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STAFF REVIEW of Squirrel with a Gun (Xbox Series X)


Tuesday, December 10, 2024.
by Peggy Doyle

Squirrel with a Gun Box art The game: Squirrel with a Gun. The premise: You’re a squirrel with a gun, well, many guns. It really is that simple and straightforward. Developed by Dee Dee Creations and published by Maximum Entertainment, Squirrel With a Gun allows you to run around blasting people in the face, being a naughty rodent.

You start the game as a squirrel in an underground government bunker trying to secure a golden acorn and escape. You will fight generic government agents in black suits during this process. It’s essentially a platformer on this tutorial level where you learn the skills to hop, jump, and shoot your way through the game. Once you make your way out of the bunker, you are in a suburban community and the real game begins.

Squirrel with a Gun may sound like an action game, and there is much less shooting than I anticipated. It’s more similar to games like Goat Simulator. It’s a sandbox full of platforming and physics-based puzzles to solve.


Throughout the neighbourhood you can find spots to unlock weapons using both regular and gold acorns that you will collect by completing the puzzles. Some of these are more difficult than others, especially if you aren’t sure what you need to do. Each section of the neighbourhood has a defined number of gold acorns, skins, and other collectibles. These can be discovered by scurrying up a flagpole. This will show you how many items of each and highlight their locations. Some of the skins are costumes, or fur colours, some even having gameplay benefits like a dive suit to let you breathe and move underwater, or a bomb suit to protect you from bomb blasts. Others give you some unique animations like the yellow sundress will give you a dainty walking animation versus scurrying on all fours. The trench coat might be my favourite. It makes you walk like a 1930s detective with your hands in your pockets. There is no achievement involved with gathering everything, so no need to worry about that.

Each section also has its own theme ranging from a backyard BBQ, a wild west section, a frat party (complete with stripper pole the squirrel can perform on) and even a backyard wedding. Those are just in the first neighbourhood section. While some of the acorns are easy to find and collect, like holding up locals or simply jumping or running around gathering them, others require some logical thinking and may leave you scratching your head for a few minutes. You may need to find some weights to help you sink in the water, for example, or cook burger patties on the BBQ and take them to the empty burger buns of the people waiting at the nearby picnic table. These are just some of the multi-step puzzles you’ll encounter.


Once you earn enough acorns and beat the first boss, Father (in a large tank), you can move to the second section which is inspired by a waterpark. Repeating the process of gathering and unlocking (more difficult puzzles here), you will encounter the second boss, Mother (in a helicopter). Each boss battle involves multiple stages where you knock out glowing parts of the vehicle, shoot agents etc., ultimately disabling the military equipment. It is a fairly simple game overall and doesn’t have much in the way of a story. You can pick it up, play for a small time and set it aside again. There are several save points, both automatic and manual. The manual saves involve you jumping on a bird feeder and spinning around which I found those rather amusing.

You will have a variety of weapons to use in game. A pistol, six-shooter, sniper rifle, even a rocket launcher are just some of them. Each weapon has its own ‘finishing move’ that you can use to finish off the men in black. These are all done in slow motion of course and are completely absurd to watch. Once you obtain a weapon from one of the agents, you’ll have the ability to unlock it and have it available to you. This also applies to the vehicles you can access as well, a RC car and a drone you can ride. The RC car is a nightmare to drive though. The controls are not easy, but you do need it to get to some of the golden acorns and skins.

There is some physics involved with the gunplay too. Since you are just a small squirrel, the bigger the gun, the more force it will propel you backwards. Unfortunately, the sound in the game isn’t quite as good as I would have hoped and there is a missed opportunity here to have some exceptional visual moments. While the reactions of the agents and the sound design may not be the best, the puzzle platforming is better. Using you weapons to propel yourself to higher sections was a fun little mechanic. Using the sub-machine gun let you have extended bursts, but nothing compares to the rocket launcher for pure height gains. Sadly, ammo isn’t unlimited, you have to find the glowing circles on the ground to reload. Luckily, some of the collectibles you can find are ammo wedges and these will give you a refill if you are stuck.


I did find a few frustrating moments, both mechanically and technically, in the game. The camera often felt like it had a mind of its own and I wouldn’t be able to see where I was going. This caused quite a few moments when I would fall with a comical thud to the ground. Complete with a body imprint like something out of a cartoon. This would often mean starting from a point quite far back from where you fell, especially in the waterpark section that had many floating platforms. From a technical side, I ran into a few times when my squirrel would either glitch into the environment and get stuck, or simply not be visible and I would have to fully back out of the game and restart. One of these glitches took part midway through one of the boss battles, requiring a complete restart of the section.

There was a lot of repetitiveness in gameplay, combat and even the soundtrack, but you can at least turn the music down or off should you choose to. While this may make Squirrel with a Gun sound bad, I enjoyed my time with it (roughly 6-8 hours), it just wasn’t anything groundbreaking.

Squirrel with a Gun is whimsical, chaotic, and has some funny moments. If you enjoy the silly gameplay you get from games like Goat Simulator or Untitled Goose Game, you will likely enjoy this for the few hours it takes to complete it. Retailing at under $20 CDN, for the number of hours and laughs I got from it seems like a fair price for this nutty experience.

**Squirrel with A Gun was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**




Overall: 7.0 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 7.0 / 10
Sound: 6.5 / 10

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