Squirm

Overview

Squirm is a reality-bending hardcore platformer which was released on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux and continues the story of Squim, the Devs former GameJolt project. Squirm was created by Alex Carpenter, an indie developer from Germany. With a lot of passion and an attentive eye for details, he managed to reinvent himself by creating a short and intriguing experience with lovely characters, unique design and a variety of difficult but fair challenges, subtle humour and flawless mechanics.

Gameplay

Squirm is a 2D platformer with a room-to-room structure with some mild shoot'em up elements. The game consists of basic platforming challenges that become progressively more complex and difficult. Besides platforming, once enough progress has been made, a gun is unlocked. The gun shoots in a horizontal line and allows for enemies to be killed. In later stages of the game a jetpack is also briefly introduced as a gameplay mechanic, which allows for swift vertical movement.

Story

Having finished their previous adventure the main character and their rat friend decide to take a nap. Upon waking up the main character notices that their rat friend has gone missing and that strange creatures seemingly appeared out of nowhere. One of these creatures, apparently tasked with watching over them while they slept, informs the main character that his rat friend has gone to see the "big dude" and asks why he hasn't done the same. Thus the main character embarks on their quest to find their friend and figure out who the "big dude" is.

While travelling through the grey area the main character finds more of these creatures, some intelligent, others not so much. The ones that are intelligent mostly respond negatively to his presence, telling him things like all of the events that have occurred bing their fault, those that don't usually tell a joke.

After some more travelling the main character runs into a gigantic floating eye named Dr. Ludo that shoots projectiles. Being unable to kill it, the main character finds itself a gun and swiftly finishes it off. After doing so the main character obtains a key that unlocks a blocked path further ahead. The now opened path leads to a central hub of sorts. In centre of the room is a mysterious keyhole and the recently collected key floats next to it. The first creature that spoke to them about their rat friend is here. It tells the main character that they will need to collect a total of six keys to unlock the keyhole.