Nuts demo lets you spy on squirrels and their secrets
What ARE squirrels hiding from us?
Squirrels: they're hiding something. No matter how cute they look, they're keeping something from us and maybe it's more than just food. Perhaps you'll see some of their secrets in the new demo for Nuts, a game about surveilling the goings-on of squirrels. By day, carefully place your cameras. By night, sit back to watch where the blighters go. It's a first-person puzzle game of sorts, about the daily cycle of tweaking camera locations to follow the furry fiends, but also has a story about squirrely secrets. I'm interested.
If this sounds familiar, that's likely because it's expanded from a game jam game Matt played in 2018. Now it's looking a lot fancier and has that whole voiced story going on. At this point, I have no clue whether that story is going to be fun and silly or dark and deadly. Never can tell with squirrels.
I like how tacticle Nuts is. Pick up the phone. Press the buttons on your monitors. Click the switch on your printer. Feed photos into the fax machine. Pop papers up on the board. Some good bits of first-person fiddling there. While the demo ends soon after introducing the basics, I'm keen to see where it might go with future puzzles and plot.
Nuts is due to launch on Steam in 2021. For now, you can grab that demo from Steam and see more on its website.
It's made by Jonatan Van Hove (Laza Knitez), Pol Clarissou (Vignettes and Orchids To Dusk, plus small spookings like Offline), Almut Schwacke (sound designer on Anno 1800), Torfi, and Charlene Putney (writer on Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2). Noodlecake are publishing.
Disclosure: Jonatan Van Hove has done stuff for The Wild Rumpus, an events group I'm part of. I also know some of the team, I wouldn't say well but I'm glad when I bump into them at some event once every five years?
Whatever you call it, hit our E3 2020 tag for more from this summer's blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check out the PC games at the PlayStation 5 show, everything at the PC Gaming Show, and all the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.