Squirrel with a Gun is exactly what it says on the tin; you play as a photorealistic squirrel roaming the neighbourhood stealing nuts and shooting secret agents with a variety of ridiculous firepower. As a 3D collectathon platformer, the game certainly has a few clever ideas and funny gags, but while a certain lack of polish is expected considering the premise, it overall doesn’t quite stick the landing and frustrates as much as it engages.

Squirrel with a Gun delivers precisely what its title promises; you play as a squirrel who breaks into a secret underground government facility and steals a mysterious golden acorn being kept behind a forcefield. After government agents attempt to shoot our rodent protagonist, the squirrel steals the agent’s pistol and develops a taste for blood and a desire to find all the golden nuts in a local residential neighbourhood while foiling the attempts of the government agency to capture him, or something. The premise is a little difficult to discern beyond that due to a lack of any dialogue, so feel free to project your own motivations onto the little furry gun nut you play as if you like.

You start out with a pistol and a submachine gun, and steadily expand your arsenal to include shotguns, grenade launchers and bazookas. The main unique element to Squirrel with a Gun’s gameplay is the whole squirrel aspect, specifically that your tiny rodent body is subject to recoil from the weapons that you carry. This carries into the gunplay, where players must be wary that their guns don’t knock them off the platform they’re standing on, as well as being able to propel your vehicles faster by firing backwards. Players can also use guns in the platforming by firing downwards to gain additional jumps or hover in the air, which I thought was a fun little feature. The extent to which these knockback physics impact the player when it comes to enemy weapons is irritating though, particularly in the game’s second half when every other enemy has a rocket launcher and the player is sent flying into the next postcode whenever they get hit.

Squirrel with a Gun is a collectathon platformer, where each area of the neighbourhood has a handful of golden acorns, ammo upgrades and cosmetic options hidden or unlockable by completing objectives. While some are out in the open, others require certain tasks to be completed, which are often very vaguely hinted at by the name of the challenge in the pause menu. There was a decent amount of variety to these challenges, which can include climbing a giant rotating cactus, knocking a drunk man off a balcony so he wakes up and attends his wedding, and running over a jogger on the street.

The game’s boss fights (of which there are two) were a particular highlight. They feature a rocking musical theme, incorporate the vehicle gameplay in interesting ways, and feature more complex combat than simply fighting wave after wave of identical government agents. These boss encounters were a welcome change of pace and I wish there were more of them.

What holds the game back is both the occasional vagueness of the objectives, and often unreliable mechanics. Aside from a general suggestion of what to do, it can often be very unclear what the game is asking you to do to uncover new golden acorns. Many of the tasks to unlock them are physics-based, such as being able to reliably throw a basketball into a moving hoop or toss a helium canister onto an injector-thingy to make inflatable platforms rise into the air. You are shown an on-screen projection of where the item you are throwing will land, which is often an imprecise suggestion at best, and can leave most of the challenges requiring you to throw anything feeling very luck-based. The car physics, particularly when it comes to driving up ramps, aren’t much better.

The game also resets completed tasks when you reload a save. This means that steps such as hitting a series of buttons on a wall with your car to drain a pool and gain access to new areas must be done repeatedly whenever you load the game again. This definitely became annoying after a while.

The combat also becomes quite repetitive before long, even considering the game’s fairly brief playtime. You can unleash elaborate finishing moves against stunned enemies, which are indeed funny the first time you pull them off. However, there is exactly one animation for each weapon type, so if you’re taking on a large group of enemies, be prepared to watch the same finishing move over and over again in quick succession. The combat music which takes over whenever agents start shooting at you also starts to grate after a while considering how often it plays.

The developer has promised a roadmap of additional free content over the next year. This will include adding a new level, new outfits, a rival, and a gravity gun weapon. Hopefully we can also expect patches to improve the game’s stability and address some of its technical issues.