Don't Touch the Snail is an anti-cozy game that takes permadeath to the next level

There's permadeath, and then there's whatever this upcoming indie game is cooking up. Don't Touch the Snail is an idle clicker, of a sort, with a dark twist. If the titular snail ever catches up to you, it's game over forever.

It's being described as an "anti-cozy" game and that seems fairly apt. The gameplay takes place on your desktop as a persistent snail chases the mouse cursor. You can only remain idle for so long before the snail catches up, so the game involves moving the cursor whenever that ornery gastropod gets close. If it ever succeeds in its grim mission, you can never play the game again.

You can open it, but the snail will now be friendly and won't follow the cursor around. You'll also be able to decorate it when the skins you've acquired. The game also has achievements, so really make sure you don't blow it right off the bat or those will be locked. The fail state is recorded locally on the computer and also via the company's backend, just in case some people try to get around things by clearing out local data.

It's in a beta build right now, with a leaderboard that chronicles the most successful living and dead players. It looks like the top player was able to move that mouse around for over 46 hours before the snail performed its dark dance of death. I am not sure how those atop that leaderboard were able to get some sleep. Maybe they passed off to a roommate in shifts.

Don't Touch the Snail is coming to Steam on May 29, which is only two weeks away. We don't have a price, but it's expected to be low given the nature of the game. Reports have indicated it'll cost $1, which sounds right for something that locks you out after a single death.