Snipperclips: The Relationship Game
Get ready, you’re about to hear the word “communication” a lot.

This past Friday, I had a stay-in date with a local boy. We’re both nerds, and while we had initially planned to introduce him to PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds, a last-minute thought hit me: why not try out Snipperclips? I didn’t really know much of anything about this game apart from the concept, but on a whim I decided to download it and try it out with him.
Turns out, that was a very good choice, because whether you’re meeting for the first time or playing with your long-time partner, Snipperclips is a pretty incredible way to measure your communication skills as a couple.
I don’t think this is a particularly spicy take, nor a super original one, but I just want to give this game its deserved praise for how it teaches its players to communicate with one another. The puzzles start out fairly easy — not incredibly difficult to grasp, but also not insultingly easy. Rather, the first tier of puzzles seems to be built with the intention of teaching the player not only how to perform certain tasks, but how those tasks work together. Each level also seems to be built with the understanding that technical skill is not as important as communication with your partner, as most of the solutions cannot be achieved without good communication and mutual timing.
For my date and I, it was a great way to break the ice and be more open with each other from the get-go. After playing the game for an hour or so, I noticed that we both seemed to have an understanding of how to communicate with one another, and it made the rest of the date much easier on the both of us.

But it was particularly useful in observing how I communicate with friends or potential partners. When failing to solve some of the puzzles (the hopping frog thing where you trap him and make him jump through the gate at the top was a particular sticking point), I found myself being indirect about what I want, assuming he knew what I was asking him to do for fear of offending him. Once I finally told him to help me trap the creature and carry him across the water, we did it in one try.
This is what makes Snipperclips so fascinating and, ultimately, useful — it’s designed in a way that punishes players for not effectively communicating with each other, but is also designed to teach players how to do so. It’s a game where the solution will often be clear to at least one player, and the key is in how they communicate that potential solution to the other player. When they fail to do so, both players can see the results in real-time and understand where the error in communication occurred. Because the puzzles are so simple to grasp most of the time, it’s all but guaranteed that the focus will be drawn to the error in communication, and the only way to finish the puzzle is to fix the problem.
That design is genuinely brilliant. Co-operative games often have an aspect of this kind of thing, but it’s usually interspersed with technical skill and a ton of other mechanical quirks and features. Snipperclips is different in that it’s all about one thing: teamwork. There’s no other gameplay quirks to allow one player to carry the game, no random-chance events or technically-difficult battles. It’s just you, your partner, and how you talk to each other.
By forcing players to confront these issues in a direct-but-positive way, in real-time, Snipperclips creates a safe environment to explore relationship dynamics and better understand how to communicate. Snipperclips is a Relationship Therapy Simulator in the best possible way. There are no time limits, no rewards for doing things as quickly as possible, nothing to put additional pressure on the players. All that matters is that you cut it out, together, and move on — hopefully having learned something in the process.