Urban Space Squirrels Review
Platform: Xbox Indie Games (Xbox 360)
Price: 80 MSP / $1

The 2D platforming squirrel homage of Portal minus the portals and creepy computer telling you what to do.

Overview:
If you've played Portal and enjoyed it, you already have an idea of how fun and rewarding such games can be. Unfortunately, it's hard to come across such titles, well at least it was until Urban Space Squirrels hit the XBLIG marketplace. The game has you taking up the role of a cool looking squirrel who has some rather impressive abilities for being such a simple creature, one of them being the ability to shoot these glowing balls that boost your jumps which resemble portals. Your objective is quite simple, collect the golden shield found at the end of each level which is a lot easier said than done. Along the way you'll encounter these red squirrel tokens that don't have to be collected in order to complete the level but do serve as an additional fun task to take on, similarly to how you collect certain items in other games. You'll have to use your wits, 2D platforming knowledge, and puzzle solving skills to get the job done. As with most 2D platformers, jumping plays a key role in the gameplay. Mastering the jump is not enough in this game though as a lot of the obstacles and puzzles require more than just a simple jump. This is where those glowing balls mentioned earlier come into play.


The urban space squirrel at work.

Can't get to the elevated platform? No problem, just stack up a couple of balls in the right slots to boost your jump to get up or if there's one of those nasty red lasers waiting for you down below, create a bridge of glowing balls to help guide you across. At this point, you either know what I'm talking about as you've seen the game in action and would like to know if it's worth playing beyond the trial or are completely lost as you have not yet seen it for yourself which is for whom the following explanation is for. As mentioned earlier, jumping is crucial and while your squirrel is gifted with it's glowing ball shooting powers, it didn't seem to be granted with the ability to jump very high without some assistance. So in order for the squirrel to increase it's jumping range, it shoots out these bouncing glowing balls that keep moving until you let go of the fire button and can be strategically placed in order to maximize the jump impact. Initially, you start off with just one glowing ball which is the most basic one but as the game progresses, new balls are encountered that are more superior and allow the squirrel to utilize them together to progress through the upcoming levels. You luckily appear to have unlimited energy as you can regenerate these balls at any time provided that you've triggered them already and have landed on something solid. Which means that in the event that you place them in the wrong spot or that they didn't bounce as you expected, you simply have to trigger them to explode and then place it elsewhere. It's important to remember that once you've placed them all, even if triggered already, you can't regenerate them while in mid air as you haven't yet touched something solid such as the ground. I'm not sure how that's logical in terms of realism but then again, the minute the squirrel began shooting those balls such a perspective was lost. Regardless, the restriction makes sense as it keeps the game challenging otherwise one could abuse this ability and just keep regenerating the balls to reach their objective without having to resort to the more strategic placement of them. Aside from using them to leap across platforms and reach higher ground, they are also used to solve puzzles. The majority of the puzzles involve triggering mechanical doors within a quick time frame and often in a particular order in order to progress further in the level as these doors are blocking your path. You will also gain new abilities throughout the game such as the ability to climb certain walls and glide while in the air which will come in handy for certain scenarios. These additions helped keep the game fresh as once you had mastered your previous abilities, a new one was introduced to test out your wits. If at this point you're worried about the challenge involved, you'll be glad to learn that you have unlimited lives and that each level has at least one checkpoint so that in the event that you die while almost reaching the end, you won't have to start all over. The game also has a save system so there's no need to start from level one again every time you play. However, you are not allowed to start back from a checkpoint which was a bit disappointing but at the same time, kept it challenging.

In regards to the graphics and audio, the 2D graphics found in Urban Space Squirrels were quite nice for an indie title and the music/audio effects got the job done. Some of the animations were humorously animated as well such as when the squirrel became shocked by the red lasers. As far as replay value goes, I honestly was unable to complete the game as I got stuck in the final batch of levels but from my understanding, nothing new is unlocked and the only thing to go back to is to collect all those red squirrel tokens if you haven't done so already which should be rather challenging as some of them are placed in hard to reach areas and require additional thinking to collect.

Finally, to wrap things up, this is definitely one of the best puzzle platformers on the XBLIG service. For the highly generous price of 80 MSP, you can't go wrong even if you're not a master at such games. Yes, you will be frustrated at times but you don't have to be a puzzle mastermind to complete most of the levels. I'd say the average person should be able to at least get to level 15 if they use common sense and their wits, the later levels require much more patience and skill though. However, even if that's as far as you can get, at that point in the game you have certainly gotten your money's worth so there shouldn't be buyer's remorse, if anything, you'll regret the fact that your urban space squirrel skills aren't up to par.

Pros:
+Excellent price
+Fun gameplay
+Nice 2D graphics
+Challenging but within reason

Cons:
-Not much replay value aside from item collection
-When you quit the game, you can't come back to the checkpoints (the more seasoned player won't mind)

Urban Space Squirrels leaps across with an excellent recommendation from me, I originally was not the person who was going to review this but due to some assigning issues I ended up lucking out and being able to experience this amazing game for the XBLIG platform. Give the trial a shot, if you like what you see, you can rest assure that your 80 MSP is going in the right direction.

A review copy was used to evaluate the game.