Squirrel With A Gun review – Deez nuts are more than a joke

Alright everyone, come on. We all think we know what this is. It has to be lame, meme garbage, right? Absolutely not. This has been one of the most fun platformers I’ve played all year. What’s here is a bit jank, sometimes cheap feeling. It’s definitely that one joke in the title. You play as a photo realistic squirrel and use a gun to take out enemies and complete tasks. But it’s not level to level fare. What you get is something of a cross between Banjo-Kazooie’s collectibles, Untitled Goose Game’s checklist and shenanigans, with maybe some Goat Simulator silliness. Squirrel With A Gun has been a delightful experience worth your attention if you want something smaller this upcoming, packed autumn season.

Squirrel With A Gun starts you off ironically, gunless, as it locks you in a bunker, being taught to flip switches to obtain Golden Acorns. These are your Jiggies or Power Star equivalent as you’ll need certain amounts to unlock item spawn points and events. When you beat a boss, the next area opens up, unlocking more objectives to obtain more Golden Acorns for the next area. You will be doing things like navigating a minefield, going into a house and playing a literal game of the floor is lava, the first boss starts with a Mario Kart track and ends with you fighting a tank with “made in mom’s garage” metal music playing. This game always has some cute puzzle or new idea while never feeling bloated.

I think what helps bring it all together is the gunplay. Your gun can be a pistol, submachine gun, a shotgun, grenade launcher, and while I couldn’t unlock it, there is a rocket launcher if you collect enough Golden Acorns. Each one comes with different clip sizes and you can reload by standing on certain ammo pads, or you use the Circle button use one of your Ammo Wedges, a collectible that lets you recharge ammo on the spot. You use the guns as a multi-jump, a hover, and even give yourself a boost while riding in the unlockable RC car. Traveling around the world is snappy thanks to being able to summon the car from any road via the pause menu, though I think a button would be more convenient.

I appreciate this game’s approach to level design. The world sort of builds itself out much like Yooka-Laylee or Untitled Goose Game. But an issue with Yooka-Laylee in particular is that the worlds got too big when they expanded. Squirrel With A Gun gives you a simple format where areas have icons at the ready to let you know there’s stuff to do at a glance. Having UI showing how many Acorns, Wedges, and even outfits in the local area is incredibly smart to just get a feel on what you’re looking for. That being said, if you want hints you just have to go to nearby flagpoles which give you a general idea of where the goals are and a name to give you a hint as to what you need to do. The names can also be accessed from the pause menu which is convenient.

I’m talking up this game about a silly squirrel so much but it has some issues. I’m running a 3080 Ti with 32 GBs of RAM. Despite the decent enough rig for getting some nice visuals, this game takes a lot to run. I’m not DigitalFoundry, so I can’t be detailed in my analysis. Eyeballing the game and listening with my own ears – this game takes a lot to run and it’s curious why. This isn’t a visually intensive game, with character models and animations that aren’t the squirrel are cheap looking. There are a lot of visual options on PC including Lumen which was nice to see, but trying to run the game at higher settings made my rig sort of howl under the pressure. Most well-optimized games don’t do that to my rig so I think there’s some work to be done there, including the Steam Deck support. There aren’t any visual options on Steam Deck and it looks a bit rough, with some weird after imaging on the squirrel.

Squirrel With A Gun has been a lot of fun. I detail the technical issues and the somewhat cheap looking visuals but the core game is solid and I think it’s worth your time. If you want a solid, small scale collectathon that will give you giggles, Squirrel With A Gun might be for you. This isn’t my game of the year, but I think it says something that this dorky concept made for a pretty fun experience. It’s not violent since there’s no blood, it’s not just that one joke, it’s trying to be a simple and fun game with some genuinely good game design choices. This was a good game with some rough edges and I think it’s worth your time. Or maybe you just read the deez nuts joke in the headline and expected that to set the tone for the review. If you want to see that tank boss in action by the way, we uploaded it to our YouTube channel so check it out.

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