Buy A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build

Full disclosure: A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer. Video review embedded below.

As I toddled around in the snow as its adorable monster, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build’s focus on companionship, and my consistent inability to find it in my own life.

I’ve always been introverted and awkward around people, content to spend my time alone with the easily understood companionship of a book or computer. But even as I told myself I was fine being alone, there are times when loneliness becomes overpowering; when I needed someone to talk to, someone to just be there to shake my from the confines of my subconscious and remind me life isn’t something you’re meant to go through alone.

The point of this is not to attempt to garner your sympathy, as I’ve no one to blame but myself for the solitude I’ve spent so much of my life in, but because it’s under these circumstances that I found myself connecting to A Good Snowman and it’s little monster. Trapped alone inside a walled garden, they’re desperately looking for someone to hold no matter how odd it might outwardly seem, a struggle I’m all too familiar with.

But A Good Snowman isn’t a game designed to empathize with those who feel isolated from society, but to show them that maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. It acknowledges both of the necessity of friendship, and that it’s something you have to work for and are going to make mistakes trying to find, but are never going to get there if you sit waiting for it to come find you. Figuring out how to build a snowman was important to me, not solely because of the satisfaction of solving a puzzle, but because it meant my monster didn’t have to be alone anymore.

It’s hard to properly put into words exactly why I felt so strongly about it, but standing wrapped in a hug with my new icy friend, I found it hard to let go. It’s a useless mechanic, but its inclusion was what changed A Good Snowman from a cute puzzle game, into something that felt personal and meaningful to me. I wasn’t building stacks of snow anymore; I was bringing people together, all with their own names and faces, and in some small way finding comfort in the fact that my monster’s garden was no longer empty.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, projecting myself on to a game in a way that was never intended, but I don’t know if it really matters to me in the end. Whatever it was originally proposed to be, to me A Good Snowman was the video game equivalent of a warm hug from someone as longing for a friend as I was. Digital or not, I didn’t realize how badly I needed one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9smxbUK8sLM&feature=youtu.be
You can read more of my writing on Kritiqal.

When I first picked up AGSIHTB, I was immediately drawn to the simplicity of its controls and concept, as well as the complexies of its artwork, puzzle-making, and beautiful, haunting soundtrack. Seemingly the only creature of your kind, you will play as a introverted and lonely, but bond-hungry Monster. Your mission is building snowmen/ma'am for a battalion of friendship to fill the void you feel whilst trapped inside your beautiful, but hopelessly empty garden. As you interact with your environment: rolling snowballs to proper sizes, sleeping on benches, hugging snowpeople you've built, and maybe ever chasing a butterfly or two, you will slowly feel empathy and maybe even frustration (depending on your puzzle skills) with Monster's situation in his botanical cell. Free yourself, and crave for something more than solitude's wintry embrace.

8.9/10

A must-have for puzzle enthusiasts!

This is without a doubt the most charming puzzle game I have ever played. You play as a featureless and lonely-looking monster who builds snowmen and gives them all their own character traits and names. And then he hugs them. Well, it's up to you really, but naturally you want to hug your new friends?

The mechanics are similar to Sokoban, but your goal is to stack three snowballs with gradually decreasing size on top of eachother to create a snowman. Snowballs come in three sizes, and what makes this less trivial than it might sound like is that a snowball rolled through a tile filled with snow will increase by one size. And if you don't have one of each size lined up properly when it's time to stack them, you'll probably have to start over. Like in Sokobond, there is a convenient erase-one-step feature too though, so if you haven't messed up too badly, you might be able to save your effort without starting over from the beginning.

As you solve puzzles, you open up more routes through the snow-clad park the game is set in. You can choose which puzzles to tackle when, to some extent, and if one particular puzzle stumps you initially, it might help to come back to it later. As you progress, you'll find more and more complex puzzles, and some of the trickier ones even require you to build two or three snowmen in the same area. If things get too tough, you might enjoy a breather on one of the many benches scattered throughout the park.

The game allows for many different interactions with your environment beyond building and hugging snowmen and they are all animated in a simple, yet delightful manner. Try kicking a table, shaking a bird bath, roughing up a flower or wrestling a pine tree. Most of these actions are inconsequential beyond adding atmosphere to the game, which they do brilliantly, but some might have unexpected results. Don't be afraid to experiment.

My first run through the game took about three hours. Or so I thought. The last required puzzle of game has you building the developers Ben & Alan's snowman equivalents. On completion of this puzzle, the gate to the exit opens and the camera pans over the park of snowmen, before a dubious "THE END?" is displayed on screen. So what's this then? I don't think I'm spoiling too much by saying that, yes, this game contains secrets. Furthermore, the secrets are excellent and complex, and they at least double the length of the game.

I am a sucker for both cleverly designed puzzles and secrets in games, and this game offers heaps of both. The switch to Haxe in place of the Adobe AIR runtime used in the developer's last game, Sokobond, even further sweetens the deal for Linux users. Throw in the gorgeous visual and audial design direction of this game and a few dozens of hugs and I'm completely sold.

