Spencer Beebe & Christine Little: Squirrels Gone Wild | Review

Squirrels Gone Wild Review | Scamper into a charming tale propelled by clever puzzles, endearing characters and an irresponsible amount of squirrel puns. In Squirrels Gone Wild, You’ll be tasked with helping Chester the squirrel scour through an adorable, silly and devious scrapbook that belongs to his (possibly, slightly unhinged) ex-squirrelfriend, Lucy. This scrapbook is packed full of happy memories, sentimental artifacts, AND BETRAYAL!

Date Played: November 2024
Time Taken: 50 minutes (main game), 30 minutes (bonus content)
Difficulty: Easy (main game), Hard (bonus content)
Number of Players: 2

Squirrels Gone Wild is the latest puzzle game by Spencer Beebe, of one of our favourite games ever, Lost in the Shuffle. But this time he’s teamed up with Christine Little of Mysteries of Christine to create something altogether unique and brand new. It’s big, it’s exciting, and it’s absolutely full of nuts. Unless you’re allergic to nuts then disclaimer, there aren’t actually any nuts in this, don’t worry!

After our copy arrived we took a little while to get started due to life *gestures vaguely at the universe for not giving us more time to play puzzle games*, but then on a lovely birthday afternoon, two of us at The Escape Roomer (Mairi and Rebecca), sat down to dive into the wonderful world of squirrels.

Brilliant!

A Puzzling Sequel (of Sorts)

I fear I sometimes have the tendency to be a little harsher to games by creators who had runaway first successes – like many infamous sequels films, it’s really hard to make a follow up. Just ask the creators of flop sequels Jaws: The Revenge, American Psycho 2, and Titanic II. And listen, making a game is so hard. Incredibly so. Made doubley when you have a game so beloved as Lost in the Shuffle (note, I can’t comment on Mysteries of Christine as I don’t believe I’ve ever played one). Squirrels Gone Wild was charming in it’s own way, but slightly flawed in other ways.

On the one hand, it’s a silly, light-hearted adventure about the personal and romantic lives of squirrels. Replace squirrels with anything and you’d still have a fun story, but you’d miss out on all the funny nut-related puns. The entire game takes place inside a lovingly recreated scrapbook with a single 3-digit code at the ending. It’s well sign-posted, creative, and above all quite funny!

On the other hand, this game also suffered a little crisis of identity. The theming of the scrapbook felt very young-teenager. The bright hot pink and “keep out or die” messaging was cute. I’d have absolutely made the same sort of thing at age 13 – although I think I was personally on the digital end of this with the Myspace era of glitter text and cryptic song lyric statuses. Add this to the fact the first few puzzles were super straightforward and well signposted for all audiences, and the cute squirrel characters and cartoony design led us to think this game might be more suited for kids. In fact, to a point it would be great for kids. But then there’s the slightly NSFW mentions of the male squirrel’s nuts and jewels (I’ll admit, I lol-ed) and light adult themed relationships and post-relationship revenge push it into “oh I think this might be for adults”. Or at least, the adult audience will relate to and appreciate what is happening in the story a little more.

As a final note on the themes, long time readers of The Escape Roomer will know we often call out games that make light of mental health, poking fun at characters being “crazy”, and this game did unfortunately have that. This isn’t necessarily the review where I go into detail about why we don’t usually cover games that feature that, but just note it as a trigger warning if you plan to play it yourself.

Squirrels Gone Wild (and Puzzley)

Putting the themes aside, the puzzles are definitely worth mentioning! In particular, we were super excited about more Spencer Beebe puzzles. Lost in the Shuffle has some of the most creative ones I can think of – and I regularly think back to how innovative and creative they were.

Here, the structure of the game follows the following loose flow, explained in loose terms to avoid spoilers:

• ~10 puzzles, each resulting in a single word
• 1 meta puzzle at the very end
• 1 longer, bonus puzzle to solve if you want to

The main core of the game won’t challenge enthusiasts, it’s quite a straightforward series of puzzles including some light twists on popular ciphers, well signposted moments, and simple instructions. This part would be great for anyone looking for something lighter.

