Squirrel With a Gun, as the name implies, is all about a squirrel with a gun. Quite a few guns, actually. Although it’s not an action game, nor is there as much shooting as expected. Instead, Squirrel With a Gun is mainly inspired by Goat Simulator and its ilk, letting you run amok in a zany sandbox full of platforming and physics-based puzzles to solve. None of these are particularly good, marred as they are by clunky, imprecise controls and a dearth of personality. Despite being around four hours in length, the whole rodent-wielding-a-firearm gimmick runs out of steam long before the credits roll, leaving you with a janky and unremarkable game that fails to live up to its absurd premise.
In terms of story, there isn’t really one to speak of. The game opens with our titular Sciuridae dropping into a secret government bunker to procure a golden acorn. Once the tasty treat is in your possession, you then obtain a pistol from a clumsy Agent Smith-looking spook before being unleashed on a suburban neighborhood to cause mischief and blast away dozens of government agents in search of more acorns. Gathering a specific number of nuts grants you access to new areas, leading to two eventual boss battles against a pair of agents known as Father and Mother (for reasons that aren’t clear). Defeating both wraps up the game, covering the entire extent of Squirrel With a Gun’s paper-thin narrative.
Lacking any semblance of a story is fine in a game like this, but you would naturally expect some kind of irreverent humor to compensate for the scarcity of character elsewhere. Squirrel With a Gun doesn’t attempt to be funny with any sort of regularity; instead, it mainly relies on the image of a squirrel holding a comparatively large shotgun or rocket launcher to provide comedic relief. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of a section where you waterski down a river or chuckle when the ragdoll physics break entirely, but humor is not this game’s forte.
Combat is neither fun nor satisfying either. The only enemies you encounter are government agents who mostly just stand around waiting to die. They all ragdoll to death in a few bullets–whether you hit them in the shin or chest–but nailing a headshot does at least put the hapless spooks into a downed state that leaves them susceptible to a special takedown. These elaborate animations see our furry protagonist spin a six-shooter around like Revolver Ocelot and use the butt of a sniper as a blunt object. They’re fun the first time, but there’s only one of these animations for each weapon, so the novelty wears off quickly.
The only time the game’s gunplay differs from other shooters in any meaningful way relates to your size. Whether it’s a pistol or a shotgun, the force of each shot propels your tiny frame backward as you hold on for dear life. Due to the game’s lackluster sound design and enemies’ muted reactions, this still doesn’t make your small arsenal of weapons feel particularly impactful. Having to realign your aim after every shot is simply a nuisance that further compounds the game’s shallow gunplay as it struggles to justify its premise.
Fortunately, Squirrel With a Gun’s puzzle-platforming fares slightly better. Its sandbox is fairly small, and aside from one house that’s filled with lava, the rest of the properties in its bizarre suburban neighborhood are almost entirely empty. Nonetheless, each one essentially functions as a miniature level containing a number of golden acorns for you to collect. You can acquire some of these nuts via short platforming challenges, while others take an ounce of “logical” thinking to overcome. This might mean blowing up a barbeque and then gathering the smoking hot patties for those waiting with empty buns, or using kettlebells to weigh yourself down so you can sink to the bottom of a pool. Some of these conundrums require a moment of consideration, although the presence of a single solution ensures that there’s no room for creativity.
On the platforming side, firing your gun into the ground as a means of double jumping is a far more interesting use of the game’s firearms than any part of its combat. There’s also some enjoyment to be had in figuring out how to traverse certain sections, but imprecise and floaty controls–not to mention an erratic camera that often obscures your view–are detrimental to any kind of precision platforming. Even simple leaps are often frustrating as you actively fight against the game’s unpleasant movement.
On top of all this, Squirrel With a Gun is also plagued by a plethora of dire technical issues. Falling through the floor is a semi-regular occurrence, especially during the first boss fight. At one point, I ran into a glitch where the squirrel failed to materialize during a cutscene, which broke the whole game and forced me to restart. I encountered a few crashes and optimization issues on PC, too. It’s not a particularly good-looking game, yet I still had to lower several settings to prevent the frame rate from tanking. While this isn’t a technical shortcoming per se, the amount of music is also limited and quickly becomes grating as you’re forced to suffer the same song over and over again.
Squirrel With a Gun isn’t aggressively bad, and I didn’t hate my time with it. It was basically just a thing that I did for four hours. Nothing about the experience really stands out; the whole game is entirely unremarkable and won’t live long in the memory. It’s kind of like seeing a squirrel in real life. You go, “Oh look, a squirrel,” watch the furry critter scurry up a tree, and then get on with your day. That’s Squirrel With a Gun in a nutshell.
