Do you want a new, relaxing puzzle game with cute and courageous creatures? Do you have a Meta Quest lying about and need to justify owning one? Then Squishies might be up your alley.
Squishies is a VR puzzle game where you must direct cute little rotund animals, the squishies, to an exit on each level, collecting gems, avoiding obstacles, and solving simple logic tasks. The squishies do not move by themselves, so it’s up to you to give them the momentum via the fish-like creatures your hands become in-game, which can both blow or suck air to roll the squishies to their goal.
Keep on Rolling
Originally released for PSVR in 2018 and then ported to Steam in 2020, Squishes has now been ported to the Meta platform. Being designed from the ground up as a pure VR title, Squishies offers a unique perspective, as you aren’t affixed to a single camera angle and must regularly change your viewpoint to fully explore the levels. Luckily, your head/camera isn’t beholden to collision, and neither are your fish/hands, so you can freely move without getting stuck because there truly are some tight spots in later levels.
The plot is obscure and presented via a textless mural, but in all honesty, it is kind of superfluous. As far as I could make out, the squishies were scattered about the land as another race was collecting the gems associated with them. It is some time later, and you play another squishie on a platform towed by the two “air fish”, reminding me of a Star Wars podracer or a gladiatorial horse chariot (Excuse me while I just have the realization that’s what the Podracers were based on), and you are rescuing your fellow squishies from across the different worlds.
Each level is presented as an island or a series of islands surrounded by a natural barrier, depending on the world, be it water, lava, or just a drop into the void. A squishie or several squishies will spawn in one location, and you just need to get them to a giant portal in another. Simple right? Well, it may start simple enough, but it soon begins adding complications to the mix. Starting with simple obstacles to navigate around, it progresses to slopes where you must control your acceleration, and thin passageways over pits. Remember, you are manipulating the squishies primarily with fancy air cannons.
As the levels and worlds progress, more mechanics and power-ups are introduced at a steady pace. There are plants that can temporarily change squishies’ attributes and mass, buttons that must be manipulated, wind-powered platforms, and on more than one occasion, platforms that changed depending on how zoomed in you were.
Easy to Learn, Tough to Master
Instead of a normal tutorial, each new ability/mechanic was taught via a simple pictograph on the level where it was introduced. They were simple diagrams but effective enough to inform a younger player.
Blowing or sucking on the squishies causes them to start rolling, and as they are mostly round, their physics doesn’t quite behave as you expect. They have some weight to them, so they can pick up speed, but will quickly lose it if you are not consistently applying force.
The squishies don’t bounce either, and their stubby legs will help them stop, but they don’t interfere with any rolling trajectory, which is a godsend when navigating narrow paths. They also don’t get a lot of airtime either. There were a couple of times I tried to use some upwards momentum to try and extend a jump, but as soon as the squishies started plummeting, there was never any chance to save that jump.
Respawning is quite generous, though, as you do get unlimited squishies to attempt to make it to the exit. If they hit the water, fire or fall off the map, they will either respawn at the starting location or at the latest checkpoint you managed to hit. There’s also no time limit, so you can use as many tries and take as long as you need to with each level giving Squishies not so much a casual feel but more like a relaxed, no-pressure game.
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The reason I don’t describe Squishies as casual, apart from the negative connotations that word implies, is that Squishies is anything but “casual”. Some of the later levels were quite challenging as they started to become real brain teasers or required perfect navigation with checkpoints spaced further and further apart. My times in the levels started to creep up and up, giving me an average level time of around fifteen minutes for completion.
How Does It Feel?
Thankfully, comfort levels were high. Squishies asks very little physical movement from the player, with my playtime almost exclusively sitting down. Movement around the level could be done by gripping the scenery and pulling yourself across. By holding both grip buttons, you could rotate the level and zoom in and out, giving you 360° of movement with your hands. Blowing was done with the triggers, and suction was a face button. If you were pressed for space, you can even turn on “mixed reality” mode, which would turn off the skybox and replace it with your room so you knew you weren’t banging into things.
At the end of each level, you are scored on three factors: how many squishies you rescued, time taken, and how many gems you picked up along the way. Each level has several gems to collect as well as a secret egg, but these seemed to be just for points, as you weren’t required to hit goals to progress or get locked out of any content for being lazy. Even the eggs, whose counter can be found on the story mural screen, seemed to be just for points, as they didn’t unlock any further story revelations.
The levels themselves are bright and colourful, with worlds evoking a different theme. World one reminded me a lot of the Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog, world two had a more jungle sky theme, and later worlds were the obligatory Ice and Lava themed. The squishies themselves were cute and colourful with various faces and colours, seemingly randomised with each spawn. Levels can be populated with fauna and flora appropriate to their world, and with 100 levels in the base game (twenty levels split over five worlds), each level is unique.
With no voice acting, Squishies has to rely on its music score. While it was jolly and upbeat, the tracks did start to repeat themselves and get lodged in your head.
Squishies also comes with a very robust level editor and community search function, meaning user-created levels would be available for download. I took a cursory look at the editor, and while it was easy to use and straightforward, I imagine someone with better skills than I would be able to make great use of it.
In Conclusion
Squishies is a difficult game to rate. I found myself getting frustrated more than I was enjoying myself, but does that make it a bad game? In my opinion, no. I just wasn’t the target audience for Squishies. The bright colours and simple tutorials suggest a much younger and more forgiving audience than I.
Squishies is a solid VR title that doesn’t ask you to perform acrobatics around your living room. If you enjoy puzzle games and can handle a bit of frustration, Squishies might be worth a look.
Developer: Brainseed Factory
Publisher: Perp Games
Platforms: PlayStation VR, Steam, Meta
