The “animal goes wild” subgenre of video games is actually more varied than it first appears. A first glance at the category which includes Goat Simulator, Bear Simulator, Untitled Goose Game and Little Kitty, Big City might make them all seem like the same thing: cause chaos and harass humans. But actually taking the time to play all of these games shows how wildly different they actually are. Some of them are open world games, some are divided linearly into areas with required goals, and one is more like a 3D metroidvania. Some aren’t even about harassing humans at all!
Squirrel with a Gun dropped in 2024 and added its own take on the genre, and that take can be described as Super Mario Odyssey meets Goat Simulator.
Squirrel with a Gun is a game in which a realistic looking, normal-sized squirrel climbs on people, lets itself get photographed by phone-wielding citizens, throws a brick through a window to enter a locked house, enters the house, finds a bomb in the kitchen and tosses it to cause an explosion that knocks down gun-wielding agents, and steals one of their normal-sized guns, then escapes the house by jumping and shooting the gun downwards in mid-air to get a propelled boost from the shot.
It’s also a game in which that same squirrel then goes into the backyard where a cookout party is being held, uses a bomb to ignite a propane tank underneath a grill of undercooked burger patties to blast the now-cooked patties across the lawn, finds each patty and places them on one burger after another in front of impatient party guests in order to earn a golden acorn – the game’s equivalent of the stars or moons from the open world Super Mario games. Before stealing their birthday cake and running away with it to give it to a crying man wearing a party hat to earn another golden acorn. Are you good? Are you bad? Maybe both?
The game is a mixture of chaotic and goal-driven. Simply by exploring the world, you can find yourself in all sorts of wacky situations, like carrying a football (that’s 🏈, not ⚽ for the non-American readers) while players launch themselves at you, desperately trying to prevent a squirrel from scoring a touchdown. Or trying to dunk a basketball in a hoop that keeps moving around and changing in size.
Chaos itself can sometimes help you achieve the goals, but chaos is something you do for fun in between seeking out or stumbling upon goals. If you’ve gotten all the golden acorns for a particular area and you’re seeking out more, might as well trip that jogger – oh wait, that also gives you a golden acorn! Might as well climb this tree, jump on this person and climb their body, get photographed by these people – oh, getting photographed earns you regular acorns, the game’s currency? How about pointing your gun at people – it makes them put their hands up and drop acorns? In this game, experimentation is rewarded, so go wild!
The game’s structure is a combination of linear level-driven, and open world chaos. It begins in a laboratory, with a cutscene that implies that the squirrel might be mistaking some kind of vaguely acorn-shaped experimental product for an actual giant acorn. The opening area is partly a tutorial that teaches the movement, throwing and shooting mechanics, and partly action-oriented gameplay with combat and platforming. You learn how to climb poles, how to knock an agent down to low health and then perform a takedown move, how to use a “slow time” ability that trips agents and makes them drop their guns, and how to fly by shooting – pressing the jump button in mid-air makes you fire your gun downwards, giving you a slight boost that helps you jump over gaps.
Once you escape the lab, you’re out on the streets, and much of it is open other than areas blocked off by unpassable red bushes. When you’ve earned enough golden acorns, you can unlock another section of the lab which ends in a boss fight, before unlocking more of the town. The next task is to figure out how to press five giant buttons that unlock the final lab so you can head to the game’s second – and final – boss. Pressing those giant buttons is a navigation challenge that can be tackled more than one way.
It’s those navigation challenges that make Squirrel with a Gun more than just a “goof around and harass humans” game. There are a lot of “How do I get there?” moments involving everything from house roofs to floating platforms. Sometimes it involves clever use of the “use the gun recoil to fly by shooting” technique. Sometimes it requires finding key items to solve a puzzle. Or driving in a miniature car that can go up ramps and totally vertical walls, getting a speed boost by shooting a machine gun or driving over painted arrows.
You’re a squirrel, so you move around like one. You can climb up trees and run along their branches with animation that heavily resembles how squirrels move in the wild. If you zoom the camera in while doing these things, it almost looks like a nature documentary set in the suburbs.
The realism stops when it comes to doing decidedly un-squirrel-like things such as picking up bricks and launching them through windows or at people’s heads with a charged throw. Or picking up their guns and using them, which looks hilariously absurd. You are a squirrel after all, and while this game is an asset flip, you’re still a realistic looking, normal-sized squirrel carrying a realistic looking, normal-sized gun. Or shotgun. Or rocket launcher or sniper rifle. One could say it’s slightly realistic to see how much recoil pushes the squirrel when a gun is fired, but never mind how the squirrel was able to lift and fire it in the first place.
