I’m rooting for you Squirrel With A Gun, but you still won’t explain yourself

It is perhaps deeply ungrateful of me that, when presented with the squirrel with a gun of Squirrel With A Gun, my immediate reaction is to thrust out my bowl like a ballsy victorian urchin and ask for additional squirrel information. It’s not that developer Dee Dee Creations haven’t shown off the game in action. It’s just that I find myself rooting so hard for this not to just be a vapid bit of meme-ware that I’m getting more concerned as we rapidly approach its 29th August release.

And look, sure. If I made a game called Squirrel With A Gun, and someone asked me what the game was, y’know, about, then I’d probably just do the equivalent of what these trailers are doing. That is, I’d continuously shout “squirrel with a gun!” until they either left in a huff or started shouting it with me. Maybe we’d start jumping up and down on the spot at some point. Maybe there’d be party poppers.

And yet, I find myself in the position of - if not a party pooper - at least the equivalent of a commenter on a nice squirrel documentary, writing out a list of horrible diseases you can catch from their bites (salmonelosis, typhus, ringworm). Here’s the launch trailer.

It’s not absent of tangible information, and neither is the game’s Steam page. We know it’ll be a puzzle platformer of some sort, possibly in the 3D Mario vein - your goal is collecting golden acorns. We know you’ll use the recoil from weapons to pull off tricky navigation challenges. And we know that the title is a slight misnomer, because the squirrel can actually have several guns. One of them is a six-shooter, and it also comes with a little cowboy hat for the squirrel to wear. You'll collect such apparel by doing side quests for strangers. Also, pets.

In truth, I’ve wishlisted games on less information than this. It’s just that, quite unfairly, Squirrel With A Gun’s memey cuteness means I’m expecting it to work twice as hard to fully sell itself to me. Isn’t this the opposite of how appearing cute to humans is supposed to work in nature? I don’t have time to check how tight the evolutionary science is on that, but I also don’t remember harbouring a deep mistrust for any adorable mammals recently. I’ve had my cat less than a week, mind.

What do you reckon? Is this a hollow meme wearing the skin of a devious tree rat, with nothing much going for it beyond a viral-worthy concept? Or will it have some substance to it? “The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest,” wrote Thoreau. Might we expect the same earnestness from the squirrel that does the killing? One in the chamber isn't enough, squirrel. I need to know your heart's in it.