The Game Bakers are crafty developers - while you could consider Squids Wild West a sequel of sorts, it acts more like an expansion to the first title, albeit jam-packed with content, new characters, mechanics and... well OK, it's a sequel, just without the usual tacked-on number.

Carrying on from the end of Squids, Steev, Vahime, Sammo and the rest of the crew end up at Seawood and are trying to find more heroes in the quest to stop the black-ooze slowly infesting and changing the creatures of the ocean. Thanks to the new Western-themed environment, players have access to exciting gameplay additions such as explosive traps, rideable Seahorses that augment a squid's mobility and damage, and all new ooze-infested monster variations to test your skills on.

In fact, you'll have a whopping 40 levels over five chapters to master your squid-sling-shot skills with up to six new characters that can completely replace your core team with ease. Where the first game separated out characters by their class, Wild West augments its new characters by adding a spin to these basic classes. This results in players being able to customize their teams with very specific tactics in mind, such as exploiting the many 'dashes' available to Kapono or watching as Cleef snipes two different enemies from a distance.

Those familiar with the original will slip right in to Wild West as its core gameplay of turn-based combat and using sling-shot mechanics to move the squids remains in-tact. However, in addition to the usual hazards of spiky walls and flowing currents, players will now have to carefully avoid or make use of explosive lobsters and flip over tenacious enemies that can't be damaged.

In a subtle, but significant change to leveling, the cost is now a flat 300 pearls - something that makes life much easier when managing so many new squids. To offset this, there's a host of new hats to find and unlock, with IAP also available to unlock special no-stat hats to support the developer.

Squids Wild West is everything a sequel should be, short of completely evolving the mechanics and upgrading the visuals (not that the game looks any less amazing on Retina displays). If you enjoyed the first game or love turn-based tactical games, definitely make this your next choice purchase.