SNAP Review – Snail Sprint!

The snails are racing through the garden and over the wall (and over each other!) Which snails will make it to the winners’ podium?

Game

Snail Sprint! is a simple racing game dreamed up by Marie & Wilfried Fort and published by HABA. It’s intended for 2-4 players ages 5-99.

Art

The snails are cute and each one has some personality. The same color and shape combinations are consistent everywhere in the game: on the dice, on the board, and on the snails themselves.

The box, which is actually a metal tin, has an attractive garden motif inside and out. It’s used as part of the game, which is very cool.

Mechanics

At the beginning of the game, deal each player a card. Keep it secret! The card pictures the three snails you want to reach the winners’ podium.

On your turn, roll the dice. Choose one die to represent the snail you’ll move, and the other to show where they’ll move. You’ll always have a choice! (Unless you roll doubles, or a snail is blocked.)

Block a snail by using it for its color as a landing space. Land on top of it, and it won’t be able to move until the snail on top of it moves off.

When the snail’s path reaches the wall – it’s time to go up! The path continues up the side of the tin. The snails are magnetic, so they stick to the tin.

Keep rolling dice and leapfrogging the snails, until three snails have reached the winners’ podium at the end of the path.

Then everyone reveals their cards and adds up their scores – the snail who won first place gives 3 points to anyone who had them on their card, the snail in second gives 2 points, and the snail in third gives 1 point.

The player who received the most points wins!

Expectations

It’s a HABA game, so I was expecting it would be fun.

Elliot

We love when games use their box as part of the game (examples: Dice Forge, IceCOOL). We expected that the use would be clever in this case, because it’s from HABA.

I expected this to be a “little kid” game, from the way it was presented. It sort of is, but there are still some decisions to be made, which I always like to see in a family game that little kids can play.

Anitra

Surprises

Claire calls it “My First Downforce“. It’s like Downforce because you can move any of the snails (depending on your roll), and who you want to win is secret. You can try to push certain snails ahead or slow others down.

Our kids took to it right away. It’s so quick to get started playing, we’d find it on the living room floor. It’s quick to get started, but there’s enough interest there for an older kid to have fun with it.

We discovered some clever graphic design: the symbols on the path around the outside of the tin are also on the inside of the tin! You don’t have to keep looking around the side tin to see what’s available next. If on my side a snail is going up the tin, you may not be able to see the snail, but you can see on the inside of the tin what’s coming next.

Even young Elliot noticed that the same symbols always go with the same colors, making this game color-blind friendly.

Recommendation

We really enjoyed that Snail Sprint! allows for some player agency (choose which snail you want to move to which color). This allows players to have some strategy, rather than a rote game. It was fun and there was anticipation every time we rolled the dice, and we had a blast playing it.

You also don’t know who will win until the very end – so there’s always incentive to keep going.

We think Snail Sprint! is a great game for younger kids to play with their whole family. You just might find yourself disappointed when your kids pull it out to play without you!

We rate it 4 1/2 snails out of 5.

Find it on Amazon or at your local game store for about $30.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Snail Sprint! from HABA for this review.

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SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?