Squids Odyssey review

If you've ever wondered what a mix of a turn-based role-playing game, Angry Birds, marbles and talking squid would be like, then you've got bizarrely specific fantasies and are probably disappointed on a regular basis. On this rare occasion, however, your overly stringent parameters have been met, because Squids Odyssey is just that.

Set in the world of cephalopods, it sees a group of mutinous molluscs trying to overthrow an evil force taking over their underwater paradise. Naturally, they decide to do this by recklessly flinging themselves into anyone who stands in their way.

The standard gameplay mechanic is very Angry Birds: pull back with the stylus or analog stick (the former is more intuitive, the latter more accurate) then let go to catapult your squid across a stage. The difference is, Odyssey is a top-down RPG affair, so bumping into enemies merely takes away some of their hit points. While at first you merely do damage by bashing into your foes, you're quickly introduced to other methods of attack, such as rebounding them into spiky sea urchins, or knocking them off the edge of the stage (though, of course, hit them too hard and at a funny angle and you risk rebounding off the level yourself).

Simply flicking characters into enemies would be no fun, so there are a number of other mechanics to keep things interesting. Most notable is having four types of character class - scout, healer, shooter and stomper - each of which has its own special ability. The scout, for example, has a dash move that lets them ping around at full power a number of extra times - handy for escaping trouble, damaging foes multiple times or, indeed, scouting out a level. Meanwhile, the healer can give allies some HP every time she bumps into them (or they into her).

Add to this the shooter (who can fire long-range bullets at enemies) and the stomper (who can execute a shock attack that knocks every bad guy within a certain radius flying) and you've got a set of character types that, while small, is sufficiently varied to enable you to approach its levels in a number of ways.

The difficulty of these stages will determine how much fun you'll have with Squids Odyssey, because the AI is fairly unrepentant from the get-go. Find one of your characters trapped in a battle with a few of them and chances are they'll be finished off fairly quickly.

This leads to some unbalanced moments, in which some of your squad members are far more valuable than others. Kill your healer early and your chances of clearing a level are reduced by far more than if your scout had pegged it instead.

Still, that this is a game to be experimented with, rather than just ploughed through, is made clear in its three-star system, which rewards the player for not only clearing a level, but also for doing it in a certain number of moves. This encourages multiple playthroughs as you try to find the best squad and tactics to finish a level as efficiently as possible.

Squids Odyssey is a difficult, but charming, turn-based flick 'em up. Its quick-burst gameplay means the promised 3DS version might be a better fit than the Wii U one, but you'll have fun with it regardless, as long as you don't mind some potentially frustrating difficulty spikes.