squares 3 is the original prototype that would eventually blossom into the wonderful game we know today as soundodger. open that tab and leave the audio running in the background while reading this btw, DOOM rocks
anyways, according to bean, squares 3 is a lil' game thing developed sometime around 2009 as a spiritual successor to gavin shapiro's squares 2.
by the way, if you haven't guessed already, i'm gonna use the given song names for these chapters. in this case, the backing track (and mild focus of the game itself) is the track revolution 909 by daft punk.
gavin shapiro is (from what i could gather) a 3d animator who primarily works on ads for random brands. coca cola, mcdonalds, the works. i couldn't really find much over squares (and its predecessor), but the gameplay loop of squares 2 is simple. you control a square with your cursor and have to hit black shit while dodging red shit. pretty simple. in a strange fucked up zen sorta way, one of the most interesting things about squares 2 itself is the music. yeah it aint tied to gameplay, but revolution 909 sorta weirdly gives the whole thing flavor. yeah it might be in a "papa john's left out on the counter for a while" kind of way, but i feel like it sorta ropes the whole thing together. idk
oh shitttttt, now we're in ACTUAL SOUNDODGING TERRITORY, BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS
once again, like squares 2, squares 3 isn't really much of a game. it's essentially a little proof of concept made for fun by bean during college. this time, the song is lemon grass by MF DOOM and this time it actually matters. unlike soundodger, the entire arena is a square, and """"enemies"""" progressively spawn outside. bullet types in squares 3 are pretty barebones, including 2 arrow variations and this weird fucked up pentagon bubble. the thing that separates squares 3 from sd are blue bubbles. if enough of these bubbles are collected, you become invincible for a short while where you could move your mouse around the screen and clear all of the pesky lil' arrows. cool shit. anyways, the main topic here is that you have a circle cursor. oh how far we've come....