- Squid Yes! Not So Octopus is not a twin-stick shooter. You might be forgiven for thinking it is just because you’re playing it on Xbox 360, where every second downloadable game is a twin-stick shooter, but it isn’t. It is in fact, essentially a one stick shooter – your squid moves in the precise, almost calligraphic manner twin-stick shooter protagoships often do, but it fires in only one direction, in a wide, shotgun-like spray. The effect of this minimalisation is that it reduces the main cognitive interplay you get from a twin-stick shooter, splitting your focus between where you are moving and where you are shooting, changing the dynamic from one where the player’s attention is divided to one where it’s juggled back and forth from guiding the Squid to thrusting its wave of electric death toward the pinpoint pricks of light (prixels?) of the game’s enemies.

This then doubles up nicely with the game’s other signature mind-jerk, which is that the whole thing rhythmically pulses, throbs and spasms with showers of Minter-level pyrotechnics (pixeltechnics?), forcing the player to read the situation and react before the whole thing is drowned in coleascing waves of pixelated bukkake (pixka … no, let’s leave that alone), like a kid in a wave pool trying to avoid being pushed along the trajectory that sends him tumbling into an overweight pensioner in a tiny bikini.

Squid Yes, Not So Octopus is 80 Space Bucks on XBL Indie Games, and worth the price of one go on Prop-Cycle.