Sniper Dan

Like my dad always said, older women are much more fun, and there’s no problem you can’t solve with a sniper rifle. And fair enough, this appears to be true, if Sniper Dan is anything to go by. This colourful hidden item game puts us into the shoes of Dan, a hardworking everyman who’s on the clock to solve as many problems as possible, with his trusty bolt-action sniper rifle.

Solving everyday problems … one bullet at a time!

Dan is a fresh-faced everyman who wants nothing more than to start up a successful business and help people at the same time. He’s also pretty snappy as a sharpshooter, and he’s found that with the right aim, he can solve everyday problems for a small fee.

Missing a hat? Dan will find it. Gotta reel in a big catch at the seaside? Dan will help you out. Need help sweeping up the leaves? Well, Dan and a bunch of bullets will make short work of that for sure! Dan is a people person, and he aims to please when helping out … for that fee, of course.

Sniper Dan is a fun, colourful and creative item-finding game where you’ll take a prime spot overlooking a busy area and be given a list of tasks to complete. You will scope out the area, find points of interest with provided clues, and snipe away until the problem is solved. As Dan solves problems, he earns money to upgrade his rifle, make his office more snazzy, and buy adorable figurines and sophisticated wall art.

Dan's goal is to scope, snipe, help out, and earn cash for his skilful shooting. It’s simple, yet incredibly charming and engaging if you like solving problems, puzzles and sniping, which I do very much!


Dan’s the man with a plan, and a rifle!

Dan, with a rifle at hand, is here to solve problems, and how these problems are solved is very simple. But figuring out exactly where the problems lie in such massive environments, brimming with life, funny goings-on, and plenty of colourful characters is where the lateral side of gameplay pops up.

See, you’re not being pointed to where to shoot. You have to figure out where to aim that gun, and make sure you’re aiming it at the right place. For example, Posh Pete has dog poop on his shoe, so you gotta find him, aim at the poop and shoot it off.

Simple enough? Yes, and no.

In a massive city environment, which features dozens of roaming NPCs, multiple areas tied together and plenty of other funny sideshows to distract you, you really do have to have a keen eye. When first playing, it might seem a tad overwhelming, and at times it really is when finding smaller items such as levers, a pelican wearing a hat or a banana peel.

It’s a fair criticism, and honestly, there can be quite a bit of repetition here due to the nature of gameplay. But it's exactly the point of an item-finding game to be searching quite a bit. If that’s not your bag, then Dan is not entirely for you. Still, I’d highly recommend it for the comedy value and novelty.

The environments are beautifully laid out, with most points of interest in clear view, and certain visual clues and hints to guide you along the way. And if you’re really stuck, then there is a hint system which provides much more detail on where to go for a small fee.

I tend to not like too much visual noise, especially in action games where all manner of attacks, flares, and particles are on the screen. But for Dan, it was much clearer and cleaner, and I could generally see most visual hints, along with clear environmental indicators on where to point my gun.

Be it from a hint in the objective message itself, a very defined character doing something to get my attention, or simply scanning the environment and seeing something that feels somewhat out of place, there was always that lovely little realisation that I needed to shoot something.

Again, it can be a little confusing or easy to miss the very small things you have to shoot, so it’s best to go in knowing that this is a very colourful item-finding game, with a wonderful art style and joyous sense of humour represented visually through plenty of gags, movement and detail.

I will admit, I got lost a few times and had to repeat searches over and over for the much smaller items of interest. And the clues are very vague, or you get no clue or hint at all, not even a small visual. I was able to overlook this, and the hint system helps.

Where I did find the actual item-finding quite tedious and frustrating was with the side objectives.

The main game presents several big locations for you to snipe, each one with variations in placement and objectives over three days at each location. It’s a nice and clever way to mix things up and reuse levels in meaningful ways. All good.

But the side objectives have you find one single item at a time across multiple levels.

The first side objective you get is to find nine parts of a robot. Okay, sounds fine. Until you realise you’re finding a small box for each part, one at a time. So instead of putting all nine pieces in one level to find, you must find one box at a time across nine different levels.

It got boring fast, especially when the items are quite plain and blend into the environment. This was a massive dislike for me, sadly.


BANG, and the job is done

As I said, objectives tend to be fun and easy to recognise. I love the idea of trimming someone’s beard with sniper fire, shooting out a rotten tooth from someone’s mouth, or pressing a button on a street crossing to allow a chicken to cross the road. It’s all very charming, quirky and lovable.

Sniper Dan knows how to have fun with the concept and provides much more for your buck.

Earning money allows you to upgrade your rifle and office, but also lets you buy fun little items for office decoration, modifiers for your rifle, additional clothing and other cool elements such as mini-games and new game modes. There was so much on offer for my money that I genuinely felt the need to do more work to buy more fun stuff.

It’s fantastic, and I love seeing games provide so much additional in-game content as a reward for my hard work.

While there are only six locations, one of them is a sort of training ground, and each one has plenty to keep you playing in a meaningful way. From the changing placement of objectives, multiple days with different objectives and additional game modes, there really is a lot at hand to keep you busy for a good 10–12 hours and more!

Sniper Dan also throws in some neat random moments, from emergency objectives and random carnival shooting gallery games to boss encounters. And while I wish there were more random events, or that some bosses were reworked to not drag on as long as they did, plenty were still thrilling, and overall they were still a highlight.

My only other main criticism for Sniper Dan is how pretty much all the problem-solving is quite one-note. There were never any problems or puzzles which required multiple actions or had layers. 99% of the time, it was: find the thing, shoot the thing, and see a funny thing happen.

The closest thing to a layered problem was finding a lighthouse, following wires from the lighthouse to a power generator, and shooting the switch to turn it on.

That was the deepest level of problem solving for the most part.

And that’s a big shame, as Sniper Dan should have used a few more instances of multi-layered problem solving for me personally, but I understand why they kept it simple for the replay value.


Overall?

Long story short, I think Sniper Dan is fantastic! As someone who loves puzzle games but has never really dived into the hidden item genre, I clicked with Sniper Dan and its quirky design.

Yes, the idea of pointing and clicking on an object in a game world for something to say "Well done, you found the thing" sounds fairly uninspiring, but it’s all about what you do to dress it up with.

And Sniper Dan, with its novel way to click away, charming art style and design, and an impressively crafted world full of funny critters and unlockable stuff, was just awesome.

I can’t put down Sniper Dan, even with some fairly sizable shortcomings, as it’s just too darn fun and lovely to do so.

++ Wonderful and charming art style
++ Fun and clear item finding gameplay
+ Great sense of humour
+ Plenty of replay value and content

- Can become tedious when finding small items
- Very repetitive side missions
- Not enough layers to problem solving

A PS5 copy of Sniper Dan was kindly provided by PQube for this review