“Oh, what another beautiful game of photographing animals,” I thought at first glance at Nuts. Look at the beautiful colors. Discover these quirky squirrels. I’m sure it’s pretty relaxing. How wrong he was. Nuts has announced the February release date of its squirrel surveillance story and there is definitely something sinister in this new trailer.
“Equip your search caravan, start GPS, spread out the map and head into the depths of the Melmoth Forest,” the creators say. “As a novice field researcher, you will place cameras during the day and see the images at night, tracking the movements of a squirrel.” Sounds sweet and simple enough, but no, please watch the end of this trailer.
What the hell do squirrels do with dynamite? Maybe they just like the look of things. Maybe it’s all simple. Or maybe they’re genetically engineered squirrels with a plot to drive humans out of their forest.
To find out, the creators say you’ll spend every day placing your surveillance equipment from a brief delivered by the University of Viago’s research team. Each night you will monitor the cameras and capture images to find out what these squirrels are doing.
Aside from its obvious beauty, what looks really nice with Nuts is the feeling of being physically present at the place. Even from the trailer I can appreciate the way your character takes pictures and then posts the printed copies on a board. In the woods, you have a GPS in one hand and a tripod camera in the other, which you can adjust the angle after placing it. The giant antique TVs in your research trailer have individual buttons for manually scanning images.
I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this lovely little mystery and luckily there’s not much to look forward to. Nuts launches on Steam on February 4th. It arrives on Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch a little earlier on January 22nd.
While you wait, you can find the Nuts 2018 prototype at Itch.