Headsnatchers

Headsnatchers is a 2-4 players multiplayer party game comprising of short and weird mini-games. Each mini-game is played in an arena with different goals all involving hitting your opponents, snatching their heads and doing things with them. Once the goal is complete, that game ends. Each match has 4 mini-games.

Pros

The weirdness and humour of the mini-games are entertaining. I can see how Headsnatchers would make a good local multiplayer boredom buster, even if it is for just a few minutes.

Cons

There are no bots for trying out the different mini-games.

I have the game’s resolution set to 1920×1080, but it keeps displaying in 1536×864.

There is only one mode for online play, and functionality is seriously lacking. There is no lobby for public matches; only quick match or invite friends through the Steam Overlay. There is no chat. There is no connection information or number of people online. There is no online rankings or leaderboards. You cannot pick what arenas/mini-games to play. They are chosen for you randomly. I guess the game’s main focus is local multiplayer.

Online games have been pretty jerky for me. This may be due to my Internet connection. I cannot tell, because there is zero information regarding connection.

When I first started playing, I could not find anyone online. Then the game was given away for free again on 21/03/2020. Now I could play some online matches, but there was still too few people. Most of the time I had to wait about 3-5 minutes to get a game going. On 29/03/2020 there was no one at all. I guess everyone is gone until the next time the game goes free.

Other Points

The single-player mode called Zombie Castle is an isometric platformer where you simply try to get your character from A to B. You have to jump, dodge and whack heads off zombies to use them for some obstacles. It is certainly different from other platformers and does provide a challenge, but it also feels quite pointless. The fun in Headsnatchers is definitely in the multiplayer side of things.

Each mini-game is quite short, but sometimes environmental hazards can drag a game out for some time. 2-4 minute games can become 8-10 minutes long. It may not seem like much, but I wish I could skip to the next stage, because it gets boring quite fast.

There appears to be a large variety of mini-games. Bowling heads, placing heads on a square to count down the timer and throwing heads into a container are just a few examples of the weird mini-games. Unfortunately, this variety is marred by some mini-games needing to be unlocked first and the fact that you cannot pick which ones to play for online matches.

You can design your own heads or pick from a list of heads. I started with random heads from those available, but ended up designing my own head, because I had difficulty finding my character in the game.

Biases

The only party games I remember playing are Rayman Raving Rabbids and Micro Machines V3. Actually, I cannot remember anything about Raving Rabbids, but I loved MMV3.

I got Headsnatchers for free, and I only played the online and single-player modes.