“Ah, what a wonderful game about animal photography,” I thought at first glance at Nuts. Look at the beautiful colors. You see those weird squirrels. I’m sure it’s pretty relaxing. How wrong I was. Nuts has announced a release date in February for its squirrel surveillance story and something sinister is definitely happening in this new trailer.
“Prepare your research caravan, turn on your GPS, spread out your map and head to the depths of Melmoth Forest,” say the creators. “As a novice researcher, you will place cameras during the day and watch the footage at night, watching the movements of a squirrel lace.” Sounds pretty simple and sweet, but no, please watch the end of this trailer.
What the hell are squirrels doing with dynamite? Maybe they just like the way things look. Maybe it’s all pretty simple. Or maybe they’re genetically genius squirrels, plotting to evacuate people from their forest.
To find out, the creators say that you will spend every day placing the surveillance equipment based on a brief sent by the research team of Viago University. Every night you will monitor the cameras and capture images to find out what those squirrels are doing.
Apart from its obvious beauty, what seems really nice about Nuts is the feeling of being physically present on the spot. Even from the trailer, I can appreciate the way your character takes photos and then posts the printed copies on a blackboard. In the woods you have a GPS in one hand and a tripod camera in the other, on which you can adjust the angle after it has been placed. The huge old TVs in the search trailer have individual buttons on them for manually scanning images.
I look forward to getting my hands on this wonderful little mystery, and fortunately we don’t have to wait long. Nuts launches on Steam on February 4th. Comes to Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch a little earlier on January 22nd.
While you wait, you can find the Nuts 2018 prototype on Itch.