Out on Xbox Live Arcade this week is the fantastic arena-shooter Squid Yes, Not So Octupus: Squid Harder (SYNSO). You might have missed it, maybe instead you’re focused elsewhere today and keen to spunk a million English pounds on Modern Warfare 2? Frankly, you’d be right to do so BUT! Do also spare a measly 80 of your Xbox Live points to indulge in a bit of old-fashioned warfare…

80 points. Not a typo. Biggest steal since we gave away Hong Kong.

SYNSO is proper old-school frantic shooting. We damn-well love it and so should you. We have a vested interest here, in that SYNSO had it’s birth in a throwaway moment on the Rodent forum. A throwaway moment that one mad-beast, RobF, chose to turn into a game. A real actual game you can play from your sofa.

And here’s the skinny – RobF very kindly stopped off to tell the inside-story of Squid Yes, Not So Octopus: Squid Harder… yeah, fuck-joo Activision, this is where today is really, umm, at!

RobF says…

Y’know folks, if you look in the credits to SYNSO on the 360 you’ll find a number of thank you notes. Some of them are to the family and friends of fellow coder and all round nice guy Andy Noble, the man responsible for bringing SYNSO to the 360, there’s a couple of obligatory shout outs to random people we’ve met and loved along the way and then there’s a thank you for Rodent. Yup, y’see, the thing about Squid Yes, Not So Octopus is despite taking on a life of its own somewhere down the line it started here. On Rodent. As a joke.

Way back in the seemingly dim and distant past, we are all having a little chat about silly sized scores in games and to counter the Gigawing-esque enormo score discussions that inevitably cropped up, forumite Maibock said that what he’d really like is a game where the maximum score is 9. Well, bugger me, that’s just begging for one to be made isn’t it? So I did. Over the course of a slightly caffeine hazed week, I cracked out the tools and got to work. It wasn’t meant to be anything special, just a silly little arena shooter based on eternal favourite Robotron with a bit of Wild West Hero where the maximum score would be nine. I figured the easiest way to make it work was to have a game that lasts 8 minutes with 1 point awarded for every minute you survive. I didn’t think for a second it’d turn out either half decent or even y’know, playable. By some sort of dark magicks weaved in the night and with a lot of cheering and support from the occupants of Chez Rodent, Maibock’s idea became a game.

BOOM! GUGGGGA GUGGGGA GUGGGGA! PWOOOW! YEEEEE!

At the time, it was called Bockotron. It’s vaguely Robotron-y so it made some sort of sense. Then the insanity hit whilst rummaging through my favourite CD’s, a line stuck out from the Half Man, Half Biscuit song “Them’s The Vagaries”. “Binman, Thinman, Lexicographer. Squid yes! Not so octopus!” and in a moment of madness I mailed Geoff at Probe Plus, erstwhile supporter of all things HMHB and all round good egg. Would it be okay to use “Squid Yes, Not So Octopus as a title for a game?”, I asked. I’m thinking that once again, I’ve totally lost it. A day later, the reply comes back. Nigel of HMHB is fine with it. Geoff is cool with it. Awesome.

And so it began. That was December, 2008. A few months later and the game appears to have gone down pretty well. Maybe it was the giant head of Johnny Ball I sandwiched in in a moment of madness, maybe it really was a good game. I’m too close to the bugger to tell, but the amount of scores getting posted in threads, well, that’s something special, y’know.

Time passes, there’s an indie game exhibition on the horizon, Indiecade. I think about buffing SYNSO up a bit more and realise the code is a complete and utter mess. I’ve the mind (and temperament) of an artist not a coder, it’s just a brainsplurge that somehow finds itself forming a game. So I set about writing a sequel. Squid Harder, named after a running joke with immensely awesome dev’s Zombie Cow. I didn’t make Indiecade. They had a section on the submissions form for “artistic statement”, I don’t have one. I just want to make happy smiley games that shit rainbows in your eyes, so I filled the section in with a rant about accessibility in games instead.

Includes some lush arcade-style 'tribute' surrounds.

Whilst working nose to the grindstone, Andy Noble dropped me a line. Would I mind if he ported SYNSO to the 360? Would I mind? Would I mind? Of course I wouldn’t mind. I was ecstatic and stupid and filled with crazy ideas. Andy, rightly, ploughed on whilst ignoring most of them though allowing me the small indulgence of adding a load of arcade machine inspired borders to the game. And real life hit the pair of us. Mrs Bob went in for major surgery, Andy found his life taking a bit of an odd turn and after the initial rush it sort of drifted.

A month or so ago, Andy once again picked up working on the game and a few weeks later, it was done. Unlike what I’m used to where you just throw up a game onto the internets, you have to go through all sorts of boring stuff when getting a game onto the Xbox Indie Service. It has to be playtested for one thing, that takes time. 3 weeks in our case. It came through pretty much unscathed and straight into review where a bunch of other developers have to tick some boxes to say “we’ve tried this and there’s no boobies” and suchlike.

Whilst SYNSO is off in review, I’m off on a trip to Leeds and London. Squid Harder has been on display at the Eurogamer Expo, I’ve been booked in to do a rant on the Friday night in front of the press and other developers. I’m surprised I didn’t wet myself given how nervous I was but somehow I pull it off and dart out with 2 minutes to spare before my coach arrives to take me back oop north. I get back around midday on Saturday and slip into a coma. I surface Sunday with a note from Andy. “SYNSO has passed review” or words to that effect. It’s going to be out in the next 48 hours. Bloody hell. 48 hours? It wasn’t even an hour from me reading Andy’s mail to the game appearing on the marketplace.

Squid porn. Yep. Absolutely genuine. Send money.

Suddenly, it sunk in. What started out as a daft joke, a weeks worth of silly was up there, on the Xbox Marketplace. For 80 MS points.

Available to buy.

Man alive! That’s crazy.

Then I remembered a few weeks earlier I’d mailed Kevin Toms of Football Manager fame asking would he mind if I used his giant head in a game and he offered to write the dialogue for it too and realised that if there’s one thing, one running theme for the past 12 months it’s this. Crazy works. Without Rodent and Rodentia, I doubt I’d have had the balls to make the leap into “fuck it, let’s do this” territory. There wouldn’t be a silly arena shooter about a squid shooting up pink robots without this place and all the mad, mad stuff that came in its wake would never have happened. That’s a lot of thank you to be done and so as Ko has asked would I mind writing something for Rodent about the game, this is it, this is what you get.

The tale of how one daft idea and a load of encouragement led from one single throwaway comment in an inconsequential thread on the internet let to 10 months of absolute utter joyous crazy and ended up with a game on the Xbox 360. My game. Rodent’s game. So yeah, thank you Rodent and thank you Rodents for enabling the amazing to happen. And special thanks to Andy Noble for taking that silly idea and turning it into a fab game that I wish was the one I’d wrote in the first place. You’re all brilliant.

And the moral of the story? Just do it, folks. The next time you sit down and think “wouldn’t it be great if…”, do it. If nothing else, it’s a right old laugh along the way.

Huge thanks to RobF and to the heroic Andy Noble – Rodent.