Squid Girls 18+

CW: Suicide, and some other shoehorned in grimdark stuff

Skip Straight to the Horny Parts

---

Synopsis

Get it? Like Squid Game?

Squid Girls is a 3D runner game developed by Squid Developer and published by BanzaiProject. It came to steam in February of 2022, hot off some of that Squid Game goodness. The art and style of the game are incredibly reminiscent of another game I played recently, Among Waifus 18+. Initially, I thought Squid Girls must be by the same developer or publisher, but despite their similarities, they aren't. Interestingly enough, they are available together in a Steam bundle. But while Squid Developer is making games like Fall Girls, The Developer of Among Waifus is working on games like SEX with HITLER. Which uhhhhh I don't think I'm gonna review.

You are a young man named Craig. You love money and are excellent at manipulating people. After a failed suicide attempt, you join a contest to win obscene amounts of money. The only catch? Alright, you get it. We all know the deal. It's Squid Game. Even if you haven't seen the show, you've probably absorbed enough through cultural osmosis to get the gist.

Story / Characters

The story is a little hard to follow because the translation is ROUGH. Still, the typical rule is that each character has some sort of defining trauma. This trauma has been completely shoehorned in to make the story seem profound, but ultimately none of it pays off.

The player character Craig teams up with Dunby and Hison intending to get out together. As you advance the story, you learn about the dark pasts of each character. But thanks to the poor translation and unfinished feel to the game, any attempt at emotional depth feels incredibly phoned in. The dialogue details games very similar to those of Squid Game; however, they aren't shown, and they certainly aren't playable. All of this is put into motion by the mysterious Investor. Her name doesn't make a lot of sense because she's definitely more of a director than an Investor. Still, we'll assume that's a translation issue. In the end, Craig convinces The Investor to join her own game and then intentionally kills her. What happens after that? I have no idea. The game just ends with no resolution. No epilogue. No explanation as to whether or not Craig Dunby and Hison escaped this deadly Squid ---Game--- Girls.

Dunby is a brash sex addict. Her defining trauma is that she had an abortion at some point. There isn't much to say about her or any of these characters. The story in this game feels like an afterthought.

---

Hison is the antithesis to Dunby. A reserved and shy girl who also happens to be a virgin. Her defining trauma is that she was abused daily by her mother, who would inspect her hymen to make sure she was still a virgin.

---

The Investor is the ringleader of this whole experiment. After her father's gambling ruined her family, she came up with this game to try to understand the mind of a gambling addict. She ultimately succumbs to the urge to gamble herself, enters the game, and is 360 no scoped by the MC Craig.

---

Gameplay

While the entirety of the story is delivered through visual novel style sequences, there's some actual gameplay here, which surprised me. The gameplay has you take control of an unknown, nameless brunette woman and run an obstacle course. The dialogue makes no mention of an obstacle course, and there's no explanation for who this woman is. You even control her during sequences in which Craig is described as sitting out a few rounds of the game.

You control this mystery woman through an obstacle course. And that's it. 30 levels of identical-looking obstacle courses never get any harder, just longer. You have no control over the camera, and the sprint is relatively useless. On the rare occasions that you race against other characters, they never finish. You could stand behind them the entire time, and they'll never advance past more than three or four obstacles.

There's no controller support and no way to change the camera angle. While that's annoying, it didn't make the levels any more difficult. The gameplay is neither fun nor rewarding, and I started to get burnt out towards the end of the game. I never really felt like I was betrayed by the camera because things never got difficult.

---

Horny Parts

• Character Models

  Say what you will about the other game, but the art is... not bad.

• Feet

  I've never really gotten the whole thing with feet, but there are a couple of instances of it in this game if it's your thing.

Horniest Part

• Sex Scenes

  I always appreciate some decent ahegao.

---

Rating

Negative

The story was impossible to follow, and the gameplay was clunky and unfun. This whole game really feels like a first draft of the recently announced game from Squid Developer, Fall Girls. Based on the gameplay footage, it re-uses a lot of assets, but the gameplay looks a little more fleshed out. Even though I really didn't like this game, I might give Fall Girls a shot. I always love a parody.

Thank you so much for reading. Please consider subscribing to our Patreon or following us on Twitter