This spooky squirrel surveillance game launches in February

“Ah, what another lovely looking game about photographing animals,” I thought to myself upon first glance at Nuts. Look at the beautiful colors. Spot those quirky squirrels. I’m sure it’s quite relaxing. How wrong I was. Nuts has announced a February release date for its squirrel surveillance story and there is definitely something sinister going on in this new trailer.

“Gear up your research caravan, boot up your GPS, spread out your map and head for the depths of Melmoth Forest,” say the creators. “As a rookie field researcher, you’ll place cameras during the day, and watch the footage at night, tracking the movements of a scurry of squirrels.” That sounds sweet and simple enough but oh no, please watch for the ending of this here trailer.

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What on earth are the squirrels doing with dynamite? Maybe they just like the look of the stuff. Maybe it’s all quite simple. Or perhaps they’re genetically-engineered genius squirrels with a plot to evict humans from their forest.

To find out, the creators say that you’ll spend each day placing your surveillance equipment based on a brief handed down by Viago University’s research team. Each night you’ll be monitoring the cameras and capturing images to figure out what those squirrels are up to.

Aside from its obvious beauty, what seems really enjoyable about Nuts is the sense of being physically present on site. Even from the trailer I can appreciate the the way your character snaps photos and then posts the printed copies up on a board. Out in the woods you’ve got a GPS in one hand and a tripod camera in the other, which you can adjust the angle on after it’s placed. The giant old televisions in your research trailer have individual buttons on them for scanning through footage manually.

I’m quite looking forward to getting my hands on this lovely little mystery, and fortunately there’s not long to wait. Nuts launches on Steam on February 4th. It’s coming to Apple Arcade and the Nintendo Switch a bit earlier on January 22nd.

While you wait, you can find the 2018 Nuts prototype over on Itch.