Mixed in with the game’s innocent civilians are the shades-wearing armed agents who seem to have a hate-on for squirrels, or maybe just you in particular. The game seems to morally distinguish between them, as innocent civilians always get back up no matter what kind of punishment they suffer, while the agents actually stay dead and drop a bunch of life-restoring acorns.
It looks less violent than what some might expect due to the game’s mostly terrible animation. While the squirrel has fluid, lifelike animation for the most part, the game’s sole animator didn’t expend as much work on the humans, who move like dolls and never change facial expressions! Shooting a person or sending them flying with an explosion feels more like playing with toys than actually causing violence against flesh and blood people. For a game with a lot of guns, missiles and explosions, its actual presentation is comparatively tame.
Also on a parental note, there’s no blood or even visible injuries and also no profanity – something even played for humor with giant “HECKFIRE” missiles! There is, however, a sexual joke that might fly over kids’ heads. One house with Greek symbols written on a large sign has people lying on the floor drunk sleeping next to root beer bottles. In the middle of the room is a pole. If you climb the pole, the room erupts in music, lights and celebration. If you climb up and down and around the pole randomly, the people will start throwing acorns at you until you earn the “Pole Party” golden acorn.
In other words, this tiny, photorealistic squirrel just pole danced for a frat party (which includes an elderly woman alongside the requisite twentysomething men) and had “money” tossed its way!
While golden acorns are used to earn certain unlocks and upgrade your life and stamina, regular acorns are the game’s primary currency. They’re used to unlock weapon dispensers located throughout the world, earn outfits and fur colors that are mostly cosmetic but occasionally bestow special abilities such as immunity to electricity or ability to dive underwater, or earn the game’s drivable miniature car or boat, both of which are needed to reach particular areas. They’re found all over the place, similar to the coins in a Mario game, or you can earn them by doing everything from killing enemies to harassing people to getting your picture taken. Oftentimes the two are used in conjunction where simply having a certain number of golden acorns makes an unlock possible, while regular acorns must be spent to actually obtain it. The other major collectible is “reload wedges,” which give you the ability to reload your weapon more often.
The level design is a mixture of grounded and surreal. There are houses, roads, trees, telephone poles, the sorts of things you’d find in the real world. Trampolines and opened umbrellas bounce you high in the air, because apparently not only can you carry multiple times your body weight, but you also barely weigh anything. Some telephone poles float in mid-air. Floating platforms require clever use of rocket jumping or gun jumping to reach. There’s even a house in which the floor is literally lava. A water park features water slides that no human can realistically expect to reach and floaties that, well, float when inflated.
The level design is as bizarre as the game’s obtuse “story.” Nothing is explained. Other than a few cutscenes, it’s hard to tell what exactly is supposed to be going on in this strange world. You need to fight two bosses named Father and Mother, who are apparently connected to the game’s military full of shades-wearing agents armed with everything from pistols to rocket launchers. The tank-driving Father has a hidden underground lair, while the helicopter-flying Mother has a very prominent and not-hidden tower stationed near a water park. And they’re probably married, judging by the cutscene of Mother bumping her face into the side of Father’s head “kissing” Father on the cheek.
If you need help figuring out where the goals are in this unusual suburb, each area has a flagpole you can climb, giving you a view which highlights all the area’s collectibles and gives you their names. If you haven’t figured out by goofing around that tripping the jogger gives you a golden acorn, then seeing the label “Jogger Stopper” might help. Many golden acorns are the sort of thing you could earn on your own simply through exploration and experimentation, but the game has these Super Mario Odyssey style hints in case you need them.
One thing that might frustrate many players is the boss fights. While there’s only two required bosses, dying on them means restarting the entire fight, even though death is usually very forgiving otherwise. The two primary boss fights can be a bit obtuse, even with the game’s hints. There’s also the issue of the controls for the vehicles. The car and boat are both very twitchy, making it easy to accidentally spin around and face the opposite direction.
Squirrel with a Gun is a short, small, low budget indie made using what appear to be purchased assets, but it wears its low budget on its sleeve and turns the whole thing into a big joke. Yes, the people all move like expressionless dolls, but that cheapness only heightens the absurdity. There’s zero voice acting, though the game’s tiny soundtrack contains a few lyrical songs. The game was almost entirely developed by two brothers, so it pads out its long credits sequence with the names of people who worked at the publisher doing things like taking phone calls and filling out paperwork!
It’s a joke and an asset flip, but it’s also a very competently made game, with a few issues, that manages to successfully combine elements from multiple games to ultimately be its own thing. It is no mere ripoff of Goat Simulator or Untitled Goose Game, but stands on its own as an original entry in the “animal goes wild” genre. And it stars a realistic looking, realistically sized squirrel that carries realistic looking guns larger than its own body. That will never stop looking ridiculous.