The Daily Click

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Author:	Ambrion
Added:	06/10/2025 18:53:09
Overall:
Average:	8.5/10

PRESENTATION: One of the greatest parts of this game. It starts off by introducing how all living beings got to be on Planet Earth. Then by no surprise cuts to the alien commander ordering his regular soldiers to conquer it while they’re all inside the spaceship observing Planet Earth, communicating with the audience and revealing the intentions. After that sequence, an animation plays showing grass being zoomed in really close, a very small snail (which is the main protagonist) and three aliens falling from the sky one at a time ready to capture of the snail (maybe these are the same ones we saw talking to the commander?), thus they fail by being shot at. After every shot, the logo is shown word after word, kill after kill. It’s a well scripted presentation, so I’ll give it a 10/10. Nice work, soldier!

GAMEPLAY: You might want to grab snacks and get comfortable in your pjs, ‘cause this is one of them reviews having a lot to say! Proceed with caution.

So the game starts by giving you the title screen with the options “Start” (that always starts from the first stage and most likely erases an already modified savefile), “Continue” (that loads your savefile, duhh), “Options” (containing switches for “Language” and “Button info”) and a regular “Exit”. When you start the game, you’ll notice a well structured GUI (Graphical User Interface) that has your continues (the initial value is always at 3), your HP bar (you get 10%-15% of HP taken away per hit which isn’t too bad), how many points you gained, what weapon and special weapon you’re currently holding, what stage you’re on and the amount of each subweapon you have. This is all in the footer that to me is the opposite of how it’s done in the earliest shmups, but it gets points for doing its own thing rather that fabricating. Best to look at it on the bright side, right?

With Stage 1 as the opener, we get a look at enemies we’ve seen earlier; the same purple aliens. They line up and move towards you, and after you kill an entire row of them, you’re rewarded with the game’s own currency (pretty good idea, considering how it desperately wants you to play more and keep you wondering what it’s used for). There’s no currency counter in the footer, so you can only figure it out when you’re done with this stage. The other type of enemies is static and shoots lasers, so nothing too worth noting here, though I like the ones which shoot red projectiles that follow your position, so the challenge kind of ramps up but not really. I’m mostly just focused on killing all the enemies and being done with them. It’s how I feel about most shmups, since there can be a lot of obstacles you need to avoid, not just enemies (I’m talking to you, Silver Surfer on the NES). And in this game, obstacles are definitely present, but we’ll get to them later.

You’re introduced to things such as regular powerups which you can immediately obtain after destroying a circle shaped container appearing in the stage when it wants to, basically. It’s a static sprite that appears at any given time, existing for the sole purpose of revealing the icon of what powerup is readily available to pick up. The green spreads are my personal favorite, since they spread slowly and can dominate all enemies before they get the chance to appear on your screen (never taking up more room). Some people might be into long lasers with noticeable delays, and some might be into faster blue projectiles with no spreads, and that’s fine too, but I feel the green spreads is when you’re hot.

The first boss is somehow predictable, it’s a giant purple alien shooting very wide spreading projectiles. The trick here is to just go in between them, because the player sprite is slightly bigger, but there’s not much to this boss, it’s literally just the start of the game. So when the boss out of your way, you get a frame that strictly asks you to save your game, transporting you to another frame with the following options: “Mission start” (a stage select screen), “Upgrades” (all the acquired upgrade slots like ‘Normal Shot’, ‘Multi Shot’, ‘Laser Shot’, ‘Missiles’, ‘Level Bonus’, and one of the frames where you can see your balance), “Shop” (which is the last frame with your currency counter and here you can buy things such as continues, full health recoveries that immediately heal you (since the footer from the gameplay is displayed here too), missiles, mines, smartbombs (that use the L key and clear the entire screen filled with enemies when used up), any of the regular powerups, etc.). After selecting a stage, you’re sent to a “Weapon setup” frame which gives you the option to set your own subweapon (only one of the two can be selected so pick your poison), special weapon (same exact number of selection as the subweapons, except these ones last until the stage is done, meaning they have NO limitation), reset your weapon, speed and shield (I don’t have any reason to do that if I’m already happy with what I have, but sometimes it can be situational).

Alright, so now that we have the introduction out of the way, let’s go over the rest of the game, shall we?

