SQUIDS: The First iOS Five-Star Story Driven Game

Now if that didn’t get you excited, this will: Angry Birds with story; ’nuff said.

However, I find SQUIDS (developed by a French indie game studio, The Game Bakers), brilliantly more of a 5 star game than what it’s based off of, simply because of the story. It’s practically required by me to gain higher than a 4 star rating on a game if you do not have a cohesive story. This game delivers that, and deeper than I first imagined or even ever anticipated.

Read on for a more comprehensive delve into the game.

The first thing I noticed as I downloaded my reviewer’s copy, and loaded the app, was how strangely addicting it was to listen to the main theme. I probably listened to the looped song – which is about 1:30 to begin with – around 4 times before I wanted to play. All of the music was fully composed for playtimes of around 1:30, which is a fairly decent time for an iOS app game.

When the song re-loops to the beginning, you’re so entrenched into the combat and scene that you ignore it, and it simply becomes what it is – background music.

Not only is the music catchy, the text they display while the game is loading in between levels has random things such as “Clint’s watching YouTube” or something about Twitter or Facebook.

The humor doesn’t end there, as I mentioned there’s story, and with story, there’s always characters. This game has plenty, with more on the way. Each interact differently in the cutscenes, with their different personalities and backgrounds clashing in the dialogue.

On the gameplay, however, it plays similarly to Angry Birds in the fact that you pull on the characters, and the farther you pull – the farther they go. Each character you have also determines the kind of mechanic they fulfill, such as having Sammo the “tank”, Vahine the Healer, and Steev as the quick-moving “DPS”. There’s one other role: The ranged DPS, Clint. Each with their specials that make sense.

Personally, my favorite mechanic of the game is the stamina, to balance the turn-based combat system. As you pull the squid’s tentacles farther and farther, the more stamina it takes to move them. Once you run out, that specific character is done with, and it moves on tot he next.

Overall, the game is a 5-star buy. The link to the iPhone/iPod Touch* version can be found here, with the iPad, Mac, Android, and PC versions coming soon.

SQUIDS is priced at $1.99 (USD). With content updates coming to expand the story to the “7 seas” (including the Pacific Ocean, Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Indian Ocean). I recommend anyone who wants a game that will keep you going for around 2-4 hours of pure gameplay.

*The game is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and 4th generation iPhone touch devices running iOS 3.2.2 or later.