The plot: You're a snail named Snaily Snail who has to set out to rescue the missing snails.
Play it here
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Tropes used in this game:
- Abnormal Ammo: A pea shooter and a boomerang sort of make sense (
though it begs the question of how Snaily holds the gun/boomerang), but rainbow waves? - A Dog Named "Dog": Snaily and Sluggy.
- Airborne Mooks: A lot of the enemies in this game fly. Among others, the Sky Viper, Chirpy, Batty Bat, and Ghost Dandelion.
- Alliterative Name: The stage names.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: It's a Metroidvania game. It comes with the genre.
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The battle with Giga-Snail.
- An Ice Person:
- The Iceballs.
- Snaily himself after getting the Ice Snail powerup.
- Apathetic Citizens: The snails of Snail Town leave everything up to you.
- Author Appeal: The creator loves snails. And boy, does it show.
- Babies Ever After: The psychic snail in Snail Town predicts this of Snaily after getting the Golden Ending. "I can see the future, Snaily! I see you having 18,000,000 baby snails!! Congratulations!!"
- Boss in Mook Clothing: The Devil (red) Blob. It moves very fast, shoots tons of energy ball... things, and takes way too many hits to die! Thankfully, there's only one in the entire game.
- Boss Rush: And dear God is it hard.
- Boss Subtitles: Although there's no descriptive sentence; it's only used to display the boss' name.
- Bowdlerise: To avoid negative associations, an update changed a character's name from Isis (after the Egyptian goddess of the sun) to Iris (after the Greek goddess of rainbows).
- Catching Some Z's: Snaily's idle animation. The final boss has it too, but he uses it as an attack.
- Ceiling Cling: Snaily can crawl on ceilings as well as walls.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Most of the snails could qualify."Cave Snail scares me! I'm staying over here!" [Beat] "Do you think Cave Snail is single?"
- Credits Gag: Downplayed. The credits amusingly lampshade the trend of putting "And You" at the end of their credits.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Snaily Snail.
- Dramatis Personae: At the end.
- Electric Jellyfish: They're an Invincible Minor Minion, at least until you get the Devastator.
- Energy Weapon: The eyes on the walls in one section of Lux Lirata fire these.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: The Rainbow Wave.
- Excuse Plot: Snails are disappearing. Go find them. Subverted towards the end, though; the plot doesn't get very deep, but a semblance of one does form. Your mission of finding the disappearing snails is also referenced quite frequently.
- Flash of Pain
- Golden Ending: Achieved by getting all 30 helix fragments. Moon Snail becomes Sun Snail again and all is well.
- The Goomba: The Blob (purple slime).
- Goomba Stomp: Stompy seems hellbent on doing this to you.
- Gravity Screw:
- The Gravity Shell powerup allows you to do this.
- The Gravity Turtles can also do this.
- Green Rocks: The helix fragments.
- Guide Dang It!: Occasionally rears its head, a prime example being the Shrine of Iris' location, which is inside another hidden area in Snail Town!
- Hailfire Peaks:
- Mare Carelia could be either Green Hill Zone, or Under the Sea.
- Amastrida Abyssus combines Lethal Lava Land and Under the Sea (again).
- Hammerspace: Just how is Snaily holding all those boomerangs?
- Hearts Are Health
- Heart Container
- Heroic Mime: Snaily, in keeping with the 8-bit theme.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Health is replenished by green and pink grass (guess which one replenishes more health).
- Idle Animation:
- Snaily falls asleep in his shell.
- It gets used by Giga-Snail as an attack.
- Item Get!: The game briefly pauses and plays a particular theme when collecting weapon and ability items.
- Invincible Minor Minion: The Jellyfish and the spikeballs. Subverted when you get the Devastator.
- Jungle Japes: Snail Town is something like this.
- Killer Rabbit: The Kitty. It looks like the harmless Snelks that randomly roam the areas, but it bounces around at a fast pace and shoots a bunch of bullets in between jumps.
- Lampshade Hanging: One of the snails in Snail Town asks "Don't you think it's weird that we all live in treehouses?"
- Another snail in Lux Lirata quips, "Amazing work, Snaily!! Say, how'd we get into space, anyway?"
- Level-Map Display: Type 1.
- Medium Awareness: Don't be surprised to see snails reference the fact that they are in a game. Particularly notable in this quote:"Don't moon snails live in the ocean? Hey, this game isn't realistic!! What gives??""I hope the next game has more weapons. This game could have used a flame whip!"
- Minus World: ???, with its weird glitchy walls and strange music. It's actually the passageway to the Shrine of Iris.
- Mirror Boss: Moon Snail. Aside from changing his own gravity, he uses Devastator-style boomerangs and dark-colored waves in his first form. As Giga-Snail, he uses bigger Rainbow Waves, as well as using the Devastator-peashooter bullets. He even uses the idle animation as an attack; the Z's fly off in your general direction.
- My Name Is ???: ???, a hidden area which contains the Shrine of Iris.
- Nintendo Hard: The normal difficulty is far from a walk in the park, but the unlockable "slug mode" difficulty turns it up to eleven. And then there's the boss rush.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: One snail in Snail Town manages to eat a pizza offscreen, after telling Snaily he would for nearly the entire game.
- One-Man Army
- One-Winged Angel: The Final Boss, Giga-Snail.
- Palette Swap: Many of the enemies come in different colours, often with different abilities. Lampshaded with the red Gravity Turtle, which is called Gravity Turtle (Cherry Red Finish).
- Precision-Guided Boomerang
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: There are several snake enemies.
- Retraux
- Reverse Shrapnel: The Angel (white) Blob, amongst others.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter:
- The snails. In particular Snaily's idle animation.
- The snelks may also qualify.
- Save the Princess
- Secret Character: Sluggy Slug (hero of Slug Mode).
- Seers: One snail in Snail Town can see the future. His words often describe what to do next.
- Shout-Out:
- "Up, up, down, down, left, right... wait, never mind, that's for some other game."
- The Boss Rush version of the Space Box is called "Time Cube". Both versions also turn blue when they go berserk.
- "I hope the next game has more weapons. This game could have used a flame whip!"
- Upon starting a new game in Slug Mode, a fake password screen appears, which is filled out by an unseen person with "JUSTIN SNAILY".
- "It's dangerous to go alone!"
- Snail Town has a turtle that informs you "Once this game is over, I'm going to go get some pizza!!"
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Spiralis Silere.
- Space Zone: Lux Lirata becomes this near the end.
- Species Surname: All the snails (Cave Snail, Moon Snail, Snaily Snail) and Sluggy Slug.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Pre-boss rooms are usually full of pink grass. The snails will outright tell you when there's a boss coming up, though, so it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
- Turns Red: Every boss does this, literally (though the Space Box actually turns blue when it goes berserk).
- Unique Enemy: Two of them. One's a cat listed under Killer Rabbit above, and the other's the Devil Blob. It's called that for a good reason.
- Under the Sea: Mare Carelia.
- Upgrade Artifact: The Devastator, which upgrades all three of your weapons.
- Wall Crawl: One of your abilities, being a snail.
- You No Take Candle: "I are Cave Snail! Thorgle borgle!!!!"
