It is perhaps deeply ungrateful of me that, when presented with the squirrel with a gun from Squirrel With A Gun, my immediate reaction is to whip out my bowl like a plucky Victorian urchin and ask additional information about squirrel. It's not that developer Dee Dee Creations hasn't shown the game in action. It's just that I find myself wishing so much that this wasn't just another bland meme that I'm growing increasingly concerned as we rapidly approach its August 29 release.
And look, of course. If I was making a game called Squirrel With A Gun, and someone asked me what it was about, you know, I would probably do the equivalent of what these trailers do. Which is I would just keep yelling “squirrel with a gun!” until they either got angry or started yelling it with me. Maybe we would start jumping up and down at some point. Maybe there would be party people.
And yet, I find myself in the position of, if not a killjoy, at least the equivalent of a commentator on a good documentary about squirrels, listing off horrible diseases that can be caught from their bites (salmonella, typhus, ringworm). Here's the launch trailer.
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The game isn't short on concrete information, as is the Steam page. We know that it's going to be a puzzle platformer, perhaps in the vein of Mario 3D – your goal is to collect golden acorns. We know that you'll use the recoil of the weapons to complete tricky navigational challenges. And we know that the title is a bit of a misnomer, because the squirrel can actually have multiple weapons. One of them is a six-shooter, and it also comes with a little cowboy hat that the squirrel can wear. You'll collect these clothes by completing side quests for strangers. And also pets.
In truth, I’ve put games on my wishlist based on less information than that. It’s just that, somewhat unfairly, Squirrel With A Gun’s cuteness means I expect it to try twice as hard to fully sell itself to me. Isn’t that the opposite of how it’s supposed to behave in the wild to appear cute to humans? I don’t have time to check how strict evolutionary science is on this, but I also don’t recall harboring a deep distrust of cute mammals recently. I’ve had my cat for less than a week, mind you.
What do you think? Is this a hollow meme masquerading as a sneaky tree rat, with little point beyond a viral-worthy concept? Or will it have some substance? “The squirrel you kill for a joke dies for real,” Thoreau wrote. Can we expect the same sincerity from the squirrel who kills? Just one in the room isn’t enough, squirrel. I need to know you’re putting your heart into it.