Nowadays it’s a common trend for developers, more often indie devs, to create games that feature pixelated art style. With this, they try to appeal to the retro games as well as keep the overall development costs lower. Don’t think that these types of games are a step down in terms of depth and quality compared to more current-gen-looking games. Games like Enter the Gungeon, Celeste, Shovel knight, Undertale, Terraria, Stardew Valley, just to name a few, are among the best that came out in their respective years. Super Squidlit is a retro gamer’s delight by recreating a game with the Game Boy Color’s characteristics, capabilities, and limitations in mind.
The Indie devs
Squidlit is the definition of retro recreation and indie. The game was started by Alex while her wife Samantha was in college for Game Art and Design. Alex loves invertebrates and has a degree in Aquarium Science. In the beginning, it was a small project that Alex did primarily on her own to teach herself how to code and make music on a Game Boy. This lead up to the first game they released, Squidlit. This game was designed around the original Game Boys characteristics, capabilities, and limitations. After the release, they formed Squidlit Ink LLC. With the goal to explore the past of Video gaming, we are bound to expect to see more of them in the future.
The Colorful World of Squishu
The colorful world of Squishu and its invertebrate inhabitants need your help! Play as Plip and your old foe, Skwit Skwot, as you set sail to banish a great evil. Super Squidlit plays like an old-school, Gameboy Color era game with 2 distinct genres. In one part you play an action-platformer and in the other a Doom-like first-person shooter. These aren’t the only genres, however. The entire game is filled with retro game tropes of its time. The game can be played with either the stick or the D-pad, with my preference being the D-pad for the retro feel. The game can be controlled one-handed as well, making the game accessible for more players.
Plip the action-platforming Squid
In the action-platforming sections, you control Plip. You can do moves like jumping, shooting ink, and rolling. When you jump and are in the air you can press the jump button again to shoot ink vertically at the enemies below. This has a bit of a resemblance Goomba stomping in Super Mario Bros but with its own cute squid charm. It’s a little bit hard at first to aim but you get more used to it after a while. When swimming however this lets you shoot horizontally in the direction you’re facing which mixes things up. Rolling lets you knock over enemies to reveal the weak spot, break barriers as well as giving more movements options.
What can be a little annoying is that the screen scrolls constantly. This is of course done because the Gameboy Color had these limitations as well. For the retro purist, this is more acceptable but for the more when looking at it from a casual perspective, it throws me off a little too much for my liking.
Skwit Skwot the weaker link
The shooter has you control Skwit Skwot. Blast your way through enemies in ray-casting 3D RPG levels that look a lot like the original Doom and Wolfenstein games. These to me are the weaker sections. It’s really hard to control and aim properly because it only used one stick to move both the character as the camera. The enemies also take a long time to kill which slows down the pacing and makes the levels go on for too long.
Gameboy Color retro recreation
As said in the beginning, Super Squidlit truly adheres to the limitations of the Game Boy Color with the devs giving us the limitations/specs. No more than 10 sprites can be in a horizontal line with no more than 40 sprites on the screen at any time with each sprite only has three colors. The pixel resolution is 160 x 144 pixels. The sound effects and music feel original as well. This is because they are all recorded on a real Game Boy Color with 4 sound channels.
This is seen in the presentation as well. By screens, dimensions and borders resemble the Gameboy Color. These borders can be changed however with the ZR button to change the color or to remove them entirely, which I really liked. The art style is so cute and lovely with vibrant colors and lovely animations. Your health bar is even made up of muffins. The writing of the game is also very funny. I laughed out loud at the beginning. You can choose not to help Skwit Skwot to banish the evil. This sends you back to the beginning of the game.
Conclusion
Overall Super Squidlit is really solid. It delivers on what it has set out to do, make a Gameboy Color-inspired game. This comes with the good and the bad part of the Gameboy Color. It’s not a game for everyone because of this, but for a retro gamer or for someone who wants to relive the past. Are you up to the task to guide Plip and Skwit Skwot to victory and save Squishu?