Squingle Review (Quest)
Summary: Squindle is a casual puzzle VR game with complex mazes and gratifying gameplay. The ambitious design endows a superlative challenge that is addicting and hard to match. While later levels can frustraingly become annoying due to an inflexible lack of perception by the confusing colors, twisting overlay, and moving components of the actual pathways within the levels, there is still a fun time to be had in the nest of this otherworldly expanse.
3.8
Existential Perception
Create life and transcend the limits of thought and matter! Squingle is a VR puzzle game developed by Dr. Benjamin Outram, developed by VRAL Games, and initially released in 2021 and is now being rereleased on November 21st of 2024 in the Meta Store for Quest VR systems. Over the years, Squingle has been updating its content with new experiences like speedruns, ghost trials, and leaderboards. Mixed Reality, Passthrough, and Hand Tracking are other features in Squingle that flesh out your involvement with your gaming space and how you actually communicate with the gameplay. Get ready to shift and stir in this mystifying world of radical and trippy mazes.
The game sees you following the directions of an omnipotent being. She instructs and guides you through the structure of how the game is to be played while also relaying some mysterious information about the universe and the concept of existence. There are these ever revolving orb structures known as Squingles and guiding them through these twisting and flowing goo-like levels progresses different fabrics of reality like birth or love. Unlocking more levels will help this seraphic creature reach the wisdom she long desires. The story is pretty interesting for a casual puzzle game like this, but it never develops into anything compelling. It is only there to usher you through each level and sometimes the fourth wall breaking can be jarring.
Squingle is the perfect VR experience. If you are ever wondering how VR actually works conceptually, Squingle uses its space perfectly to naturally interpret the groundwork of spatial awareness, interaction in your playing area, and achieving goals while in this new reality. The main objective of the game is to grab hold of the Squingle orbs and push them through an undulating tube to the end without touching the sides of the perplexing labyrinth. The game slowly increases in difficulty and adds challenges to test your skills in the later levels. The actual stages are suspended in midair so you can freely walk around them to get a better view on how to accomplish your goal. You can even pick up the level, zoom in and out, and rotate it as much as you desire. Later levels introduce even more winding pathways, risky secret passages, and tricky obstacles with the tubes that you have to dodge.
The Squingles are always rotating so that is one of the main things you will have to look out for while maintaining them inside the environment. Getting them through these tight spaces is really tricky, but becomes trickier when other mechanics get introduced like reversing the rotation of the orbs or changing the rotation of the axis that the orbs are rotating on. There are large spaces within the levels for moments of alleviation so you can see what you need to do. The game has an option to enlarge the entire game space to help see and guide the orbs and you can also make it smaller, making it easier to rotate the level around and interact with the game if you are playing it while sitting. I thought this inclusion of being able to scale the orbs and the levels really thoughtful and a nice addition you don’t see with a lot of VR games.
You can finish a level with ease, but in order to unlock a set of new levels, you need a certain amount of points. To gain these points, you must collect green orbs throughout the pathways as well as maintain your petals. Every time you lose a life by continually hitting the edge of a maze, you lose one of three petals. You have unlimited retries, but doing the best you can is pivotal to earning the most points to unlock new stages. The path to the end of the level might be right in front of you as soon as you start, but you will need to get to it in a roundabout way if you want to collect all of the green orbs to get points.
The graphics in Squinngle are very psychedelic. The space that you are initially starting in is almost hypnotizing with all of the moving colors and odd imagery. The option to play this game in Mixed Reality is really helpful if you find it to be too disorienting. Mixed Reality gets rid of the background and lets you play the floating levels in the comfort of the actual area you are using your VR headset in. The fluid anatomy of the levels are really cool to look at, but can be incredibly dizzying. Even after rotating the levels around and approaching them from all angles, it can still be confusing of what the level actually wants you to do, making some accidental losses feel unwarranted.
The music and sound design is tranquil and serene. The soundtrack definitely helps with relaxing you during the harder segments of the game. It produces this certain ease that lessens the stress of particular demanding gameplay moments. The boops, bleeps, and plucks of confirming actions feel great and help the notion of rewarding the player all throughout the game. I did have a weird audio bug that occurred every so often when the celestial being would talk that was vexatious.
Final Thoughts?
Squingle is an excellent VR game that is great for VR experts, amateurs, or dabblers. It provides an exciting challenge and the core design of the game is entertaining. The multiple options the game has is a huge plus in providing comfort and connectivity with the player. Playing can get tiresome at points with the difficulty of the gameplay mixed with the style of the levels, causing unnecessary issues, but the mechanics are very enjoyable and the game makes it satisfying when completing your objective. Squingle is a must play VR experience and is the epitome of design in how to create a fully immersive VR game.
About the Author
Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.
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