Stage 2 is mushrooms, mushrooms, and did I forget? Mushrooms! What I find interesting here is not the theme of the stage itself (it is to be expected since you’re stupidly small, so small that one would need a magnifying glass to find you in grass and in this case it’s the mushrooms), but the fact the mushroom stems have working collision detection! There’s even some layering work put into this stage regarding the mushrooms, making the whole thing more of a love letter to the times when retro videogames first introduced sprite layering. It was mindblowing back then. The most dangerous enemies are purple aliens in mech suits. Why, you ask? Well, the projectile speed is slower and gives you less room. Knowing this, your best bet is to avoid them completely or risk it all by going between them. Again, it’s the sprite size of your player that makes it slightly difficult to dodge, regardless of your skills. The purple aliens blazing at full force aren’t as bad (they’re just sprinting), you just need to stay still while holding down the shoot button, so please don’t worry too much about them. The boss of this stage to me looks like the work of Dr. Wily or Dr. Eggman, a mecha spaceship controlled by three purple aliens. They shoot at all four angles (those are the only directions they shoot at) and don’t come at full speed. Really it’s a piece of cake as long as you pay attention the whole time and keep positioning yourself either above them, on one of the sides or below them. Then they change their offense to shooting red spheres following you around, and for this phase you move up and down while you shoot. I suppose this is triggered when the halfway mark of the boss is reached, but I haven’t checked the metadata to know for sure. I’m just assuming that’s the case.

Stage 3, oh boy… How oh how shall I start this one? Umm so this one can be a little tricky for new players, and I’ll tell you why right away; the stage has brand new obstacles, but they don’t look…. so great. In fact, the colors are wrong to the core. How can someone recognize the sprites with white dots acting as cacti that can hurt you? I don’t see that as being possible for anyone’s first try, they’re 1. too crude and 2. very hard to tell apart from the rest of the backdrops. As for new enemies, you have purple aliens with goggles on shooting lasers, but the cool thing about them is they work as chameleons; they can disappear and reappear. They’re like the static lasers from the first stage except there’s more to them. Another highlight of this stage is the type of enemies which look like they came straight from the Portal series, I’m not joking. They’re like sci-fi eyeballs or something. So how they work is their eyelids are closed and are slowly but surely moving towards you. As soon as they come closer, they light up and you take damage as soon as they stop. Not what I expected to see, so bravo. The semi last segment of this stage is a neat idea, but not with the right kind of graphics I’m afraid. You know the vertical pipes from Flappy Bird? This is exactly that, but with cacti and the side scrolling speed increasing more and more so it “feels” like it’s harder to dodge, but it’s not, believe me. The music changes after this segment begins, and I think that idea is more than fitting, but the *music itself… well, I’ll leave that for when it’s time to discuss sounds and music, okay? The boss is its own thing (how come this game has a neat variety of bosses?). It’s a closed, green shell moving slowly left and right, then it opens up and reveals itself as a soldier with an eyepatch controlling the thing, shooting three lasers at the same time (that don’t spread, mind you, all three of them are on a straight line). The pattern changes to the closed shell again, but this time it moves like a snake towards the bottom and returns back to the initial position, repeating the whole boss pattern. Just be careful with the lasers, the shell can move towards the left side and if you have subweapons such as the missiles (that sometimes aim towards the right and towards the left side) and mines (that get stuck to the ground, scrolling with the screen to the left until they collide with enemies and bosses), then you can finish him off quickly. Quick note before I move to the next stage is a very embarrassing error in the game’s description, as it’s related to the subweapons. It says you press CTRL to shoot missiles, but in fact you use the pause shortcut (CTRL+P). Yeah, a shortcut to use subweapons in a niche videogame. Where have we gone wrong? And just to be clear, I discovered this on accident, because I was trying to pause the game and take screenshots.

