Topic: Squish is a Puzzle Platformer in which the player compresses 2D views into 1D

[Software Santa]

Squish is a Puzzle Platformer in which the player compresses 2D views into 1D

Squish
Posted September 8, 2008 at 11:01 pm in Complete Games, squish.
Squish is my entry into TIGSource’s Bootleg Demakes contest, a contest that asked participants to remake a modern game in a retro style. It’s conceptually inspired by the very underrated PSP puzzle game Crush; rather than demake the game for a specific system, I demade the core mechanic in simpler terms. In Crush, the player can compress the 3D view of a level into a 2D view and transverse the level as if it was a 2D platformer. In Squish, the player compresses 2D views into 1D!


Honestly, I started out thinking of it as a joke entry – but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I got that there was potential for some really interesting puzzles here. So I figured I’d give it a shot – I wanted to make *something* for this contest after all, considering I wasted a whole week on a project that was just way too ambitious.


There’s quite a lot I wanted to implement but didn’t have time to – I started it on Friday, finished the engine on Saturday and as a result designed almost all the levels in one day, on Sunday, so it’s pretty rushed and it’s still kinda buggy… All the same, I’m really pleased with how it came out! You can download it here.

Squish features music by the awesome Josiah Tobin! You can check out his other music projects as Swimfail on myspace!

[edit] The game’s since been updated with a level editor and eight new levels, as well as two new gameplay elements!

[edit again] The game’s now at version 1.3 –

As for old stuff, I finally got around to updating Squish today. I created virtually all of the original levels on the last day of the demakes contest and I’ve never been totally happy with some of them – so I decided to recut the arrangement. I’ve created a couple of small, easy levels which bridge together some concepts in the game a bit better, I’ve taken a few levels from the extra “Gates” stage in v1.2 and mixed them in with the original levels, and I’ve totally rearranged the stages. The six levels that I cut from the game have been moved to a custom stage simply called “Rejected Levels”.

I don’t like difficulty “curves” in games; particularly in puzzle games. For some reason it seems to be a widely held opinion that games should start easy and get harder in a fairly linear fashion. I don’t think that works because (a) unless things ramp up quickly at the start, it often means that the early levels are dull, (b) if the game gets quite hard, then near the end most players will simply hit a wall and not progress any further and (c) it’s not as satisfying to solve a difficult or clever level when it’s sandwiched between several equally hard levels. I prefer difficulty “waves” – i.e. where the difficulty of a game oscillates between satisfying difficult levels and rewarding easy levels all the while increasing gradually. That’s what I was aiming for with the original level arrangement, but I don’t think I really got it right. Hopefully I’ve made a better job of it this time!

Anyway, have fun, hope you enjoy it!

http://distractionware.com/blog/2008/11/squish-version-13/