Squares Story is a fun, if rough, "RPG puzzle" similar to games like Tower of the Sorcerer. If you haven't played a game like this before, it may look like an RPG, but it's closer to being one giant math puzzle. There is no randomness involved, damage is a simple matter of attack minus defense, and resources, including healing, are limited; the goal is to plan out the route which will net you the most stat boosts while taking the least damage possible. As this is primarily a puzzle game of sorts, don't expect anything in the way of plot or character development.
This game quickly gives you access to many different locations and I had fun bouncing between them, trying to figure out the best enemy to tackle next. The difficulty balance feels just right, with enough leeway to allow for a few mistakes and alternate path choices while still being tight enough that a lack of long-term planning can result in needing to restart from scratch (or at least reload an older save).
Aesthetically, the simple graphics work in Squares Story's favor. While I doubt anyone would say the graphics on display here are impressive, the relentlessly rectangular nature of the world does give it a sense of playfulness supported by the bright color palette and crunchy sound effects. Perhaps more importantly, this simplicity goes well with the gameplay as everything being compartmentalized within their own squares and rectangles makes it incredibly easy to visually parse the trade-offs of every encounter in an area. The only real issue I have with the aesthetics here (other than technically issues which I'll get into later) is the severe lack of musical variety with only one song for the whole game.
One particularly neat twist Squares Story introduces is the food system. You can eat food both before and during combat, but your stomach can only hold 6 items at a time. Refreshing, by clicking a literal toilet button, will clear away every item in your stomach at once, but it will also fully heal whichever enemy you're currently fighting. In addition to putting a cap on the number of healing items you can use in a fight, this adds another layer of strategy to the game thanks to the different types of food.
There are four categories of food to balance in Squares Story: fixed healing, percentage healing, attack up, and defense up. While figuring out the best use of your limited healing items is an enjoyable puzzle in its own right, the true stars here are the temporary stat boosters. Attack and defense boosting foods give a temporary buff to their respective stat as long as they are in your stomach, but they take up the same slots as healing items would. All of this gives you one more layer of numbers to juggle. Is it worth using 6 attack boosts to overcome the defenses of an enemy guarding permanent stat boosts? Should you fill every slot with your best defensive foods or should you leave some slots open for strong healing items and which is better to conserve for later? If you enjoy min-maxing, Squares Story gives you plenty of options to choose between.
All this being said, there are three major technical issues to be aware of here. First, for whatever reason, the bottom two save slots seem to simply not work. While you can certainly save to them, choosing to continue from them only starts a new game. Secondly, while the game's Unity launcher offers plenty of resolution options, most of these options don't scale properly. Some resolutions result in parts of other areas showing through at the top and bottom borders at all times while others make the graphics horribly blurry. Finally, your health, attack, and defense are all normally at the bottom-center of the screen and this UI element moves close to whichever enemy you're mousing over to easily compare your stats with those of your foe. This would be great, except rather than moving back to the bottom of the screen afterwards, this valuable UI element completely vanishes forever outside of combat, forcing you to highlight enemies every time you want to do something as simple as check your current health. While none of these issues are game-breaking, they're definitely incredibly frustrating and should have been easily caught and fixed during development.
Overall, I think Squares Story is a surprisingly good entry in this rather rare subgenre. The developer's lack of experience certainly shows through on the technical side of things, but the core gameplay and difficulty balance are rock solid. This is also a nice purchase on the quantity side of things too; though there's not much replay value, I got about 5 hours of entertainment out of this $1.99 game. Squares Story is not the type of game that everyone will enjoy, but if you're already a fan of these types of games or if you're new to the genre and want to try out something a bit different, I'd definitely recommend it!
