Preview: Hands on with Squids

Squids is the 1st IOS game from newly formed, The Game Bakers and I was given the chance to play the upcoming game and talk with the developers, Emeric Thoa and Audrey Leprince. So before we get into the amazing world of Squids, here’s a little info on the creative minds behind the game.

Emeric Thoa is in charge of The Game Bakers’ creative content. In a previous life he played a major role in the design of best-selling AAA console games and was Worldwide Director of Conception for Ubisoft on titles such as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent and Rayman Raving Rabbids.

Amazingly vibrant graphics!

Audrey Leprince worked as a Producer on several best-selling console games. Her most recent game was the award winning voice controlled RTS Tom Clancy’s EndWar. She started in the industry as a game designer and producer for independent studios, before spending 6 years developing games for Ubisoft in China.

Like I mentioned before, Squids is the company’s 1st IOS title but since the developers roots were in the console market, why go to the IOS? Well according to Emeric, The Game Bakers were formed because he felt that the current IOS market had games that did not fully utilise the platform. They felt that they could bring what they learnt from making console games and compress it into an IOS gaming experience. “As a gamer we… for me when I’m playing with the Iphone, I have great fun and I still do with many games but sometimes it can feel like its missing something… something like depth”.

In Squids you control a team of super stretchy heroes to protect their world from an emerging threat. The Crabs and Shrimps of the sea have become corrupted so it’s up to a colourful crew of Squids, each with their own skills to defend their land and overturn the evil.

You're kick ass team of squids!

The gameplay is simple and easy to get to grips with. You stretch and release each squid in your team using your finger and try to hit them in to the opposing forces with each one being surrounded by bubbles called action points. The gist here is that the more you pull, the more action points you use up. This gives a more tactical edge to the game which requires you to use your turn carefully and make use of the squids as effectively as possible.

Once you’ve run out of squids to send flying, it’s the enemy’s turn to try and deal you damage. Visuals wise, the game’s underwater environments look absolutely gorgeous! An incredible amount of detail has been added to make sure the backgrounds and characters stand out really well, the colours and characters fit the overall theme so well but with the announcement of a HD version coming along as well, they’re sure to look even better and sharper.

Take those crabs down!!

Surprisingly for an app game, it has a lot of depth to it, the likes that are rare to see in the store! Full out story, colourful characters, a vast amount of levels and RPG elements which makes this game, practically bursting full of content.

Squids will be released on October 13th for the IPhone and IPod Touch! In addition to that a HD version will be released for the Ipad, Android, PC and Mac later this year.