down to enjoying the game on the whole. With Bluetooth/network multiplayer (It could be argued unnecessary in a turn based game), a random level generator/level editor, ability to customise controls and create your own team of snails and even customise their sounds Snails would be even more of a Worms clone, but the important thing is it would be a near perfect game.