“Ah, what a beautiful game about photographing animals,” I thought to myself as I looked at Nuts. Look at the beautiful colors. Observe the peculiar squirrels. I’m sure it’s quite relaxing. How wrong I was. Nuts announced a February release date for its squirrel surveillance story and there is definitely something sinister going on in this new trailer.
“Prepare your search caravan, initialize your GPS, spread your map and head to the depths of Melmoth Forest,” say the creators. “As a novice field researcher, you will place cameras during the day and watch the footage at night, tracking the movements of a squirrel race.” It looks sweet and simple, but oh no, please pay attention to the end of this trailer here.
What the hell are squirrels doing with dynamite? Maybe they just like how things look. Perhaps everything is very simple. Or perhaps they are genetically engineered genius squirrels with a plan to drive humans out of their forest.
To find out, the creators say that you will spend each day putting your surveillance equipment on the basis of an instruction passed by the research team at Viago University. Every night you will be monitoring the cameras and capturing images to find out what these squirrels are doing.
In addition to its obvious beauty, what looks really nice in Nuts is the feeling of being physically present in the place. Even from the trailer, I can appreciate the way your character takes pictures and then publishes the printed copies on a board. In the forest, you have a GPS in one hand and a tripod camera in the other, which you can adjust the angle after being positioned. The old giant televisions in your search trailer have individual buttons for manually scanning images.
I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this lovely little mystery and, fortunately, I don’t have to wait long. Nuts will be released on Steam on February 4. It will arrive on Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch shortly before, on January 22.
While you wait, you can find the Nuts 2018 prototype on Itch.