Stage 4 is my favorite in this entire game. It’s the most impressive I’ve played, and it’s a good example of how you can go beyond expectations. You’re on sand, and you have all the enemies you’ve already encountered, but the only major difference is there’s no actual boss that you face at the end, but a very large tank with a chainsaw instead of a barrel chasing you the moment it appears. What’s notable here is that the tank is synced with your movement, so it moves with you. The difficult part here is when the tank comes closer with the chainsaw, giving you very little room to move and avoid/shoot enemies. It’s not a big deal when you’re up against the sci-fi ones coming from the back, but it’s more when the blazing purple aliens are approaching, so as always, your best way to destroy them is to stay in one place and hold to shoot, nothing more. As for the tank, you can do two things; you can let it finish what it does the moment it commences, or you can destroy him and end the level quicker by setting up *Mines to blow him up (I will talk more about why I had to mention this strategy). He doesn’t have a pattern (he’s not an actual boss, like I said), just an entire sequence of doing everything to stop you while he’s behind you the entire time. Like for instance when he backs away, at a certain point, he will begin shooting very long lasers. How you can truly tell when they’re coming is when his sprite begins “glowing up” or “lighting up”, telling you that he’s charging his lasers. I really like that, it’s not too sudden and you can get the hang of his tempo. The lasers aren’t stressful to dodge either, they’re literally a long thin rectangle, so all is well. And when he backs out completely, PLEASE don’t get fooled so easily, because he WILL charge at you like a bull. After that, he’s supposed to crash into the next stage and explode (crashing into the alien base), kind of like in Streets of Rage 3/Bare Knuckle III when the bulldozer chases you down and you have to break all the walls in front of you to escape. When you make it in time, the bulldozer crashes exactly like the tank in this game. So that’s why I dropped this reference, it’s a very classy way to end a boss!

Stage 5 has the hardest boss in the entire game, at least in my opinion. So this is where you’re going inside the alien base and now there’s a new mechanic. Apparently there’s exploding barrels! Fortunately, the explosion range isn’t as big as I initially thought, so you can get around them. Just make sure to blow them up earlier. This is also the stage with the most appealing graphics, in a way that the simplicity and the fact the gray color is its main color make up for most of the appeal. I like that those sci-fi eyeballs I mentioned earlier are present in this stage as stage decoration. Could you believe that? When I first started playing this, I thought that’s their initial position and all they needed was the right call for action after the snail barges inside the alien base. But nope, they are literally just backdrops. No extra challenge, but you know what, I’m not complaining, because what I’m about to tell you is gonna be crazy (surprise surprise, it’s the very first thing I brought up). The boss of this stage looks like the first stage boss from Contra, except it has 5 parts you are required to destroy; the red spheres, the metal parts (arms? snipers? whatever) and the source in the centre which is the biggest red sphere. At first it’s surrounded by a forcefield that breaks when the other parts are destroyed first. Makes complete sense. Now, onto the difficulty. The boss shoots rings (which I believe are the same ones the stage 2 boss uses), red spheres, spreading projectiles as well as a metal crane attached to a tube. When the forcefield breaks, the source becomes aggressive. It shoots a large blue blaster, meaning you not only have to pay attention to everything I listed, but also this too. My advice is to just stack up as much lives as you can before entering the stage, just in case you don’t end up smashing your head into a wall. Of course, that will never happen. Oh, and while I’m writing this review, I noticed something peculiar. Something you may only find out on accident. When you equip the long laser as your regular powerup, you will notice that it’s not affective to this boss. When I stayed still and kept shooting the bottom red sphere, I was asking myself “Why on earth is this taking so long??” I swear it took me less time with the other regular powerups. So yeah, there’s your 0$ strategy. Thank me later ;)

Stage 6 is the shortest and the laziest in terms of a background that scrolls. It’s just a simple black-gray gradient and a lot of yellow stars scattered around the said gradient. Here we see purple aliens in a capsule that have their own path of movement, as well as shoot red rings before leaving the screen (I learned that just now, I never got to see that earlier due to killing them so fast). The mech aliens are back, and they have jets! But it’s just a graphical difference, so it’s not worse than the previous iteration as it’s practically the same just with a different look. We get to see meteors that do practically nothing but spawn in front of you (they can be destroyed, so don’t think they have a special condition). If I were them, I would just make them fall down and try to crush you, since you’re literally in space. But then I figured this is the type of meteors that just stays still and all you do is brush them off. They’re actually a boss opener, so they can be pardoned. I will say, this boss shoots rings just like a lot of actual shmup bosses do, so I’m really happy to see this developer showing off their knowledge of shmup literature. After the rings are gone, the boss traps you like it’s trying to crush you down vertically, but actually it creates spikes which forces you to not move up and down. But in fact, the intention was to shoot a quick laser when the surrounding area disappears so you HAVE to move away. Of course, with good weapons, you can destroy this boss quickly, so it’s not as bad as the previous. Too bad I didn’t get to talk much about this stage, but I like that it gave you new stuff. Every next stage is new content, which I can respect. There’s not much repetitive parts, unless you can say the side scrolling is the repetitive part (shmups also have vertical scrolling levels).

