True permadeath: You can never play this game again if you let its immortal snail assassin touch your mouse pointer

I’ve seen a few different versions of the “snail assassin” or “immortal snail” or “snail hunting you down” meme over the years, but it looks like it originated from an episode of the Rooster Teeth podcast back in 2014, where the question was basically this:

Would you take $10 million dollars, but an immortal snail would always be slowly crawling toward you no matter where you were, and if it touched you, you’d die?

You could take precautions—moving to a different country would certainly buy you a few years of peace—but it would be tough to enjoy your newfound wealth for long knowing that no matter where you were, death was slowly, slimily, heading your way.

Soon you’ll be able to live out that scenario on your desktop, including the life or (perma)death stakes. Don’t Touch The Snail is a game where a snail slowly, ever-so-slowly, is always moving toward your mouse pointer. If the snail touches your pointer, it’s game over… forever.

“Permanent death, no retries, and you’re locked out for good,” says publisher Both Good. That’s harsh, only getting to play a game once, but hey, this is an immortal snail assassin we’re talking about here. It is not to be trifled with.

There’s more to it, of course: there are tons of achievements, you can customize your killer snail with various costumes and disguises (and after you die you’ll be given a friendly desktop snail to model the cosmetics you’ve earned), plus your final time will be locked into the global leaderboard so you can see how to did against everyone else trying to survive the slimy assassin.

I’m not sure what sort of strategies you could come up with to evade the desktop snail for long. I suspect an ultrawide monitor would be a major advantage, but even on the biggest screen I imagine it would be tough to leave your mouse pointer motionless for more than a few minutes without panicking.

You can find out how long you’d last against the dreaded immortal snail when Don’t Touch The Snail launches later this month on Steam.

About