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Radio Squid

Posted on this, the day of our Molyneux,

by

Rob
and filed under

in our entirely accurate databanks

A screenshot from the game Radio Squid. The game itself is largely white on black with the odd hint of red. The art is cute, slightly surreal, pixel art. A squid is encased in a bubble located beneath a stave that is also encased in a bubble. The room itself is a maze of sorts, brick-ish with a fishy theme.

Crikey. I can’t say I was prepared for quite how brutal Radio Squid was going to be. Its largely-in-vogue white on black with the merest hint of a colour cute graphics hide quite the vicious little videogame.

I’m not complaining, I really have been rather enjoying myself with it and the unforgiving nature of it is certainly part of the draw for me! Just took me by surprise, is all.

That’s what I get for just buying a game because it was called Radio Squid without reading a single thing about it (including not reading the description on the store), I guess. As ever, my own silly fault.

In my defence, it’s called Radio Squid. How could I not just buy it? Yer ‘onor etc…

It's another screenshot of Radio Squid. A similar set up to the last though there's more strange looking creatures clinging to the walls in this one.

It turns out that the rules of the game are fairly simple – you take control of a small rhythmic squid who has to shoot a strange bunch of nasties to the beat, grab some money then make your way to the next room, ever so slightly richer.

Complicating all this is the Crossroads/Forget-Me-Not style shooting where your bullets wrap around the edge of the screen and yes, your own bullets do kill you because that’s sort of how bullets work. There are quite a few exits for the bullets to wrap around too. In summary: oof.

A screenshot from Radio Squid. It's black and white with the occasional red highlight, all pixel art. A boss sits vaguely centre stage shooting chunky projectiles at a squid.

Slightly (only slightly) confusingly there’s a number of different screens to each room to progress through with each screen needing to be cleared before you move on to the next, with the ultimate objective being to clamber your way through as many rooms as you can.

Difficulty aside it’s all quite breezy and there’s a lot of character squeezed out of both a simple premise and the not quite monochrome but nearly artwork. I can’t say I have the slightest clue of what the story is supposed to be because my eyes glazed over with it – that’s a me problem rather than a game problem though. My eyes glaze over quite easily these days.

With the warning that it might well make you swear like a trooper, Radio Squid is an easy recommendation from me. From not knowing what to expect through to now, I’m really enjoying my time with it and certainly don’t regret the sight unseen purchase – quite the opposite, I’m well chuffed with it.

I’ve been hammering away at the PS4 version, other consoles are available etc…

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The online home of Rob Fearon, disabled videogame maker, games journalist, crap film watcher, gobshite and doodler. Rob’s been around games a very, very long time now and Punching Robots Club is their personal blog featuring whatever nonsense takes their fancy.

Sometimes it’s a sketch, a review, an article about videogames, a pointer to something Rob finds cool. Whatever, really. Expect anything, Rob’s tired of being a brand online and so it’s just stuff and things these days. Nice stuff and things, mind you.