Recent reviews by Spooky Squid

Fantastic remaster of a classic arcade game from the early days of indie games!

I sunk countless hours into the original and this version just builds on that solid foundation by adding some fun new twists and remastered art. Honestly one of my all-time fav arcade games. If you enjoy score attack "coffee break" games at all, this is one of the best. The fact this doesn't have hundreds or thousands of reviews is just a sign of how bad discovery has gotten on Steam.

The core mechanic of Rescue the Beagles is identifying where you can safely switch between the three constantly moving parallax layers. You do this by either by climbing up or dropping down when the vertical distance between the hills and valleys is small enough (a little taller than your player). Your goal is to ensure that all beagles are rescued and none wander off the left side of the screen, presumably lost, never to be found again. To help you out there are collectable ropes and parachutes giving you an out for when you need to quickly ascend or descend large distances, owls can be collected and tossed at oncoming enemies, goji berries provide brief invincibility etc.

Because of it's unique mechanics early on you'll misjudge heights and fall to your doom or fail to spot a beagle.
Keep with it! Soon you'll instinctively know when it's safe to jump or climb, and become a beagle spotting master.
Eventually you hit the point where you can read the entire screen at a glance and know that a closed pathway will open up by the time you reach that side of the screen. You'll start pulling off daring diagonal leaps to catch tiny openings and weave between enemies. There's a real sense of flow to high level play.

There are also several different level end bonus multipliers you can aim for to improve your score that require either expert play or aiming for a specific play style, such as collecting all the owls or clearing levels without killing enemies. There's a lot of depth and a high skill ceiling to aim for.

FOR FANS OF THE ORIGINAL:
Good news! The fantastic original soundtrack and sound design are still here!
The two major gameplay additions I've noticed are water layers on some levels and a meta mechanic where you can upgrade various stats:

• Water is a great addition, you can safely fall into it from any height but your horizontal movement is significantly reduced while swimming. It completely switches up your instincts around the optimal path to take.
  
• The meta layer is thankfully just impactful enough to be noticeable and vary your playstyle a bit without becoming intrusive. This is still a game about player skill, not what upgrades you've picked.

NOTE: at the time I wrote this there appears to be a bug where you can't view the online leaderboards in game.
The scores are posted though, and you can view them here: https://steamproxy.com/stats/2763000/leaderboards/12729713/

Tamagotchi + RPG with wonderful presentation. I absolutely love the art and animation in this game. SUPER charming!

The game does a nice job of letting you choose to fully engage or ignore it for stretches just like a the electronic toys that inspired it. Great for throwing in the background while you're doing something else on your computer, then taking a break to help your little fella out on whatever task or adventure they're on. It can be set to float above your other windows, so it's always just a glance away to see what's happening and if your hero might need some assistance in their current fight.

The energy system works well letting you know when you might want to take a break and put your hero to bed, but giving you the option to buy them a coffee and keep playing indefinitely if you're on a roll.

Similarly, every activity can be left alone to passively play out, but has an optional mini game you can jump into at any time to speed things up or improve your hero's success rate. They're almost all variations on timed single button presses. Nothing too fancy but just enough to be engaging while you grind through some training, or help slay a weird poop monster or killer goose your little hero is fighting. Very similar to the games on modern Tamagotchi, but with MUCH nicer presentation.

I'm still in the early game so haven't hit the ability to pick a character class, or mess about with different equipment much, but already starting to have some choices such as optional harder or longer quests I can pick from that require more engagement and consumable items (or just grinding easier quests) to get through. Looking forward to seeing what the game has to offer as my choices expand!