Snekburd (subtitle: A Snakebird Demake?) is an all-new game in the Snakebird universe, an unofficial fan-sequel made in PICO-8 and playable on the web for free. Developer Werxzy published the project earlier this week and you can play it now on itch.io.
Snakebird and its prequel Snakebird Primer are beloved games in the puzzle scene, even appearing on our own list of Thinky Essentials. The first game introduced us all to perhaps the most in-depth and polished take on "snake but it's a puzzle" that we'd seen: blocky snakebirds climbing over each other, pushing themselves around floating levels and eating fruit to grow longer.
It was also known to be much higher on the difficulty curve than the cutesy, rainbow graphics suggested, and in response to that consensus Noumenon Games followed up with Primer, an interesting sort of tutorial-sequel which was more friendly in its challenge level and meant to serve as an on-ramp to the harder puzzles of the first game.
Now enter Snekburd: one fan's imaginative continuation of the series. The new webgame advertises over 70 levels(!) and the trailer shows off some newly invented mechanics you'll encounter. I've played some of the intro island so far and can vouch that it looks, sounds and feels a whole lot like Snakebird, with plenty of "how is this possible" feelings cropping up already. Being a PICO-8 game means there's not even a download required: you can play the new entry right in your browser. (I miss having mouse-drag controls and dedicated Reset button, but these are tiny nitpicks.)
Head over to the itch.io page to play some Snekburd. What are you waiting for, it's free! (Did you know there's also a Snakebird demake for Gameboy? I hope we never stop seeing new iterations.)
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