It's a squid! No, it's an octopus! No? Not so Octopus? oh.

Every now and then an absolute gem is born from the rodent forums and Squid, Yes! Not so Octopus (originally named Bokotron) is one of the best. Dacman explains:

It started as a lament that modern day games, shoot ‘em ups in particular, had adopted ridiculous scoring systems. Thousands and thousands of points were being given away for simple kills. Millions were available for end of level of bosses and high score tables were in danger of running out of screen real estate.

Forumite Maibock mentioned that he would love to go back to the old days where every point was hard earned and meaningful, RobF read this and saw it as a challenge to create a low scoring game and within 24 hours the first playable version of Squid, Yes! Not So Octopus was made available and we on the Rodent forums lapped it up, each minute we survived, up to a maximum of 9, was worth a single solitary point with minor scores being awarded for shooting the ever multiplying numbers of nasties out to try and make squid pate out of our hero.

Well, cut a long story short, we all loved it and Rob must have enjoyed working on it just as much as he has submitted a sequel to this years Indiecade. Squid, Yes! Not So Octopus 2: Squid Harder has officially been submitted into competition. Like the original version it’s an arena shooter taking it’s cues from Robotron and Geometry Wars, the original scoring mechanic has been replaced by a more conventional one and it looks and plays like a psychedelic dream. The name of the game is still survival but the points will come as long as you can keep our eponymous hero alive whilst facing an onslaught of foes all intent on reducing him to his constituent pixels. It will make your trigger finger ache, your eyes bleed and the air turn blue but you’ll thank me for it, download SYNSO2 Beta and why not watch to see if makes the shortlist of Indiecade

I’m off for just one more go as soon as my eyes recover. Tara!