Snake Pass Is a Platformer Where the Ground Is the Enemy

Snake Pass asks you to do something most platformers have spent forty years training you out of: never jump. Sumo Digital’s puzzle-platformer, released in March 2017 for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, hands you a coral snake named Noodle and a hummingbird named Doodle, and then removes the one verb you thought was non-negotiable. Jumping is gone. You slither instead, and the whole game is built on that single refusal.

Trailer, via Snake Pass.

Haven Tor and the Keystones

The setting is a jungle world called Haven Tor. Doodle, bright and curious, discovers that a mysterious intruder has been stealing the Keystones — the gems that power the gates linking the land’s realms. She wakes Noodle, and the two set off to find the thief and restore order.

That premise carries the pair through 15 levels across four themed worlds: jungle, water, lava, and wind. The first three worlds hold four levels each. The last holds three. Every level asks you to collect three Keystones to reopen the portal that ends it.

How a Snake Actually Moves

Snake Pass treats Noodle’s body as a chain of small segments, each one affected by physics. His body reacts to gravity on its own, which means the game’s challenge is not timing a jump but managing a mass.

You move Noodle’s head 360 degrees on a flat plane, lift it, push him forward, and tighten his grip. Straight-line movement is slow, so speed comes from slithering side to side. To climb, you wrap his body around bamboo and other structures to stay secure. Call Doodle and she lifts Noodle’s tail, which is the closest thing to a helping hand the game offers.

The controls are the argument. Where most platformers give you a character who obeys instantly, Snake Pass gives you an animal with a body that has to be placed, coiled, and trusted. It is slower, stranger, and more deliberate than the genre’s standard.

Water, Wind, Spikes, and Lava

Each world introduces its own mechanics. Water lets Noodle swim and dive freely. Wind currents blow him around. Spikes and lava pits kill him, as do bottomless pits.

Optional collectibles add a second layer for players who want it: 20 Blue Whisps per level, scattered along the critical path, and five Gatekeeper Coins placed in harder-to-reach spots. The Whisp count rewards a clean run. The Coins reward the players who have already mastered the slither.

Hazards and bottomless pits both kill Noodle. The game does not soften that. Falling is a real cost, and the physics that make climbing satisfying are the same physics that make a bad coil fatal.

Black Feathers and the Great Shiny

The story runs alongside the mechanics. In every world, Noodle and Doodle glimpse big black feathers and a large flying figure. At the end of each realm, its ruler thanks them and hands over a treasure.

At the top of Haven Tor, the culprit turns out to be a magpie searching for something shiny so it can reopen a portal home. The four gifts from the four rulers function as keys. Together they reveal “the Great Shiny,” which activates the portal and sends the bird home. Then it returns, asking for help.

That ending is the game’s best joke and its clearest statement of intent. Snake Pass is not interested in a villain. It is interested in a problem, and in two small animals who solve it by cooperating.

What Works and What Drags

Ranking what Snake Pass gets right, in order of how much it matters:

1. The physics. Noodle’s segmented body is the entire game, and it holds up. Wrapping him around bamboo to reach a ledge feels earned in a way a jump never does.
2. Doodle. The tail-lift mechanic turns a solo control scheme into a partnership, and it keeps the game from becoming a pure wrestling match with a snake.
3. The four-world structure. Jungle, water, lava, and wind each change the terms without abandoning the core.
4. The collectibles. Blue Whisps and Gatekeeper Coins give skilled players a reason to return, though the base path is thin without them.

The cost is pace. Slithering is slow by design, and the game’s later levels lean hard on precision that the controls make deliberately awkward. That is the point, but it is also the friction. Players who want momentum will find Snake Pass stubborn.

Our verdict is that the stubbornness is worth it. Snake Pass is one of the few platformers in recent memory that solves a design problem instead of inheriting one. Removing the jump could have been a gimmick. Sumo Digital built an entire locomotion system around the absence, and it works.

game review · Nintendo Switch · physics-based · puzzle platformer · snake pass · Sumo Digital