BMO Snaps Review: Snap Happy

Rumor has it that, at one point in time, some people believed that having your photo taken could steal your soul. Those people would have really hated BMO Snaps. Everyone else though? Well, you’re going to really enjoy it. It’s particularly …

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Rumor has it that, at one point in time, some people believed that having your photo taken could steal your soul. Those people would have really hated BMO Snaps. Everyone else though? Well, you’re going to really enjoy it. It’s particularly great if you want something that will hook you just as easily for five minutes as it will for an extended session.

Princess Bubblegum has inadvertently unleashed holograms upon the Candy Kingdom, so it’s up to you to use everyone’d favorite walking calculator to shoot them as fast as you can, before they wreak havoc on the place. Shooting, in this case, means photography. It’s a simple mechanic with a pretty smart control method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bblmb9TdlQ

You can either use the iPhone’s gyroscope to move the camera around just like a real one, or you can swipe around on screen to change direction. It’s likely that you’ll end up using a combination of both as this proves most effective. A simple tap on the camera button has you snap a photo, which you’ll want to do when the reticule is hoovering over a hologram.

Such simplicity is where BMO Snaps feels its most rewarding. Soon enough you’ll be waiting for that moment when a few holograms cross each other’s path, proving an ideal moment to hit the button and take a photo of all of them at once. Typically, each hologram requires multiple snaps, and you need to reload your camera from time to time, meaning such well timed shots are everything.

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The holograms fight back, too, performing actions like throwing a pie at you and blocking your vision until you wipe it away with your finger, or simply attacking you in a more traditional method. This means that time is of the essence as you try to line up shots effectively.

Occasionally you’ll come across boss battles, requiring even more snaps and giving you a sense of progression. Much the same as when you move onto a different setting, making you feel like things are changing. In reality, that sense of change comes more noticeably from the upgrade system.

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You earn coins every time you snap a hologram (making accruing combos all the more beneficial), which can then be used to boost your abilities. You can recruit the likes of Finn and Jake to perform a special move to help you out. On a more incremental level, you can improve upon your reloading times or the amount of shots you can take before needing to reload. Such trickle feeding of new adjustments works well in enticing you to play a little longer.

You can buy coins for real money if you want, but as should be the case with any premium purchase, BMO Snaps doesn’t try to push you into anything like this. You can just earn them through regular play, and they’re available at a fairly steady pace.

BMO Snaps taps well into that ‘simple to learn, trickier to master’ trend that works so well for games like this. It really is so simple to start out with, but like any good photo shoot, perfection is tricky to capture.

The good

  • So simple to play
  • Plenty to do
  • Lots of upgrades
  • Very charming

The bad

  • Getting used to the controls might take a couple of minutes
80 out of 100
Jennifer is a UK-based freelance writer. Her work has featured at multiple outlets, including Gamasutra, 148apps, Paste, TechRadar, Wareable, and MyM magazine. In her spare time, she tries to teach her guinea pigs tricks, and enjoys losing hours to Netflix.