Introducing Hyper Square, a puzzle game that shows what Asia’s indie devs can do

Taiwan’s Team Signal wowed the judges at this year’s Casual Connect Asia with Hyper Square, a puzzle/music game that relies on quick reactions, deep focus, and great patience, and it winning Critic’s Choice from the Asian Indie Prize Awards is well deserved.

Yet Team Signal is no industry veteran or amalgamation of old hands. It is a new company and Hyper Square is its first iOS title, so how did it achieve this level of success with such a simple concept?

Be a breathe of fresh air

Hyper Square makes use of familiar iOS gestures—enlarging, shrinking, rotating, and flicking—to ease players into a gorgeous music-based game where you send solid squares sailing into hollow squares placed at random locations around each level.

See: Taijitu review: is this perfection?

Exceedingly reminiscent of music-based arcade games, Hyper Square engages players more quickly than anything I have played in the last six weeks, and with a great concept to boot.

Team Signal told me that it wanted Hyper Square’s learning curve to be low. I was told that the game is approachable for non-hardcore players because they won’t hit a wall on level 1. Team Signal also said that it “provided super-hard late levels as well so veteran twitch game players will find plenty of challenges in the game.” It’s a sound design choice and it worked well. I am not a fan of frustration, but Hyper Square hooked me early and I am still playing.

It is a refreshing change after months of wading through umpteen endless runners, thousands of “flappy” clappy clones and other card-based gashapon games.

So many developers these days are going the easy route by forcing a concept into a pre-existing mould (see all the card collection games out there, from Summon Masters to the dreadful Soul Calibur: Unbreakable Soul), but Hyper Square doesn’t do this. And surprisingly enough, going against the market’s taste has paid off for Team Signal.

Be more than a collection of obstacles