Snipperclips – Cut it out, together!

For: Switch

Classified: G

Showing off the effortless multiplayer capabilities of Nintendo's newest console, Snipperclips is a unique and hilarious puzzler that can technically be played solo but is made astronomically better when a pair – or even a group of four – play together.

The essence of the game is hard to describe, but essentially each player is a paper shape that can run around, rotate its body and make a whole bunch of really weird facial expressions. When two shapes overlap, one player can press a button to cut a silhouette of itself out of the other player. There's hundreds of puzzles that will require you to take certain forms – for example a hook to grab a container or a cog to turn a wheel – but players need to work together as you can't alter your own shape, only that of others.

The genius of the game is that it drops players into these scenarios with no clues or instructions, meaning they're left to investigate the various aspects of the puzzle (for example maybe a frog, a tank of tadpoles, a few switches and a lever) to find out what they need to do. Often this will lead to a period of mad experimentation and phrases you never thought you'd exchange with friends – "I'm going to make your butt into a cone and I need you to take a chunk out of my side!" – before you finally work it out or come up with a creatively obtuse solution.

The game uses the tiny Joy-Con controllers, two of which come with every Switch console, which makes it perfect to plonk down in front of friends for some impromptu puzzle solving. Players will inevitably vacillate between working like a well-oiled reasoning machine and rampaging about cutting their friends' shapes into ribbons, but with no real in-game penalties for that sort of thing it's all part of the fun and experimentation as well.