Squish

.: By: Jason Surguine :: Device used: E-125 :: July 10, 2001 :.

Squish is a simple puzzle game recently released in which you are a penguin (creatively named "Mr. P") that runs around the screen collecting gems. You collect these gems by having to move obstacles out of your way, breaking objects, and basic trial and error interaction with objects on the screen. Once you have all of the gems, a door appears and then you use that door to exit the level. Not a complicated concept to grasp, but of course a difficult task to accomplish, as is the point of most puzzle games.

The game plays much like many of the mini-games in RPG's and adventure titles, such as in Zelda where you push blocks around in the correct order to get the best items, or in Final Fantasy VI where you have to flip the switches in the correct order to open the door to the front of the train. But if you move one block or switch in the wrong direction, you’ve screwed up and have to leave the room and start all over again. Squish plays much like this, but extends the idea a bit further by adding more ideas to the formula than just pushing blocks and flipping switches... at least for some levels.

Many of the levels actually do have some intellectual challenge and the game just has a very good PPC quick-game feel to it. It’s definitely the type of game for those that just want to play a quick 5 minutes of while on the bus/metro/train/toilet/whatever and then pick up again later.

However, most of the levels don’t follow suit. First, the game has unbalanced challenges - it seems like the levels around 25 were much harder than any other in the game, while all of the levels in the 40s were relatively simple, only a bit harder than the first ten, for example. And at the same time, the lack of something new to do is pretty abundant. In this game, after you are introduced to the last new puzzle idea around level 10 (connect a key and a lock; push blocks of ice into water; break ice cubes using a metal block or wall; coins inside of ice cubes; push metal blocks into weak walls to break the walls; push metal blocks; get coins, exit level; push uni-directional blocks; and push anything into bubbles that pop), there really isn’t any other new idea introduced for the next 38 levels.

Moreover, the level colors/backgrounds/themes get boring after a few levels and don’t change for the rest of the game. The developer could have easily implemented this along with a short little story about Mr. P’s adventure. But no, you’re just a penguin, ‘Mr. P’, who is supposed to collect gems and then exit a door that appears. Come on, there should be at least some story, to explain this stuff. And it could easily tie in with the border/color changes.

Actually the game did implement cute little names for each stage. Names like: "Demo"? "Demo2"? "Harder"? "Harder2"? "Pac Man", "David’s", "not sure"? "mommy!" (?!), and "Almost"? These names sound like they never expected someone to buy the game, or they never expected someone to get as far as I did... which I highly doubt.

I suggest that the developer/programmer play through the puzzle game of Donkey Kong for game boy, which is to this day the best puzzle game created (in my opinion). This game has a new puzzle idea introduced during a cut scene between each world/theme, which is then implemented into the next world/theme.

There really should have been a save feature and a level select feature; only being able to play the last level you got to (or start all over from level one) is pretty limiting. That and every time that you run out of time or your penguin dies the game is over and you are kicked back to the title screen, which is a total pain. Why not ask if the player wants to continue instead of having to load three more pages and use 4 more screen taps? What a waste of time. Even just re-loading the same level takes too long. It has to draw each title separately instead of just loading the entire screen at once, which takes way too long just to load a level.

And why does the penguin die in the first place? This happens from falling into the water. This must be because penguins can’t swim in video games. I can accept that, but why does he have to die? Can’t Mr. P just not be able to cross the water? It’s a real pain when you have to get a game over just because of the poor play control knocking your non-swimming penguin into the water.

That’s my main gripe with the game. The play control is very, very frustrating. You have to use the stylus, and then the penguin is supposed to go in the direction of where you tap the stylus on the screen. This is obviously flawed already as you can imagine - if there is an obstacle in your way yet you tap on the other side of it, the penguin will try to go through the obstacle (whether you did it on purpose or accident). So when you are trying to use precise movements (which is 80% of the time) you end up tapping on every little isometric square on the screen for each little step you want to take.

However, even that mucks up sometimes and, if you tap on a block you want to move, the stupid penguin will move it and then move into the position of the block you moved, and then glitchily move it again in the same direction, making the penguin a retard and you a really unhappy gamer.

I’m still confused as to why there was a points system implemented. It really only keeps track of how many coins you picked up and how many things you broke, which is really not the point of the game. The point is to solve the levels, not break things and pick up more coins before the timer runs out. That’s a different type of game.

Speaking of time, I ran out of time many times because I had no idea that I only had 10 seconds left to complete the level. There should be some kind of warning beep to let you know it’s time pick up the pace. Also, because of the nature of the game, there should be some sort of pause button in the game so you can visualize your strategy without having to worry about the timer. Don’t take the timer out, but the timer should only be there to time how fast you should be able to execute the puzzle, not analyze it. This game would actually be much more enjoyable if you increased the time limit and slowed down the game/animations and controlled the penguin with a directional pad.

The graphics are rather decent and don’t hurt your eyes like many other PPC puzzle games do. Still, it’s a far cry from what the PPC is capable of and is already accomplishing in other game genres. At the same time, however, it’s a class above the sticks and blocks that have been used in puzzle games.

The sound consists of three sound effects that are decent and nothing to complain or scream about (even though it uses the windows default start up sound for picking up a coin… Come on!). Music? None, of course. What a surprise.

Something that should never happen in (well, every publicly released game, but that’s hoping a bit too much I guess) a puzzle game that depends on certain movements and where you're being timed by a clock is the game freezing while you’re in the middle of solving the puzzle. The game froze on me about 5 times in which the only way out was to do a soft reset... Not a giant problem, but still very annoying. I don’t know if this was due to the Pocket C runtimes or Squish itself, but it is still unacceptable on Oz Creations part to release a game that freezes this badly.

With the strange level names (which easily could have just been taken out and left with the original title of level 37 or whatever) and all of these glitches, it makes you wonder if this game even went through a beta testing stage. There are just too many gripes that I know many gamers would have with this to allow this game to be released.

Hopefully, the level editor will be able to solve a few of the drab level issues, but they’re not going to help with many of the other fundamental gaming issues such as the play control (play control is absolutely fundamental, especially in a puzzle game) and glitches. Yet, for the past week or so, I’ve been trying to download the editor and visit the website for Squish and it has been down every time I have tried. Therefore, I have never been able to try it for myself. Needless to say, I do not contact game authors about the concerns for the games I am reviewing for many obvious reasons. So I did not contact the author concerning this issue, but I can assure you that after this review the website will most likely be mysteriously back up and running.

Anyway this is a very simple, basic game, which is a very good first amateur attempt that demonstrates the developer's/programmer's potential. And, if they improve this game and add a lot to it, this could be a very promising game. This could be a well-polished puzzle game if all of these things were fixed... perhaps you could add a story, some small themes to all of the worlds, like ice world, and desert and maybe even bonus or boss type levels so you know that you have defeated a certain theme/world. And all the while, the game can still honestly be enjoyable with a lot of patience. As much as this game has flaws, it does have some diamonds buried very deeply in the ground.

Pros:

• Very intuitive ideas and levels

• Decent graphics (for a puzzle game)

• Perfect quick 5 minute game playing style

Cons:

• Decent graphics in any PPC game is getting old

• Buggy and unpolished

• Play control is horrid

• Lacking in the sound department

• No blood and guts flying around the screen when the penguin dies from drowning! ;)

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