In conclusion, I compell you to buy this game now if you too have a monster within you who is desperate for puzzles and affection.

Note, this is a small rewrite of a review I wrote for GamingOnLinux.com: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/adorable-sokobanlike-puzzler-a-good-snowman-is-hard-to-build-released-today-a-musthave-for-puzzle-enthusiasts.5012

EDIT: Turns out that getting the hidden achievement is basically the second, a lot more involved half of the game! Thus, my qualms about the length of the game are unfounded, and you should go and buy this game now.

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To be honest, I expected much more difficult puzzles from the creator of Sokobond. This game took me slightly more than one hour to complete, and thus left me a bit underwhelmed. Nevertheless, the visuals are lovely, the sound is excellent (full disclosure: I have a soft spot for Ryan Roth's music), and the puzzles are clean and satisfying, albeit lack in number. If you like short relaxing puzzle games, "A Good Snowman..." is a wonderful choice. Otherwise, you might want to wait until a sale (or lower temperature in London!)

Quick, adorable, and fully explores one well-defined mechanic. About as pure a puzzle game as you could ask for.

I've got a couple more hours of gameplay on this than it shows. I took my PC over to my Grandpa's house, where we generally eat and watch crappy TV movies every Saturday or Sunday. No one there plays games. Period. Well, no one happened to be watching the TV, so I plugged my computer in and fired up steam in big picture mode, and started to play some Poker Night 2. Once I switched over to A Good Snowman, my family started to ask...

"What the crap is this?"
"Uhm... What?"
and my personal favorite... "You don't have a girlfriend, do you?"

But everyone kept watching. Then my cousin, my age, started to help. It took us about 15 minutes to figure out one of the puzzles, But when we did, it was like, "ohhhhhhh, wow we're dumb". My dad came over and watched a bit and laughed when I'd kick the tables or chill on the hedge while we discussed the strategy.

I must have told the game mechanics to five or six of my family, seperately, as they all started to watch and "help". My aunt finally plopped down and really started getting into it. I was starting to get bored, and tried to change games, but she started getting agitated and said, "put the snowman game back on!"

After I handed the controller over, she played with intense concentration for about an hour before we told her we needed to leave. She asked if I could build her a PC so she could play it and other similar games on her own.

Thanks, Snowman team, You guys got some of my family to actually play with me. It's only taken 15 years to get to this point.

"A good Snowman is hard to build" is a charming game, simple, beautiful and awesome. One of the best things about the game is that is filled with tons of little details for you to find out, don't spoil the game, don't check guides or forums, just play for 4-5 hours and you'll discover everything on your own.

Some reviews skipped a major part of the game, which is a pitty, just buy it and play paying attention to everything. Totally worth the price.

Very cute, intuitive and addicting puzzle game. There are 30 puzzles and about 20 of them are relatively easy. The final puzzle is very difficult. I took me 3:30h to complete the game the first time(about an hour on the final puzzle alone). Second time it took me 45 minutes with the fact that the final puzzle took about 20 minutes.
So not exactly too replayable but it is a very good brain teaser and I'm glad I played it. All puzzle solutions can be seen below:
http://youtu.be/XyMaa7urhZQ

Built a snowman.
Hugged it.
Died happy.
10/10 So chill.

A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is a top-down puzzle game in which the player moves through a series of rooms in which they have to create somewhere between 1 and 3 snowmen. They are presented with an appropiate number of balls of varying sizes, and need to roll those balls over snow in order to enlarge them to the appropriate size (one large, one medium, one small) and assemble the snowman.

It's very simple mechanicallly, but provides more variety than you might expect at initial glance. It's rather short to "beat" - it took me less than two hours - but upon completion there is another, hidden area where you seek to make more snowmen from balls placed at the locations you'd previously made snowmen - it's a very interesting meta-game that makes you go back to previous locations and re-do them in order to construct these new snowmen. I haven't completed it yet, but it allows for a bit more gameplay.

I recommend it for anyone who enjoys a nice, laid back puzzle game to waste a little time with. Price according to how much you feel that time is worth.

Relaxing, beautiful, chilling and yet not obvious.
Excellent experience.

(English)
The most enjoyable things in the beginning of a game for me were charming, cute and funny main character, nice animation and art, beautiful atmospheric music and sound effects and quite interesting developed mechanics of classical sokoban. It was also awesome to meet little nice details like that you can sit on a bench, touch different objects, chase butterflies and so on. Some of the puzzles were really tight, but most of them were of moderate difficulty and some were pretty straightforward.

However while progressing through the game I was getting more and more tired and bored as the game for me at the moment have become mostly a set of puzzles without further developing of mechanics or another interesting changes in gameplay, and I just wanted to complete them all to finish the game. But when I've completed seemingly the last puzzle I've found that it's not the end!