And now Stage 7. Have you made it this far? I don’t know what to expect from my readers (Secretly proud of you all). This is the only stage where the hurtful obstacles are actually much more distinguishable (the cacti). I assume you reached the lair of the aliens, and here the background looks like you’re walking on metal waffles! I like that. The enemies that jump and spread towards the bottom are back, and I think a lot of enemies from previous stages make their appearance. This stage is respectfully more difficult, even with the most powerful equipment. Just be patient for this one. The final boss is a red cyclops creature on all fours that has its repeating pattern such as shooting lasers, those big blue blasters and all things like that. I like that you can cheese him from the top when he starts shooting lasers, and even the big blue blasters for which you just need to be entirely on the top. Trust me, the player hitbox is not broken, it’s actually fairly coded. This alien is apparently the leader of all purple aliens (which look nothing like him), but when you defeat him, everybody that worked for him immediately disobeys him, which is pretty funny. He goes like “This is not the end” and “AHA, you are outnumbered! Get him, soldiers!”, but then the soldiers pick him up and turn him upside down so they carry him away from us. The leader’s right-hand alien (as I call him) wearing the eyepatch (you know, the one from the prologue) appears and tells you that they will not attack Planet Earth no more and will live in peace from now on. Then it cuts to all invaders retreating and leaving Planet Earth, thus leaving it alone. Our hero snail joins his kind (recolored kind), the camera moves up and that’s where it all ends. Honestly, every single presentation from start to finish is actually very well done and has the potential of ending up on a 16-bit console.

Wait… you thought I was gonna end it here with the GAMEPLAY and rate the game? Ohhhh no no no no no. Several more nos. This game.. has.. replay value!! That’s right, you can revisit the game and beat challenges that you can find in stages you already went through except the last (stage 1-6), and I have to say, they make the game even more fun! I think because of the replay value, the GAMEPLAY deserves a bigger rating. So I will talk about them as well, but for each one, I’ll just explain their conditions.

In Stage 1, you have to defeat 100 slimes. On top of the screen, there’s a counter that shows how many you have killed, so you have to lock in as they say. This reminds me of Snail Mail, when you’re collecting mail and you’re aware of how much you got. To me this challenge isn’t so bad, but the only boring part is you have to beat the whole level so you don’t ruin the condition. It’s okay though, just get the green spread like me and I assure you nothing will make you miss any of the purple aliens (or slimes, as they’re called). And just to be clear, it’s not that you clear the condition and be done with it, it’s also that you get special rewards! After beating this challenge, you get two new upgrade slots; Missiles and Level Bonus (remember when I mentioned them early on?). You can get 6 bars in total for each of the two, and at first they’re locked until you beat the rest of the challenges. So now that you see what it’s about, I think you all have a good idea on why I wasn’t going to call it quits after the epilogue.

In Stage 2, you have to beat by taking absolutely no damage. You will get a rectangle or whatever showing you that it can turn red when you DO get hit, so it’s very much functional. Knowing that Stage 2 is all about mushrooms that you can collide against, it’s not too easy to do this challenge. Just make sure you don’t end up on the bottom when the top enemies are shooting towards the bottom and you can’t get back up. Yadda yadda yadda, you beat the challenge and your rewards are the next upgrade bar for Missiles and Level Bonus, the Uppergun which is VERY useful for some of the more frustrating enemies (shoots upwards constantly, as the name implies). Quick note: Missiles and Level Bonus upgrades, no matter how much bars you payed for, reset after reopening the game each time, but not the currency and the regular weapon (and that makes me think this is like a real game, it saves EVERYTHING you have and it’s not going anywhere).

In Stage 3, you have to defeat 30 disguised purple aliens; the ones that wear goggles, work like chameleons (disappearing and reappearing) and shoot lasers. So this one I feel is okay, but knowing what stage 3 has in store (and you’re already met with what it’s made of), then it can be frustrating with the cacti. You’ve seen me talk about the side scrolling building up speed the more you go through the cacti and the shell boss with a repeating pattern, and since you know that already, then you’re probably wondering “Does this require a little bit of patience?”. You’re not wondering for nothing. I suppose it makes sense that you have to beat the whole level and then get rewarded. Oh right, now the reward… You get the next Level Bonus upgrade bar and Mines which you can place. You will see why the *Mines are very very useful……

In Stage 4, you have to destroy the tank. See? You CAN destroy the tank! This is what you were waiting for and now you know it is made possible! Since you’re literally Scrooge McDuck by this point, you can buy a good amount of *Mines in the shop to use for this special challenge. What’s cool about this challenge is that you can see the tank’s HP, and when you’re planting the mines themselves, it actually doesn’t take too many blow-ups to win, just maybe 4 or 5 (maybe slightly more, but not too much). Your rewards are the next Missiles, Level Bonus and Multi Shots upgrade bars, as well as Backgun that adds a gun on the back of the snail which never stops shooting (I don’t like that name, I like Uppergun way more).

