Squids with guns! Pink Robots! Devils from the 4th dimension! Shopping Trolleys and Lasers. When 4 worlds collide, only SYNSO (he's a squid, not an octopus!) can save the day. Psychedelic arena shooter action with visual and aural overload. Just the way sir likes it. Critically acclaimed and star of the Eurogamer Expo 2009 Indie Games Arcade, Squid Harder is an arena shooter like no other.

Post news Report RSS SYNSO 2:Squid Harder Beta Released

SYNSO:Squid Harder is now available to download. The full version will follow in just a few days, in the meantime enjoy this release and please, feel free to give me your feedback.

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Without further ado, the beta version of the eye searing arena shooter with an eye on accessibility "SYNSO:Squid Harder" is now available to download. The full version will follow in just a few days, in the meantime enjoy this release and please, feel free to give me your feedback.

Well, as the worlds worst last minute decision I decided to rewrite World 4 from scratch. Which means that I'm even more behind schedule than I already was with this release. However, a promise is a promise and here, for your enjoyment and edification is the beta version of SYNSO:Squid Harder. Containing 4 out of the 5 levels from the complete game.

Squid Yes, Not So Octopus Squid Yes, Not So Octopus


How to play

Move around arena. Shoot things. Survive. You only get one life, so make it count. Score! Or just watch the fireworks go off around you, it makes no odds to me as long as you're having fun. Heck, you can turn collisions off if you want to. Doesn't bother me.

Controls

SY!NSO!: Squid Harder supports a number of different control configurations out the box. You can either use keyboard, in which case you'll be wanting Cursor keys and a firebutton that's the most comfortable for you - I prefer Z, but you can use space, shift, control or a few others. Whatever.

How about joystick control? Oh alright. You shouldn't need to configure a thing - it should just work. If it doesn't, grab joy2key until I fix whatever is obviously broken there. Ah, you've got an X-Arcade stick? Don't worry, you should be able to use it with SY!NSO! out the box.

Need a switch interface? Run SYNSO4Noah before loading SYNSO and thanks to the magic of William Pilgrim, you can play SY!NSO! with a single switch. Turn practice mode on to avoid dying or you'll need pretty fast reflexes to survive. Still, it's actually quite fun seeing if you can last more than 2 seconds no matter what control you use, so don't feel like the game is picking on you - it's sort of just does that y'know?

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Dremth
Dremth

ooo shiny

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Kasplatt
Kasplatt

indeed :)

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Weeman45
Weeman45

oh my god this hurts my eyes... i'll play it all day long! :D

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CallmeMic
CallmeMic

looks like Geometry Wars.. just more square-ish :p

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Ynkyr
Ynkyr

Just saw this one here. AWESOME game! Indeed addictive and eye-hurting ^^

Great that it works with joystick. I suck with keyboard here and there are not so many games out there which support joysticks.

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NullSoldier
NullSoldier

This is like the 4th one of these to come out. They are all over steam too. :P I'll have to give it a try. Trust me, im reserving judgment I'm just pointing out patterns in game development. There's been a huge number of these that have been developed.

Echos, Geometry Wars, Everyday Shooter, Bullet Candy, and now... SYNSO:Squid Harder

Looks mighty fun though.

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RobF Author
RobF

Ha, caught bang to rights!

There's also Bullet Candy 2 due soon. I got a sneaky preview of it, it's great!

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timstro59
timstro59

looks awsome i'll download it

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jesse41993
jesse41993

I love the mix of robotron and geomitry wars keep up the good work.Also the theme song while playing is awesome.

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RobF Author
RobF

Thanks for all the comments, folks. If you hit any trouble with it or even if you don't like bits, please let me know as there's still time to tinker with things and unbreak any broken bits.

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Elratauru
Elratauru

wow, impressive I must say, I Liked the demo, nice colors, concept and art, really... Its just beautiful too see, not just to play. My controler worked fine and was recognized out of the box, however I would like a option to shoot other sides without moving... its hard to destroy enemies while moving forward for them...Keep the good job guys.

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WTFA54
WTFA54

For some reason the controls on the keyboard are kinda wonky on my computer. Sometimes they'll be nice and responsive, but other times they won't register, or a single push will send me flying off into the corner to get cluster ******. is this just my computer or is there some strange glitch that no one seems to be mentioning?

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RobF Author
RobF

Nope, it's not you! It's a bug alright, had a few reports of it.

Tracked it down a couple of days ago and the test build I sent out to a few folks seems to be reporting it fixed, so hopefully I should be good to put it out in a couple of days.

Sorry about that, it was a really stupid thing too.

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Armageddon104
Armageddon104

Reminds me of polygon wars :D

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Hidraga
Hidraga

WUT?

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