I Commissioned Some Snails 3 Review (PC)

Believe it or not, someone out there made a conscious decision to commission the incubation of fifteen individual paintings that would incorporate two natural subjects: snails, and lettuce. And not just the one snail or lettuce, but 1,500 of them. That’s right, over a thousand snails, in just fifteen images. That’s I Commissioned Some Snails 3, in a nutshell: an almost pointless exhibition of fever dream-like art depicting handfuls of hidden garden snails, vegetables, and hallucinogenic elements. If you’re curious to know why or how such an idea ever came to light, then join the club — we’ve got jackets and magnifying glasses.

The good news is, I Commissioned Some Snails isn’t just a series of love letters to Gastropoda. Oh no, as it turns out, embedded within these fifteen painting is a game, funnily enough. It’s essentially Where’s Waldo, only if Waldo had participated in some questionable pastimes alongside a couple of other eccentric figures. It isn’t the LSD-powered portrait that I’m making it out to be, but you get the idea. Herein lies a “quirky” point-and-click experience that wears its heart on its sleeve, and its unnatural fixation on phylum mollusca in the slimy entrails of fifteen unorthodox paintings.

If all of this sounds like a w̶h̶a̶l̶e̶ snail of a good time to you, then be sure to stick with us a while longer as we dig a little deeper into the creator’s seemingly undying love of garden pests and rabbit food. Scoot aside, Waldo — you’re redundant until further notice. Or at least, until we decide that enough is enough, and that 1,500 snails is 1,368 too many. Either or, you know?

Following the Trail

First and foremost, let’s examine the visual aspect of the game—the beating heart of most, if not all point-and-click hidden object puzzlers. While it’s certainly no renaissance painting with godly colors and awe-inspiring visual effects and what have you, the book of colorful artwork here is actually quite pleasant on the eye. Scratch that — it’s a feast for the eyes. It’s abstract and it’s hypnotizing—absurdly complex, even.

The truth is, I’d struggle to pinpoint the center piece for each of the fifteen paintings that the game has in its collection, for the art here doesn’t necessarily contain focal points, but rather, a cascading waterfall of multiple static pieces, with each one having little to no relation with their neighboring parts whatsoever. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Who knows? It’s an optical illusion that relies heavily upon surrealism and illogical assumptions. Again, a feast for the eyes, for better or for worse.

The breadth of the gameplay isn’t any different from your bog-standard hidden object game. True enough, the edge here is that there are thousands of objects to find, and not just a few primary subjects dotted on each page of a relatively short book. With 750 snails to find, and 750 lettuces to unearth on top, you could say that the creator aimed for quantity over quality here. And I’m inclined to agree with that, given that, outside of the two core objects, there isn’t much else to magnify or eliminate from the page. But hey, at least it keeps even the speediest of spotters busy for a lot longer than the average search-and-find marathon.

Snailing Along

I’d be lying if I said that the act of finding all 1,500 subjects wasn’t a complete slog, though to be fair, the addition of a useful built-in hint system and several save slots did help to break up some of those drawn-out sections on each of the fifteen paintings. There was another feature, too—a tool that allowed me to randomly pocket a handful of snails and lettuces and return them to their rightful spots for me to, well, find all over again. It wasn’t a redundant feature, though I’d also be lying if I said that I relied on it to squeeze more time out of the experience, too. It didn’t need that extra space; it was enough.

When all’s said and done, I Commissioned Some Snails 3 isn’t the be all, end all of hidden object games, but it is, however, a solid contribution to the collection, despite being one of thousands of similar pieces. Clearly, there’s a lot of bang for your buck here, and so, if you happen to have the time to scrape just about everything out of its barrel, then you should be able to get your money’s worth. And even if you don’t stick around the whole caboodle, then hey, look on the bright side — at least you can take advantage of the opportunity to bathe in some ludicrously complex paintings for a short period of time. That warrants a trip into the canvas, right? Right?

Verdict

I Commissioned Some Snails 3 peels back yet another layer from its slimy canvas to unveil thousands more of its staple subjects with a generous collection of fresh artworks and abstract designs. It isn’t massively different from its predecessor, though, to give credit where it’s due, at least it makes an effort to capture new paintings and an original assortment of objects. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the same old formula. That said, it’s still a commendable work of art that deserves some recognition, if not as a game-game, then as a thought-provoking art installation of some varying degrees.

Of course, if you’re the sort of gamer who enjoys the thought of getting lost in a bottomless pool of unmarked checklists and chaotic puzzles, then I’ve no doubt in my mind that you’ll get a kick out of mulling over the shells and bergs of this unruly exhibit for a couple of hours or so.