Attendees of this weekend’s IGN Live event in Los Angeles got the chance to see a new trailer, release date reveal, and playable demo for the upcoming Maximum Entertainment title Squirrel With A Gun. The chaotic shooter-platformer revealed a launch day of August 29, along with a new trailer you can watch here.
I got a chance to play the full demo at IGN Live, and it was as chaotic and ridiculous as you would expect. The tutorial takes the form of breaking out of a secret underground lab, going from platforming to light puzzle-solving to fighting off Men In Black-style agents while, of course, wielding a gun larger than your squirrel body. The guns in the game have kickback that push you a full foot or two backwards, but the upside is that when jumping you can continue pressing the “jump ” button fire the gun straight down, creating a double jump that’s repeatable multiple times. Shooting enemies enough will unlock the ability to perform a takedown, which are executed in hilarious animations. The squirrel is not permanently equipped with a firearm, instead taking more of a Hotline Miami approach with single-magazine munitions (there were plenty of place to restock ammo for your currently held gun). In fact, many parts of the game require you to leave whatever weapon you’ve scavenged behind, keeping your hands free for climbing a pole or some other platforming element.
The real conflict of the game comes in breaking out of the boundaries it puts in your way, whether it be looking for hidden passages or finding ways to get your gun through platforming sections. The developers know that there are ways to break through the game’s design, and encourage it (upon sneaking a hard-to-get uzi past a pole-climbing section, I was rewarded with an alternative route built for uzi-based-platforming). The first level was linear, but teased the game’s collectathon side with new items and outfits to unlock buy collecting acorns (and harder-to-get Golden Acorns) and searching new areas. Upon completing the tutorial level, I broke free of the laboratory and found myself in a suburban town. This structure of the new open-world play in this is somewhere between Bowser’s Fury and the Goat Simulator series, with an unhinged sandbox of different locations and toys to play with while working to reach Golden Acorns. Once you’ve collected enough acorns in the area, you move on to the next location (this is where the demo ended, sadly).
Squirrel With A Gun is not an easy game, and I saw at least three other people quit playing the demo within a few moments of picking it up. The default sensitivity is set extremely high, which paired poorly with the demo’s controller-only presentation. Once I turned that sensitivity down it became a lot easier to manage aiming my weapons and jumps, but controlling the movement of the squirrel still presented a challenge. Our protagonist is extremely hyperactive, making platforming a bit more challenging when he’s willing to run off an edge with any slight joystick movement. Of course, the sensitivity in movement and aiming is intentional, emulating the twitchy and quick movements of a real squirrel. The game certainly takes nods from titles like Getting Over It and Octodad, but is not nearly as challenging once you get used to the controls. Those looking for a non-serious and goofy platformer in the vein of Goat Simulator or Catlateral Damage should keep an eye out for Squirrel With A Gun when it drops on PC August 29 and consoles later this year.