1. Squidlit seeks to recreate the Game Boy experience on hardware that is much more expensive and powerful. You might think this is kind of dumb but it's a good time so hold your tongue.
2. I think a lot of people w/ this goal might just go ahead and build an Game Boy homebrew to play on emulators. I like the idea of just making it a playable Windows game that holds to the same limitations. It's much more accessible. Only dorks download Game Boy homebrew to play on emulators. Cool people like us just want to click a button and have things work after waiting for a download and install.
3. I actually think the developers stuck a little too much to what Game Boy games are really like. Specifically, there is no way to save your progress. It's a super short game but this is still no fun to find this out by surprise. I dunno... I guess what I'm saying is don't start this if you expect a pizza to be delivered in fifteen minutes.
4. In Squidlit, you play as a squidlit, which is a small land-walking squid. You can jump and shoot ink downward at enemies. It's a simple control scheme but it's enough.
5. At the game's outset, you talk to the first character you see and are given a quest. Unsurprisingly, this quest involves a lot of jumping and shooting ink downward at enemies, while traveling towards the right side of your screen.
6. I am very impressed by the shades of green they use here. I feel like many Game Boy emulators and such never get the greens quite right but Squidlit does. W/o a non-backlit screen, you never really get Game Boy games looking just so but this comes as close as anything I've seen. In all seriousness, I think Squidlit is worth playing simply to experience this greenness sublime.
7. The sound too is Game Boy correct. The developers said they used Little Sound DJ to make it so this makes sense. They also took pains to not use too many sound channels at once when using sound effects. I am of the mind that you can take some liberties w/ this stuff when making bit-era throwbacks but I do appreciate the attention to detail.
8. It helps that the music is excellent and it seems to get better as the game goes on.
9. Actually, in general, Squidlit gets better as it goes on. It's one of those games where you can tell the developers built the
levels in the order they occur. The early levels are pretty plain and straighforward but
the last levels start to have some cool puzzle solving elements.
10. I wish the puzzle solving would have started at the level it was at at the end of the game and progressed from there. Squidlit only started feeling really engaging once that element was there.
11. The boss battles are really cool. Each one breaks from standard gameplay and provides a nice change of pace. My favorite is really the first one though, which is a side scrolling shmup type boss that I believe is a reference to Tatanga in Super Mario Land.
12. The story of Squidlit is told completely through on screen text and most of it is skip-able when you have to replay the first half of the game after you closed it halfway through. It's a light-hearted and a bit silly take on the hero's quest. Pretty standard fare for the style of game and well done.
13. It might seem like I'm focusing a bit too much on the Game Boy-ness of Squidlit but that's really its whole pitch. The developers set out to make a Game Boy game on PC and sure as sunshine they did it. It's fun and quick to play in addition to being a neato curiosity so definitely worth checking out if you are inclined to check such things out.
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