I just want to give a hint to others (without spoilering) that besides this first obvious part of the game there is another one, at least as large as the first one. And exactly after I've reached this second part I've become very intrigued by new strange things that start to happen and by new mechanics. This have revealed the game for me from another side and all of the tiredness and boredom disappeared and I was like "OMG, what's happening here? I certainly want to complete it to see what else the game have for me in the end". I became much more emotionally closer to what was happening on the screen while proceeding the second part. I couldn't calm down until I've truly (I hope) completed the game. Recommend it to all who like to solve puzzles and who like unexpected turnaround of events. :)

The only truly annoying thing with this game was that it crashed sometimes in the late part of the game and in "about" menu after choosing a name on my 64-bit linux system. Thankfully, after quick relaunch the game continued exactly at the same moment it crashed.

(Русский)
С самого начала игры я получал истинное удовольствие от наблюдения за очаровательным, милым и забавным главным героем, великолепной анимации и художественного исполнения в целом, замечательной атмосферной музыки и звуковых эффектов и весьма интересно развитой механики классического сокобана. Впечатление ещё больше усиливало множество небольших приятных деталей, таких как возможность сесть на лавочку, трогать разные объекты, гонять бабочек и тому подобное. Над некоторыми из головоломок мне действительно пришлось поломать голову, но большая часть из них были средней сложности, а некоторые были довольно просты.

Однако, по мере прохождения игры мне становилось всё более и более скучно, я даже стал несколько уставать, поскольку на тот момент игра для меня по большей части представляла собой просто набор головоломок без дальнейшего развития механики или каких-либо других интересных изменений в геймплее, и мне уже хотелось побыстрее выполнить их все чтобы закончить игру. Но когда я решил казалось последний паззл, я обнаружил, что это ещё не конец!

Я хотел бы дать другим подсказку (при этом не спойлеря), что помимо этой первой очевидной части в игре присутствует ещё одна, по-крайней мере не меньшая первой. И сразу после того, как я достиг этой второй части я стал весьма заинтригован новыми странными вещами, которые начали происходить, и новой механикой. Это раскрыло для меня игру с совершенно другой стороны, и всю усталость и скуку как рукой сняло. У меня на уме было только "Боже мой, что здесь происходит? Я хочу обязательно пройти это всё, чтобы увидеть, что ещё игра приготовила для меня в конце." Я стал эмоционально гораздо ближе с тем, что происходило на экране, пока проходил вторую часть. И не мог успокоиться до тех пор, пока действительно (надеюсь) не прошёл игру. Рекомендую её всем, кто любит решать головоломки и кому нравятся неожиданные повороты событий. :)

Единственным досадным моментом с этой игрой было то, что она время от времени вылетала в поздней части игры и в меню "about" после выбора имени на моём 64-битном линуксе. Слава богу, после быстрого перезапуска игра продолжалась ровно на том месте, где она вылетела.

This game is full of charm! In a way.
You are a monster that likes to build snowmen. You are in some sort of yard, sectioned off with hedges. Each section contains a puzzle, sort of like a sokoban puzzle. You move the snowballs around to build.. A snowman!
You need a big snowball, a medium snowball, and a small snowball.
Each time you roll a snowball across snow, the snowball grows.

The key is to make the right size snowball and move the snowballs into the right position to stack to a snowman.

It sounds simple, but it gets pretty tricky the further you go.
Each time you build a snowman, the hedge opens up to a new puzzle.

The game is gorgeous, and it really hits a certain spot in my heart that makes me love this game. I hope everyone plays and enjoys this game.

i tought this game was all about hugging snowmen... When i saw there were puzzles i cried

10 Games where you can hug snowman / 0 Games where you can hug snowman
~Gamian Approved

beatiful game. love the atmosphere and puzzles!

'A Good Snowman is Hard to Build' is adorable puzzle game where you must push snowballs around to create a perfect snow man.

The concept is very simple, you must move snowballs around a defined puzzle area to create a small, medium and large snow ball and stack them on top of each other to make "a good snowman".

While the concept is simple on the surface, the mechanic makes for a challenging and fun puzzle experience. While the art style and music make it calming. (Except for on of the later puzzles drove me crazy and I cursed a lot).

Check out the first look video!

I'd have to imagine we will continue to see more and more puzzles being added.

With that said, I did complete the game in just under three and a half hours. And at $11.99 its a fairly even hour/gameplay ratio for me.

If puzzle games are your thing I'd check this one out, the more people that buy it, the better chance we're gonna get content sooner!

If you want to check out the first look video or other of my reviews for early access or indie games, check out www.earlyaccesspodcast.com

Adorable but still challenging. Super enjoyable!

A simple ruleset, but the puzzles gradually get very advanced! There's a lot more to this game than it looks at first glance. I love this game tremendously.

At first I thought this game was too easy/short... but there is more than meets the eye! *HINT*

I really like the visual style and the idea of building snowmen. Very addictive and fun to play.