Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! Review: A snipping good time

Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! is the Switch’s second-best launch game, almost beating out The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the honour. Forget about the shovelware that is 1-2-Switch; Snipperclips has a cheap entry point, simple yet demanding gameplay and delivers utter joy for up to four players.

You and your pals are placed in the shoes of sentient cardboard cut-outs. You can move your shape from left to right, squat and jump and — more importantly — use the Joy-Con’s shoulder buttons to spin it around. The titular snipping (and clipping) reshapes your avatar into a useful tool, necessary for a myriad of increasingly difficult puzzles. To accomplish tasks, your avatar can be clipped and reformed an endless amount of times until you figure out what needs to be done. As you try to solve puzzles, the shapes will pull ridiculous faces, sometimes matching the frustration you’re feeling in real life because your partner SIMPLY WON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE DEMANDING THEM TO.

Ahem. Control freaks are going to have a rough time with Snipperclips.

Playable solo, the joy of Snipperclips disappears. A rational mind can maneouver two on-screen avatars easily and efficiently to solve a puzzle, but that’s not what it’s about. Truly, things are best as a two-player affair, with friends screaming at each other in an effort to get things done. Just as Ben and I drew a crowd at the Switch launch event, my husband and I did the same thing on a recent Frankston line train. A fellow commuter, interested by our.. um, somewhat raised voices… ended up standing behind us, watching us play and even offering advice when he saw fit.

I could have given that guy a third Joy-Con, but I figured we were having a hard enough time as it is. A three-player puzzle usually means one player will be standing around with nothing to do, or worse yet, getting in the way of the players actually doing something, and four-player puzzle solving is best described as chaotic. For more than two players, I’d recommend ditching puzzles altogether and heading to multiplayer matches instead. Players have the ability to play basketball, hockey or even just enter into a three-life deathmatch, a delicate balance of knowing when to strike or when to hide in a corner and try to regain composure.

Snipperclips requires thought, co-ordination and timing in a combination that means friendships will be tested. That combo also means that success has never tasted sweeter.

Compared to the likes of Super Bomberman R and the aforementioned 1-2-Switch, Snipperclips is the best value for money possible on the Switch. At $30 AUD, you’ll get far more play out of this title than any other, bar Zelda, and in the sweet spot of two players, no additional controllers are needed. With a four-player setup, you will be best with another set of Joy-Cons.

Simply put, if you own a Switch, you need to own Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together!.

The good Pure, simple fun. More puzzles than you’d expect, especially for the price.	The bad Though for 1-4 players, it’s best suited for 2.

Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! was reviewed using a retail code on Switch, as provided by the reviewer. Nintendo did make a retail code available to Stevivor from late yesterday. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.