It is an odd feeling to be playing this game in the year 2024, where crypto-turned-nft bros have moved on to “AI” as their next big panacea. It is a game that imagines AI as both less and more than it is today, where its mechanical force is to effectively play the game out in front of you in order to put obstacles there (something we’ve been able to do for decades, at least) but its plot force is to effectively be the singularity, a superintelligence far outside the capabilities we can imagine. But it’s surprisingly easy to suspend that part of my disbelief. I can engage with each part of the game as two sides of the same coin. Or maybe, instead, as one treats a model of the solar system: one a toy of the other.

But it is surprising, which half felt lackluster to me. Its platforming, while serviceable and tight, too-infrequently makes use of its own predictive conceit. The story, on the other hand, was engaging and well told - if a bit basic. It was a pleasantly unique perspective into the genre. It is not so often that we get stories from after the singularity, and very much not in this medium.

Ein kompetenter Platformer mit einem unterhaltsamen Antagonisten.
Es ziemlich cool, auf wie viel verschiedene Ereignisse der Antagonist provzierende Antworten hat.
Die Steuerung ist sehr präzise, die Fehlertoleranz ist auch dementsprechend niedrig.
Ich mochte die automatische Anpassung der Schwierigkeit, da sie dafür sorgte das Momentum beizubehalten. Wenn die Schwierigkeit einem nicht passt kann man sie immer noch selbst anpassen, was ich auch einmal gemacht habe, da es sich doof angefühlt hat gerade in den Flow zu kommen, wenn das Spiel entscheidet, das ich zu lange brauche.
Neben der niedrigen Fehlertoleranz störte mich hauptsächlich, dass das Spiel sehr viel verschiedene Elemente präsentiert ohne dem Spieler die Zeit zu geben diese besser zu verstehen. Da durch die Aktionen der KI man meistens bedroht ist, hat man keine Zeit sich die Sachen in Ruhe genauer anzusehen, wenn man sich nicht sicher ist wie man Handeln soll. Generell hab ich den Eindruck, dass beim Design etwas das mangelnde Wissen eines Erstspielers vergessen wurde, weshalb Level mit neuen Mechaniken einen schnell überfordern können. Auch gibt es einige Level wo einfach sehr viel verschiedene Sachen auf einmal eingesetzt werden, welche mich auch oft überfordert haben.
Dass die KI versucht vorherzusagen, wo der Spieler sich befinden wird ist ein sehr cooles Konzept, dass aber insgesamt sehr zurückhaltend eingesetzt wurde. Der Großteil der Herausforderung kommt von statischen Elementen, die dynamischen Elemente sorgen meist mehr dafür, dass man in Bewegung bleiben muss. Es gab nur wenige Level, wo ich aktiv versucht habe mich unvorhersehbar zu bewegen und die KI in bestimmte Aktionen zu ködern, davon hätte ich deshalb gerne mehr gehabt.

(This review is biased as I'm a translator)
Core mechanics are great, some rooms are hell in easy mode. The game is very difficult, it mostly feels like you die due to RNG.

Story and OST are great! Visuals are very catchy and charming.
One of the best things about Will You Snail is the huge amount of voice lines, seriously, it never ends.

It's a standard challenge-room platformer where the goal is to make it through without dying. The catch here is that the game learns from your efforts and will put barriers in your way to prevent you from engaging each level purely by muscle memory. The strength of these challenges is adjustable whenever you want, thanks to a fairly generous option to change the difficulty at will. The negative here is that you are insulted for wanting to make the game more playable, which is so played out at this point. At least it's thematically appropriate here? Given that, the AI who follows you around is doing a lot of work to make this game memorable. The voicework is incredible (Apparently done by the game's main director?), and the ability to shift at the drop of a hat from comedy to tension is phenomenal. I mean, it's partly due to the effects added on to the voice, but it still is cause for some memorable moments in an otherwise forgettable game. The tight controls and input only do so much when you really are just jumping around. There's no advanced tech here compared to the likes of Celeste, and relying on randomization as your primary hook is a trick which wears old a bit too fast. It's fine, and the speedruns I did watch afterward were cool, but I also had more fun watching the speedruns than actually playing, and I'm not sure if that is supposed to say anything to the quality of the game or not. 3/6

I followed the dev a bit of this via Jonas' trailer on Youtube, but now I finally got around to playing it. It's a solid precision platformer, if a bit to trolly/"I wanna be the guy"-ish for my taste. It's definitely a unique and clever take on AI, but it can be really frustrating sometimes, obviously on purpose. The visuals got old after a while, the soundtrack was better than I expected considering Jonas did it himself. While it didn't blow me out of the water, I would recommend playing this to fans of platformers for a unique experience.