Sniper Dan review – a shooting gallery for pacifists

Sniper Dan – how the chicken crossed the road (PQube) More hidden object game than sniper simulation, this new indie title from former GTA veterans is not at all what it sounds like. Sniping in video games is an unusually satisfying process. The stealth needed to get into position without being spotted, the careful observation, allowing for the amount your bullet drops over the distance to your target, choosing the moment, and then a final squeeze of the trigger. It’s a demanding, multi-phase operation, and when everything lines up you really feel like you’ve earned your dopamine hit. The way games celebrate that moment varies considerably. Sniper Elite glories in slow motion X-ray killcam shots of shattering craniums and rupturing spleens, while in Metal Gear Solid 5’s rugged open world the rewards are intrinsic, your mastery of the environment and your equipment making you feel like a professional when things go right. It turns out that not every take on long range marksmanship needs to be quite so poker-faced. In Sniper Dan’s cheerful, primary coloured world the only thing your high-powered bolt action rifle gets used for is helping people. While you can draw a bead on humans and animals, doing so will only earn you a $10 fine, when your real job is to render all manner of unlikely long range bullet-based assistance, in what amounts to a sort of rifle based hidden object game. In each of the game’s levels you begin by climbing a sniper tower and surveying the chaotic scene in front of you. You’ll see people going about their business, while others are frozen in place in the midst of comedy accidents. Some of those are just set dressing, but plenty of others require your intervention, leaving you to deduce which is which, based on a list of objectives hidden amongst the brightly coloured bedlam in front of you. Scanning the scene with your zoomable scope, you need to infer what sort of assistance is needed from the scant clues available. You then use your weapon to deliver that help, whether it’s blowing out candles on a birthday cake, milking a cow, freeing a boat lashed to a dock, or helping squeeze toothpaste onto a brush. Complete all your tasks within the suggested time limit and you’ll earn a higher grade for your day’s work. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. This gives you reputation points to spend, opening up new levels, buying hints to point you in the right direction when you can’t figure out what you’re supposed to be shooting, and unlocking various minigames. The cash you earn for completing objectives can be spent on decorations for your sniper HQ, each of which confers a bonus on future earnings, and upgrades your gun, delivering faster reloads, more bullets in a clip, and an extra level of zoom that really lets you get close to the problems you’re solving. Aside from each level’s objectives, there’s plenty of silliness to be had just shooting different things to see what happens, with countless little Easter eggs to uncover in each of its scenes. Appropriately enough, one of those is always a stripy vested, bobble hat wearing boy who bears more than a passing resemblance to the hero of the Where’s Wally? books. That mix of object finding and humorous problem-solving works well through the crosshairs of your sniper scope, your observations leading you towards the people you’ve been assigned to aid. Given the brevity of the missions’ instructions it’s not always obvious whether you’ve found the right object to shoot though, the game signalling when you have by drawing a small circle around it. Aim to help (PQube) Then it’s a matter of aiming, picking your moment so you don’t accidentally kill a bystander, and taking your shot. There’s not an awful lot more to it than that, although you will get phone calls flagging an emergency situation you need to sort out with your trusty gun. Those moments, along with time-based minigames, effectively expose weaknesses in the game’s gunplay, which is perfectly fine when you’re taking your time, but lacks the necessary feel and precision when you have to snipe against the clock. There’s also the issue that all hidden object games have, which is that it’s great fun hunting for things until the moment where you have one or two items left and just can’t seem to find them anywhere. That protracted, increasingly frustrating time spent in each level, tends to be the final few minutes of each day’s sniping, and while you can use hints to get you over the hump, they cost scarce reputation points and are in consistently short supply. Sniper Dan’s a budget priced game and expecting it to play like a AAA would be deeply unfair. You can still wish it lived up a little better to its wonderful premise though, which sees every single interaction with the game performed by putting a bullet into something, whether answering your office phone or choosing a level from the map. It’s generally a fun few hours, and a rare sniper simulation that’s entirely suitable for children, but it’s no more than that. Sniper Dan review summary In Short: A colourful, pleasingly silly game of helpful sniping, where you deploy your high-powered rifle to find hidden objects and help townsfolk with comedy calamities. Pros: Relentlessly cheerful and with a slapstick sense of humour. Dozens of Easter eggs to find and an amusingly non-lethal take on a genre usually associated with nothing but killing. Cons: Early objectives are more entertaining than finding those final hard to spot goals in each day’s sniping. Gunplay doesn’t hold up in minigames where you’re working against the clock. Score: 6/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PCPrice: £9.99Publisher: PQubeDeveloper: DenkiRelease Date: 17th September 2026Age Rating: 7 You can’t train for this (PQube) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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