SYNSO2SH: I love a good title screen, don't you?

Many people missed the original “Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!”, made by Robert Fearon (who, despite having a last name like Fearon, identifies himself as “Oddbob”). It was reportedly developed in response to some arbitrary impulses, like when a friend declared his desire to play a game where the high score was 9, or when he heard a song called “Them’s the Vagaries” by Half Man Half Biscuit, the song from which the title is derived. But I didn’t miss it. I found it, and played it for four seconds, and died, and made a noise like “ugh”. For the record, SY!NSO! was rather well-loved and well-received, but under-appreciated. Par for the Indie Game course, then. I didn’t like it for three reasons: I hate arena shooters like this because I’m rather a poor player, I’m an irritable sod, and it hadn’t occurred to me to try my X-Box controller to control it.

When I tried out the sequel, “Squid Harder”, the stars were right, the prophecy fulfilled, and those three conditions were miraculously reversed. Like it’s ancestor, SY!NSO!2:SH is an arena shooter where the goal is surviving in a short time frame while under constant attack from a colourful variety of thingies. While the messy madness of the original was charmingly chaotic, sprinkled with little flickering text lines and mad pixellated explosions, this is gorgeous. It’s still mad, though, so bring your sick-bag, and don’t try this one on nasty ‘shrooms, kids.

SYNSO2SH: This is what you'll be looking at most of the time.

Play is simple; you shoot five projectiles in a fan shaped spread, very quickly, at all times. This is with the Z key, space bar, or using the auto-fire function. It’s also fundamental that you begin flitting around the screen very quickly with the arrow keys, a joystick, etc. as soon as possible. Colliding with an enemy or a projectile kills you, all enemies die in one hit, and you need to survive for up to four minutes, depending on the level. So, a standard arena shooter deal, right?

That’s where you’d be wrong, because SYNSO 2 incorporates some interesting, simple, and effective feedback mechanisms. The most noticeable is the muted colour that appears where an enemy is about to spawn; this means you can start firing in that direction and be reasonably sure they’ll be dead on arrival. It also provides an exciting tension when a huge row of coloured blobs fades into view and you struggle to position yourself to take them all on. There are no power-ups either; SYNSO is as powerful as it needs to be, after all, and the lack of complications like shield belts or love hearts makes this a pure, focused experience.

SYNSO2SH: Try just running away; it works. Well, for a minute or so.

The effects are pretty over the top, really, although you get the feeling it’s quite in keeping with the spirit of the experience, and although the explosive, screen-swallowing blooms of neon colour won’t obscure things like deadly projectiles, it will obscure, um, you. So you might not exactly know where you are, per se. This is a bit of a niggle, though, because once you start to practice a particular world, you’ll be able to take care of the enemies as they appear. No, I can’t really fault it for being a confusing mess of explosions, because you can turn all that off. You can even save and load your game, and turn off, uh, death. These aren’t considered pure experiences, however.

The finest of the feedback mechanisms is the one that feeds naturally into the climate of the game; every enemy has a unique sample that plays when you kill it, and it does a great job of knitting with the blistering pace of the chipcore music. Try it just to kill those things that say “squid all over me!”. I could nitpick some stuff, like the lack of levels, the tragic lack of both plants and zombies, or the fact that it’s free when it’d get away with at least three quid as it stands. Really, though, there’s nothing left to say. This is a simple game, and a short game, but it’s difficult like only an arena shooter can be, and only total shmup-phobes will hate it. It’s also intelligently made, with an eye to subtly leaning on the established norms and getting information to the player in neat, innovative ways. This is the future of retro.