The special ingredient here is NUTS.
The game is intriguing, stylish and hints at something mysterious and foreboding whilst feeling oddly frivolous as you essentially become a squirrel detective in the search for the truth…
Let me rewind a moment and explain what this game is.
This game clearly draws on games like Firewatch with its walking sim gameplay and lovely colour palette styling. It will obviously draw comparisons to The Return Of Obra Dinn with that minimalist colour usage that leaves you with this mysterious air to the game.
Now throw Umurungi Generation and Pokemon Snap into the mix and you have NUTS which draws on retro-tech and filmography skills to bring you a game of intrigue and investigation that you get to play at your own pace.
You’re dropped into your first day at work as a wildlife researcher who works for a company that gets paid to undertake wildlife surveys of areas where building work will potentially take place.
You live in a mobile home towed by a quad bike and are frequently towed to a nature reserve that you will need to investigate in order to prove that there are squirrels in the area that are potentially endangered due to the proposed building works.
You will use a plethora of 90s tech which include a GPS locator, a handheld polaroid camera, SLR cameras on tripods, a video editing suite and a good old fax machine to pull together evidence and get that over to your boss.
All the time you will be searching for the money shot which is the stash of NUTS that the squirrel is hiding somewhere in the environment. It’s down to you to trace the squirrel’s movements each night to work out the NUTS stash location and then fire the evidence over to your boss and wait for their call on the gloriously ‘90s landline telephone.
All the while I was playing NUTS it felt like there was something more sinister at play with a chilling undertone to the atmosphere and the music which affirmed my suspicions that something was not quite right and this really drew me deep into the mystery.
There are also some cool audio tapes lying around the environment which are playable via your dictaphone and take you back to 1982 when this research was originally run.
The 90s technology really gave me that Stories Untold vibe of working out how each piece of equipment works to its full potential as you are surrounded by CRT TVs and other 90s styled gadgets such as the enhancer technology to zoom into recorded video and produce a printed picture to be faxed off.
The progression is broken down into Nights and Days that are numbered and give you a feel of each day being an episode in the overall mystery of what is going on in this small but well thought out environment.
I loved the thrill of investigating the Squirrels recorded trail and then exploring to uncover a breakthrough and then rushing back to my cabin to set the recording rolling for the night, it truly is a Squirrel Detective Simulator which rewards your patience as you configure your camera setup to get to the bottom of the mystery with the optimal camera placement.
It would be a crime if I didn’t mention the journal in the game that allows you to stick your very own Squirrel snaps into it as a memento of your research. I’m an in-game journal fan and this one is up there with the Uncharted Journal as it feels personal and really complements the loneliness of the whole experience as you plot out your next Squirrel expedition and await your boss’ call.
"Right, I’m off to stash my NUTS under a rock by the river."
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