Very fun game!

Love the style and everything with this game. Theres a nice cute sense of humor throughout. And I love that you can accidentally kill the squid friend, nice funny touch

The gameplay is quite fun. There were a few moments of sudden difficulty spikes but overall you did well to build up the difficulty level by level, and that was key for getting me to stick to the end. Lots of interesting fun combos with different enemy times. And there were a good solid number of levels too.

The art looks good and everything comes together visually quite well. I really don't have complaints on any of the categories I think you just did an overall solid job!

Trying to nitpick, there were a couple moments I died to getting stuck on a corner, and I do wish there was more adherence to the theme here. It def never stopped feeling like a water level, but I feel like the flying meteors and cannons could've been replaced with something a bit more related to the whole squid thing.

Great picks with the music as well, was really enjoying it, goes great with the game

Overall love this, great job!

Thank you for the feedback, @swooty!

About the levels, I was afraid the game was too short and easy, but I also didn't want to risk boring the player by making levels with repeated ideas. I wouldn't be able to work on it today, so I scrapped the boss fight I was planning and ended up adding a few more enemies in the last levels, I guess that explains the difficulty spike haha. So your feedback about this and on getting stuck on corners is invaluable, just goes to show how important it is to playtest your game with others.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, though. That makes me happy :)

I really enjoyed playing this, great level design and difficulty. I loved the way I could repeat levels quickly. Took me many attempts in some cases, but I made it to the end :)

Spoiler of the end: [Screenshot 2025-04-08 at 09.20.39.png](///raw/9c2/2/z/6b464.png)

YAY HAPPY SQUIDS

The game is simple and fun. Think it could use some scores, but the end is really great!

Haha, knew after my first try that there was a "second ending" and had to go for another run. Actually maybe few because I got sucked into doing a bit of a speed run...


Don't think that is even beatable without the skip I found (or any possible other ones). A full restart options would have been nice too for speed running purposes. Doing a full page reload was kinda awkward. Especially because (even on itch) it was sometimes not just straight up accepting focus in the game area itself so restarting was fiddly. I think it also ate the R key press event (even though it only worked on end I think) and thereby blocked ctrl+r refresh completely.

It controlled great. The pixel art was simple yet clean and good looking. Sounds overall worked brilliantly and the music fit the mood of the game.

Nice and generous to have checkpoints on all levels. Could have easily been longer with no real new mechanics without losing my interest. Having nice and fun movement and combat alone goes a long way.

One easy way to give it a bit more depth would be to have the shooting slow the player down a bit. Would make it so that you'd need to shoot a bit more carefully, especially if going for a speed run. I'm pretty much of the design school that if you have a function like shooting/running, there should be something in it that makes the player to do it 100% of the time. Ammo counts, stamina systems, recoil/knockback etc. Otherwise it might just as well be automatically doing it all the time.

Anyways, good job! 👍

I like squidventure. Squidventure made me happy. I'm glad squid got a good ending.

Can't rate it because the game didn’t launch in the browser, and the download link doesn’t provide a file.

I cannot issue inputs if I put the game on fullscreen on itch.io for some reason... Great game though! Levels feel really well designed and balanced, game play is fun, shooting mechanic feels great and the ending was so cute :D Maybe it could be a good idea to put shooting left and right to seperate buttons?

@antti-haavikko Amazing time!! I will be sure to make restarting easier next time, the R button works only after 'Thank you for playing!' appears, so I'm not sure if that was the problem or something else. The timer only starts after entering the first room, so at least reloading the page didn't impact your time. Oh, the skip you found in that room is the only one there is, I'm amazed you found it!

About the levels, I kind of regret not making more levels now because the game is so short the player doesn't have enough time to enter the 'flow' state. This kind of feedback is really important because to me it's difficult to know what the right balance for pacing is, however by making more levels I think this could be one of those games you get into the 'zone'.

Your design tip makes perfect sense to me! It increases risk/reward and adds another layer to the gameplay, making players and speedrunners be more strategic with their shots.

Thank you for the feedback and for playing the game, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@finntastico @advarsky @whateverdat thank you as well for playing and for the feedback! About making shooting left and right separate buttons, it could be a good idea, it is a little awkward at times to change shooting direction. I would have to test it and see what works better

@peppersalt07 @khaotom :)

@un-kirik I've uploaded the download files again, does it work now?

I'm probably just not very good at the game, but being able to only shoot left and right made it way too difficult for me personally. Shooting in all four directions would probably make it too easy on the other hand, so maybe this is better and it's just a skill issue on my end. I liked the graphics and overall vibes of the game, it's simple enough to work really well as jam entry but also varied enough to keep you interested!

Despite that this is not an easy game, the checkpoints makes it a fair challenge. Simple concept but really well executed. I love the fact that you have another ending and have a special scene for that.

Really well done. Felt challenging but possible. Engaging obstacles and gameplay. And the ending made me smile. Really really well done. Not sure was feedback I could give, def not shooting down or up felt unintuitive at first, but it also made the challenge just right.

Pretty fun little game! The browser version wouldn't take my inputs, but the download worked fine. Only being able to shoot horizontally was a neat limitation, forced me to think about how to navigate around the enemies to get beside them. Visuals were minimal but did what they needed to. Had a good amount of variety and didn't overstay its welcome. Nice work!

Cute squid game :squid:
Nice job! :heart:

A good old robotron style shooter! I don't see this type of game a lot on LD, and this game is well executed, with varied and original gameplay. A pity it ended so soon. It would be great to have procedurally generated levels. Graphics are effective, though the sprites seem a little flat, as if missing depth in contrast to the background.

Nice short game! I thought it's going to play like my entry but turns out it isn't. when it comes to shooting and strafing that is.
But regardless, it is still fun and offer good challenge.

Sooooo cuuuuute! I love the ending :D

Very good job on the level design. Learning all game mechanics step by step like this is always highly satisfying, and the final boss is challenging without being too difficult (it really helped finding out that I can keep the k button pressed to attack).

The visuals are really nice. I'm always impressed by visuals using a few colors, keeping the whole interface pretty clean, and still making everything understandable.

Music and SFX fit perfectly.

Great game!

really nice simple concept and mechanics! It was a little annoying not being able to fire upwards or downwards but maybe that was intentional.