Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together!

The stunning success of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, may have lapped up all the attention, but that’s not to say that there’s no other fun to be had among the rest of the Nintendo Switch’s launch lineup. As it turns out, the adorable puzzler Snipperclips is particularly worthy of taking up a spot on your new console’s home screen.

This unexpected indie delight is a simple concept both to explain and to experience. You and a friend control cute paper characters Snip and Clip, who are tasked with cutting one another into different shapes to solve a variety of puzzles. With a sumptuous paper-craft aesthetic recalling Media Molecule’s wonderful Tearaway, and a focus on co-operation, it feels right at home on a Nintendo platform. You can play through a number of levels with three or four people, but the game shines brightest as a two-player game and in doing so provides a compelling case for Nintendo’s packed-in Joy-Cons as you only need one each.

The controllers are held horizontally as if they were tiny NES remotes, with the analogue stick used to move left and right, and the four buttons across from it allowing you to jump, cut a chunk off a comrade, and restore yourself if you’ve been snipped by mistake. The teensy shoulder buttons are used to rotate your body, which is key when contorting yourself into different shapes.

Many of the 66 levels require the characters to line themselves up to fill a certain space, while others demand a little more thought and in doing so allow for far more creativity. For example, one level will throw you a basketball and task you with getting into a hoop. You might cut yourself into a bowl shape and your friend into a sort of shovel to scoop the ball up so that it nestles into your new body. Then you could jump up onto what’s left of your buddy with the ball in tow to give you the elevation needed to leap up for a slamdunk.

Like all great video game puzzles, tests like these make you feel like the smartest person in the world when you solve them. This sense of satisfaction is amplified when you’re playing with others, making Snipperclips one of the best co-operative puzzlers since Valve’s Portal 2. As well as making you feel highly intelligent, Snipperclips has plenty of comedy potential. Much like Breath of the Wild’s shrines, many of the giggles come from formulating solutions that the designers probably didn’t have in mind.

Another smile-raising element of the game is its paper-craft aesthetic. The backdrops look wonderfully homemade, but it’s Snip and Clip themselves that are the stars. Both animate with real style, boasting a cheeky grin when they cut each other and an expression of palpable effort whenever they reform part of their bodies. The music and sound effects are similarly charming.

In truth, there’s little to be said about Snipperclips that isn’t positive. The competitive multiplayer featuring takes on hockey and basketball isn’t up to much but it’s hardly the focus, and it’s very reasonably priced at £16.99. If anything there are a few too many levels, with some concepts re-appearing multiple times.

But Snipperclips certainly sits alongside Breath of the Wild as an early must-buy title for the Switch. It’s one of the best co-operative puzzle games in recent memory and is chock full of the wit and character you’d expect from the very best Nintendo has to offer. That it comes from a tiny team of two brothers makes that fact all the more impressive.