Indie Games News/Previews #3

Squirbs by Team Indev (2015) - PC

I've long had a weakness for those platform games with cute/weird characters so this upcoming indie title caught my eye easily enough, but I quickly noticed another thing that makes it stand out - you don't control just one cute/weird character but two simultaneously! The main character, you see, is the Squirb of the title whose world has been split into two, both of which contain copies of him. Your job is to search the 125+ stages for fragments of a magical stone which will return the world to normal, but you do this by controlling both Squirbs in both worlds at the same time by way of a split-screen view, with the simple controls (left, right, jump) moving both Squirbs in the same way.

This probably makes things sound a whole lot more complicated all of a sudden, and indeed, stages are filled with spikes, water (which is deadly of course), bottomless pits, and all sorts of other hazards, and avoiding one with one Squirb may cause the other to fall victim to one. There's just a demo available so far but it's looking really good. The character(s) is appealing, the many small stages are well designed, the difficulty curve seems okay(ish), and it's good fun to play with some real head-scratchers later on. The presentation could use a bit of polish in the final game and I'll be hoping for a little more variety in the landscapes and music but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one - good puzzley platform games of this type aren't common after all.

Find out more about Squirbs and download the playable demo here. If you like it, support it on Steam here. In the meantime, check out this sweet trailer :)