The Game Bakers, the developers of SQUIDS, have combined RPG gameplay with intuitive touch controls and turn-based, catapult-like combat. SQUIDS is suitable for all ages, I had my little sister play it for hours, to be followed by my granddad, who also enjoyed it a lot. SQUIDS offers addictive gameplay that never bores you. But is SQUIDS really an original game, that veteran RPG fans would like?

Something that is pretty obvious from the beginning is that SQUIDS has a detailed storyline; which is not something you see in a lot of iOS games (iOS hit game, Angry Birds, is a perfect example). In SQUIDS, a there are a few Squid Veterans in your team that lived through the first war against the infectious, black ooze. With the Squids being underwater creatures and the black ooze resembling oil that somehow leaked into the ocean from presumably a ship, it’s not particularly hard to see the connections being made between this fictional world and our own equally polluted one. Not bad for something that will mostly be passed off as child’s entertainment.

Now, feared and hated, the black ooze returns to, once again, cause violence and despair in the Squids’ underwater kingdom. Your men, a few willing heroes, are the ones that are fighting them. Your job to actually assemble that team and put ‘em up against the dark hordes.

As with all good RPG’s, SQUIDS has a stats bar for each character you can command. You can level them up, increasing their stats and making them more resilient, stronger, or faster. You can even purchase, or find items to give bonuses to their stats. Plus, these items look great on your characters.

There are four classes for the characters you can play:

Scout – These squids are scared of nothing and are faster than the others. Their defense is lower, but they have a special dash attack, which allows them to get farther and to do more damage by combos.

Soldier – These squids have low defenses, but an incredible special attack which allows them to shoot their opponents from a distance once a turn.

Trooper – Troopers are the strong, big-brother types of your posse. If you were to compare them to human, middle-aged warfare; they are the muscled knights that fought with 2 handed long swords.

Healers – The name sort of gives away what they do. They are weaker than the others, with a less damage dealing attack and are capable of bumping into their teammates to heal them.

The graphics of SQUIDS are great for an iOS game. They really make it so that people from all ages can enjoy it. If it was more dark and perhaps more detailed, it might get too messy. Which would, of course, cause people to lose sight of what they’re doing. The characters can only be described as cute. They look like they were cut right out of a kid’s book.

The music of SQUIDS is what you would expect from an addictive, easy to learn, hard to master iOS game. Simple but fitting. There isn’t much variation and it can get very annoying at times, when you’re trying to complete a level and every time you died, you get to hear that same music at the beginning.. grr. But then again, I have heard worse.

Sarcasm, optimism and timeless humor hide in every corner, you just need to notice it in the dialogue. It really increases the fun of the game. SQUIDS is happy to fluctuate between sparks of humor and more hard hitting dialogue though, and the varying moods it puts you through will accentuate certain moments as you play.

Something I did notice about the game, was that the levels are sometimes far to complex, you literally get thrown all across the map to reach the level exit. Sometimes it’s so hard to see where you need to go, that you catapult around in circles for a few turns before realizing you’re going the wrong way. On the other hand, it can be still lend itself to a bit of fun. It makes the game a bit more complex than most iOS games. And being original is very important if you want to create a hit game.

Summary
SQUIDS offers addictive gameplay combined with classical RPG elements (like the multiple characters and the stats bars), all merged with intuitive touch screen controls. It has a detailed story line and is suitable for people from all ages, that can hold and control an iPod or an iPhone. Its references to oil pollution in the ocean and its accessible approach will make this a popular narrative with most players, and certainly adds a layer of relevance, perhaps even teaching younger ones about the problems with pollution. The music and the graphics are simple, but fit for their cause.

A few downsides of this game are the repetitive music and the somewhat chaotic level layout. The music needs more variation and the levels can make you walk in circles if you don’t watch out. But overall, SQUIDS is a great game. With the right advertising, it could get in the top 10 of the appstore – it is already in mine. Who knows what will become of SQUIDS?