Sniper Dan Review

Those of us who are, shall we say, well-matured will remember the classic hidden object books (yes, books) of Where’s Wally; a selection busy pictures that hid various key items as well as the titular bestriped Wally. Digital versions have come before now, but in Sniper Dan, we get a family-friendly shooter variant. Here though, we’re not headshotting and eliminating enemies. Instead, we’re helping to populace of the various diorama’s solve their problems with a 50-cal bullet. It’s charming, bright and cheery, and offers a lot of bang for your buck (excuse the pun).

Each of the levels offers sets of challenges across three separate days. These might be helping find the lost Tiny Tim, feeding the birds breadcrumbs, activating a radar, helping check passengers plane tickets, or a whole host of other seemingly innocuous tasks that in any other world a sniper rifle would be overkill. 

We view the dioramas from our perch, only moving our sight around to scope out the scene. We can zoom in and out, and as we progress can unlock better zooms, bigger ammo counts, and faster reloads. To score the maximum three stars we need to be quick and accurate; each level has a par time, but Dan is also not here to cause chaos. Hit anything living – people, pets, wildlife – and he’ll be punished with lower rankings. Even a single misfire is enough to bring our grade and rewards down to the minimum.

So we scan the areas as fast as we can to find what we need, based solely off of a clue in the task list. Hints can be bought in the store between rounds – though these are an expensive way to use our stars up – which will give us an image to go off of, but for the most part the clues follow some logic. For example, in one level we’re asked to trace who stepped in the oil patch, so following the footsteps will naturally lead us to the culprit. Elsewhere, we might be asked to help someone light their oven, so the obvious place is to look in the windows of the various houses. 

Sniper Dan is yet another title to make the most of Xbox Play Anywhere, which means we can check it out on Xbox, PC, and ROG Xbox Ally X. The nature of aiming an (admittedly cutesy) sniper rifle means that using a mouse is the ideal way to play, but the chill vibe of Sniper Dan means a controller is perfectly adequate as well. It runs excellently across all three devices, and will make a great travelling companion on the Ally X.

Xbox Play Anywhere Corner

There are exceptions – turning on the aforementioned radar requires us to hit four switches, but these are randomly placed on all sorts of nonsensical objects like the tops of trees or the side of a vehicle – but generally the clue should be enough to get by. With a job selected it’ll also flash up when we’re hovering over the direct object as one final hint, though it won’t show up any jobs that aren’t actively selected. 

Occasionally we’ll get a call about an urgent job, requiring immediate attention. These range from stopping someone being pulled into a jet engine to preventing robots hurting the towns mayor and are short, snappy challenges to give us bonus money and score. 

Beating the final day of an area drops us into a boss battle, where quick shooting combines with actual fail states. These are similar to the urgent jobs, but longer and slightly harder, and a great way to pay off a successful clearing of an area. 

Using the currency earned from all the challenges, we can not only upgrade the rifle but our home base. Various decorations can be purchased, and each offer a percentage boost to our days work that stack up together. I’m at the point now where I get an 80% bonus on all jobs completed, so for every 100 coins I get an extra 80 – this soon adds up when clearing entire stages.

The act of scouring the levels, trying to figure out what to look for, finding them all in the time limit and looking for all manner of bonuses has been enjoyably rewarding. On a good run levels last less than 15 minutes, and going back to try to beat our score isn’t just learning where everything is as placements are randomised on each attempt (though the items and jobs remain the same). Beyond the three days in each area, we get extra challenges from vendors to look for specific items, hidden challenges to discover each day (such as setting off fireworks), and even minigames to unlock such as bowling and air hockey. There’s a lot to see and do in Sniper Dan, and that it’s so family friendly means it’d be a great hidden object-type game to play with the kids.

Conclusion

Sniper rifles usually spell disaster for those on the wrong end of one, but in Sniper Dan it becomes a tool to help people. That the game manages to pack so much to do within what is a singular method of interaction is excellent, and there are so many extra challenges to find that it’ll last you quite some time indeed.