Squingle is one of those virtual reality (VR) videogames that has to be played to be really understood. Basically, it’s a psychedelic puzzle title where you have to guide revolving orbs through twisting liquid crystal mazes. If that wasn’t hard enough, Squingle Studios has just added a speedrun gameplay mode, truly testing your puzzle-solving skills.
Normally, Squingle is a fairly casual VR experience where you can relax and find your way through the 100 trippy levels. If you’ve already completed them and really love a challenge – or maybe love speedrunning videogames – then the addition of a speedrun timer might be just what you’re looking for.
Talking to gmw3 in an email regarding the idea behind the new speedrun mode Benjamin Outram of Squingle Studios explained: “I’ve always been fascinated by speedrunning since I saw a Technology Assisted Speedrun (TAS) of Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES. There is a small but active speedrunning community in VR – notably doing speedruns of Superhot VR, Moss, and Boneworks. Our VR game, Squingle, lends itself to trying to play quickly, almost like a platformer, and as an indie game studio talking with the speedrunning community seemed like not only a natural fit to the game, but a great way to support our players.
“A speedrunner going by ‘BlitzVR’, who is famous for a viral IGN video ‘Moss (VR) Developers React to 43 Minute Speedrun’, got in touch with an interest to set a score on Squingle,” Outram continues. “Having asked the community what features might help them, the biggest request is for an ‘in-game-clock’. This sets the standard by not relying on external timing equipment to time your run, making it less friction to record a speed run. So based on Blitz’ interest, I went about to implement a speedrun timer.”
However, this isn’t your ordinary gameplay mode you’ll suddenly see pop up in the main menu, it’s partially hidden – although still easy to access. All you need to do is turn ‘story mode’ to ‘OFF’ in the options.
“This stops the main character appearing every ten levels (which would just waste time!). After every ‘epoch’ (group of 20 levels) – as long as you started at level 1 – the timer appears to show you your total time for that epoch. Assuming you have completed all the levels without going back to the level-select screen, or retried any levels, then your time for the whole game also gets presented at the credits at the end, as well as your scores (how many lizards and petals you collected).”
And that’s it, happy speedrunning through Squingle. If you’ve not tried it out yet you can find Squingle on Steam where there’s a free demo available and on Meta Quest’s App Lab. Oh, and by the way, Squingle is a Game Development World Championship (GDWC) finalist alongside the likes of A Township Tale and Maskmaker.
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via Mint VR