There’s permadeath, and then there’s whatever this next indie game is cooking up. Don’t touch the snail is a kind of idle clicker, with a dark touch. If the titular snail ever catches up with you, it’s game over forever.
It’s described as an “anti-comfortable” game and that seems pretty apt. The game takes place on your desktop as a persistent snail chases the mouse cursor. You can only be idle for a certain amount of time before the snail catches up, so the game involves moving the cursor every time this nasty gastropod comes closer. If he ever succeeds in his sinister mission, you will never be able to play the game again.
You can open it, but the snail will now be friendly and will not follow the cursor. You can also decorate it when you have acquired the skins. The game also features achievements, so make sure you don’t blow it right off the bat or these will be locked. The failure status is saved locally on the computer and also through the company backend, just in case some people try to get around the problem by erasing local data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-TNVd_-Ok
It’s currently in beta, with a leaderboard that showcases the highest-scoring living and dead players. It seems that the best player was able to move this mouse for over 46 hours before the snail performed its dark dance of death. I don’t know how those at the top of this ranking got any sleep. Maybe they took turns switching to a roommate.
Don’t touch the snail arrives on Steam on May 29, just two weeks from now. We don’t have a price, but it should be low given the nature of the game. Reports say it will cost $1, which seems good for something that locks you out after a single death.