Quick Review: Squirbs

“Double trouble” has never been truer.

Made by Team Indev and released to Steam on January 6th, 2016, Squirbs is the story of… well… the Squirbs. One of them, feeling heroic one day, touches the Universe Crystal and shatters it. This literally split the world, as well as its inhabitants, in two halves that always do the exact same things at the same time. Your Squirb feels the need to correct his mistake, so he (and his split double) decides to gather the shards of the Crystal and restore the world.

Just one of so many grueling platform challenges.

This concept, which starts out deceptively simple, gets complicated fast. Controls are basic: Arrows to move, Space to jump, R to restart a stage, that’s all you need. Both characters move in the same direction, at the same time. They’ll also both jump if they’re on solid ground; if one is in midair already, only the other will jump. If one is stopped by a wall, but the other can still walk, it will. The main challenge here really is to keep your eyes on both Squirbs, since the hazards will be different on both sides. As an example, if one lands on solid ground, maybe the other lands on water… or worse even, on spikes, killing both. Brutally, too; they’ll literally explode into a splatter of guts and blood.

So. Much. Blood.

Needless to say, trial-and-error gameplay is strongly encouraged. Achievements are earned for dying 10, 100 and 1000 times; this tells you exactly what type of game this is. There’s one more for finishing every area: Forest, Castle, Ice Mountains and Underground. And a last one for finishing all four. Much like other puzzle platformers (and I’ve played a lot of those lately!), elements soon start piling up. Spikes? Lasers? Treadmills? Teleporters? Floors that are sticky and prevent jumping, floors that allow super-jumping, walls that allow for double jump? Cannons? Special pads that reverse the direction in which one Squirb walks? It just gets crazier at every turn.

A point comes, really quickly, where you need perfect-pixel precision in order to reach the shards. The smallest mistake or misstep, and boom, the Squirbs paint the world with their innards. It’s gonna happen a lot. A lot a lot. Having your attention split definitely doesn’t help. Usually, what kills you is something you didn’t see coming because you were focused on the other half.

Yeah, I'm just repainting the whole damn place
with a nice, thick coat of red paint.

It's not the cannonballon the right that kills you.
It's the spike on the left.

The graphics are fine; about as simple as can get. The music, however… well, instead of each world having its own track or set of tracks, the whole game cycles through its small number of songs. It robs these worlds of one thing that could help make them unique. Minor nitpick, but it does highlight that presentation wasn’t as important as gameplay. (Might be why I feel so weirded out by the gory explosions whenever Squirbs die; it feels so out of place with everything else, and I can’t tell whether it was on purpose for comedy, or just shoved in there without much thought.)

Geez, good thing there's those sticky floors here.

This one’s okay. The concept is interesting and implemented in many clever ways. The difficulty goes quickly through the roof, so if you boot this one up, be ready for a major challenge. Eventually, the stages require such precision that you have to measure every single step and action you take, and sometimes you barely have time to adapt. It’s insanely tough. It does all the most common (borderline tired) puzzle platformer tropes as well, though a lot of these are made trickier by the set-up of controlling two characters at once. Ultimately, this one is more interesting in concept than in presentation. Not really bad, and good for a try if you want to sink your teeth into a tough one, but other than that (and its low price), there’s not much to it.

Squirbs is available on Steam for 0.99$ USD.