Stage 5 makes me very happy. You know how I said the barrels are a new mechanic, intended to blow up enemies faster when they’re shot at? Well for this challenge, you need to kill 30 enemies doing just that, blowing up barrels! I suppose this one is as easy as Stage 3’s challenge, it’s the same amount of enemies and it’s even easier when you have barrels to help you out. Your rewards are the next Missiles, Level Bonus and Laser Shot upgrade bars (yes, Laser Shot).

Stage 6 is another damageless run, and I have even less to say about this one because 1. the stage is short and 2. nothing here is too hard except the jets. I had absolutely no problem with this run, I was even flawless on the boss even with the spike trapping gimmick it has, so after every previous challenge you just beat, this one won’t be too bad since you’ve got so used to the game. Your rewards are the last Missiles and Normal Shot upgrade bars.

Wow, you’ve reached the end of the GAMEPLAY? I’m so impressed with your results. For that, I will give the gameplay a 10/10 because I enjoy the self-made engine, the variety of enemies, stage gimmicks, bosses and so on. After playing this author’s other game, Libu the Ghost, I realized how fun Snails Vs Aliens truly is. There is SO MUCH effort put into this title, it exceeded my expectations. So one last time, good job for this game.

GRAPHICS: While I was still trying to 100% this game, a friend of mine pointed out the graphics look like that of GameBoy Color which they like. So while I was showing them the game (if it wasn't for me discovering this title, you wouldn't be here reading this Anna Karenina of a review). For me personally they are decent, although I still hate how the cacti appear in Stage 3. The author should've focused on making the colors easier on the eyes, because otherwise the contrast for the cacti is non-existent. I don't mind anything else visually, just this stage is very telling. No worries, my score is 9/10 because I feel the graphics fit the old-school style a lot, no matter when the game was released, you know?

SOUND/MUSIC: Ughh.... Okay, I said I was going to leave discussing the *music for later, and this is as good a time as any for that. Well, how do I put this... the *music is barely listenable. Why must every arrangement be like notes being placed on a piano roll just for no reason? I don't get it. If this is your actual skillset (and you're not just messing around), why even? Can't you try to get a little better at doing music and then putting those skills to use? The only okay sounding arrangements are the Stage 1 music and the one that plays in Stage 3 when you're going through the cacti while the screen scrolling gradually speeds up (it speeds up two times), which is like a piano composition that reeks upcoming danger. I guess it's fine when it has context to back it up, but my ears are just disappointed. As for the sound, it's actually pretty good. I like the chiptune sounds, even on the select screens. I don't think they're infuriating, so props to having a good pick. Because of the sounds, I will give this a 6/10, otherwise it would get a 4/10. I like games with a good soundtrack, you feel me? Doesn't matter if it's a freeware title with borrowed soundtracks or a totally original project with totally original songs, I just want inspiration when I'm playing a videogame, not lost hope.

LASTABILITY: It lasts for 7 stages. I'd say it would take you about 15 minutes or maybe a little more, depending on how good you are at the game. What l like the most, which I haven't mentioned in the GAMEPLAY section (but I will make it up for it here), is the timer that commences every time the game is opened. By the time of writing this review, I got to 3 hours. I was revisiting the game multiple times, and sometimes I would leave the main selection screen running in the background (basically minimizing the game), so it's no wonder. I think this is a respected lastability, so I will give it a 10/10.

OVERALL: Okay, this might be hard for one reason; I don't know if I should make a sum of all ratings so the game can be rated globally OR if I should only rate the game just comparing it with the author's game library (saying it's the best of their games). So, since I took a lot of time to write this review, I will be nice and do the latter. I love how I can find a shmup which is not only enjoyable, but also very simple to pick up and play. I wish to find more games like this one :)