Snail

Snails are small, neutral creatures, most often found slowly waddling around watery regions.

Appearance
Snails are hard-shelled animals that resemble a mixture of a snail and a turtle. Their upper bodies are black in color, and they possess a small head with two white eyes, and two stubby legs that they use to walk and climb. The rest of their body is protected by a brightly colored almond-shaped shell that they are able to retract into for self-defense. They are slightly smaller than the.

Utility
Snails can be held and thrown to temporarily stun any dangerous creature. This comes in handy for most medium sized predators, but is especially effective against. Chucking Snails into the many Leech-infested pools of the can make swimming through them much easier and safer. With a well-timed jump, the Snail's pop may also grant a good amount of vertical momentum, allowing the to reach high places, though this use is fairly niche. Due to their prevalence, portability, and repeated popping, they can be utilized as an effective distraction, as the can simply throw one at one of the Snails' predators, causing them to either catch the Snail and retreat to their den, or sometimes even get trapped in a near endless loop of grabbing but not killing the Snail, the Snail popping, the predator getting stunned, the predator attempting to grab the snail again, and so on. This can come in handy for passing dangerous creatures such as and, who often take a long enough time to kill or eat the Snail for the Snail to pop.

Abilities & Behavior
Snails don't actively flee from or go after most creatures they encounter, often choosing to aimlessly wander around instead. While slow, they can scale background walls, which gives them a fair bit of mobility while traversing rooms.

Popping
Snails are capable of producing a loud pop from within their shells, creating a stunning shockwave, which can easily repel the Slugcat and any other similarly sized creatures. There are a few conditions under which Snails may pop:
 * When around other creatures - standing near one causes it to shake with increasing intensity, before eventually popping. Snails may also produce a few smaller pops beforehand, which serve as a warning. The exact speed at which a Snail pops depends on distance, being near instant if touched.
 * Shortly after being thrown.
 * Hitting a surface with enough velocity. This is especially noticeable, and most often the cause of popping, when a Snail is held by the Slugcat.
 * Getting hit with a non-lethal object, such as a piece of.

Relationships

 * -|Vanilla=


 * -|Downpour=

Variants and Attributes
Snails' bodies vary in size. Their shells can take on practically any hue & lightness, giving them some of the highest color variety in the game (the colors are always highly saturated, however, meaning that greyish ones are impossible). Shells have an ~80% chance to feature a gradient, and a ~20% chance to feature one solid color.

Trivia

 * Snails boost certain moves, including backflips, longjumps, and walljumps, when held. This interaction is likely unintended, and simply a quirk of the physics engine.
 * A Snail's pop radius is proportional to its size.
 * Pops are considerably stronger in water - up to 5.5 times if both the Snail and the creature receiving the shock are submerged.
 * Snails can only pop if they're touching a solid surface, background walls, or water. Though unlikely to ever happen in normal gameplay, this means that a Snail may get stuck on top of a creature's corpse, incapable of popping until moved.
 * It is possible to prime a dead Snail by inputting jump while on top of it.
 * Snails were revealed in Update #20 on the Kickstarter page and are the first backer-suggested creature.
 * suffers seizure-like spasms for a brief moment if a Snail pops near them.