At about 3/4 of the way through there’s one puzzle that is really, really quite difficult which requires a much bigger leap of logical deduction. Many incorrect submissions on the answer checker later and we finally got it correct, but this was the bulk of the puzzle solving.

The game then gets a little easier again for the meta, before culminating in a satisfying ending. I’d warn my European and global counterparts that a knowledge of USA-geography would be an advantage in this experience, but since you’re allowed to use Google there’s nothing in there that anyone, anywhere in the world couldn’t solve.

We finished this at around the 50 minute mark and were pretty happy with ourselves… Until we realised there was a bonus puzzle. Now there’s no hints for these, but I think they’re not so difficult a seasoned puzzler would need them. It just takes a bit of time and thinking outside the box to get there.

Of all the puzzles, we enjoyed the bonus puzzle the most, and I would wholeheartedly encourage anyone reading this review (because if you’re on The Escape Roomer you probably enjoy puzzle games, hey!) to stick with it to the bonus. The bonus puzzle had us in absolute delight. The puzzles are a creative aha moment. Amusingly, in a few of the clues “hidden” within the bonus we’d spotted earlier, but it was an excellent moment returning to puzzles we thought we’d completed only to discover there was a second layer. From a game design perspective, this was chefs kiss.

On a final note, the clues are delivered via reverse text on the reverse of the puzzle page they relate to. We only used clues on one puzzle, but the reverse text made it easy to not accidentally spoil the game for yourself. Of course, the bonus does not have clues, but again we don’t think a seasoned puzzler would need them, and don’t let the lack of clues put you off!

As a whole, whilst the main puzzles could do with a little more balancing – the easier ones could be more challenging, and the difficult one could definitely be brought down a step or two, the overall experience was good in terms of puzzles. It scratched that itch, and still leaves me with a lot of admiration and respect to the designers for pulling off such a delightful bonus.

Stay Out of this Scrapbook! Or Else

The very last thing we’d love to mention is the design. In our copy there was some AI imagery, but the creators have assured us these were placeholder only and will not make it to the final copy. Whilst it does leave an uncomfortable taste in the mouth, we can’t judge a game by something that… Well… Won’t actually be in the game. So we’ll focus on the parts that will be!

The whole thing plays out over three items – one locked pouch, one scrapbook, and one introduction leaflet. It’s a lightweight and slim game. Ours came in a black foil bag. The final version of the game will be in a neat box that’ll fit nicely on your shelf.

The design of the game as a whole is bright and puzzley. There’s a real mish-mash of aesthetic styles, including some beautifully drawn images of squirrels, some “photographs” and then some more generic clip art. There’s this specific Y2K kids scrapbook aesthetic which to my 2024 eyes does burn a little, but I’m pretty sure that’s the exact look they were going for. I’m also confidentally informed that there are a lot of Taylor Swift related puns in there. Sadly I missed those since I’m not familiar with her music, but that’s definitely a vibe. The whole thing is unequivocally a vibe.

One thing the scrapbook does do a fantastic job of is environmental storytelling. You really get a sense for the squirrel author and who she is in the story. The game left you with an amusing open question of “which team are you on”, #teamchester or #teamlucy. I’m pleased to say that one of our players was #teamlucy and one was #teamchester, so the authors did a very good job of not making it such a clear-cut question!

Squirrels Gone Wild: The Verdict

Squirrels Gone Wild wasn’t a perfect game. It had flaws, but hey what game doesn’t! I really admire the ambition and charm put into this game by the two creators and really hope that they continue to build on what really worked here and improved the parts that didn’t work quite so well.

The game can be purchased on Kickstarter for a reasonable price. Shipping to the UK (and I presume the rest of the world) is a necessary expensive evil, but it does push this game into “probably a little bit too expensive” territory for the amount of gameplay, hence the slightly lower rating on value.

I’m not entirely sure who I would recommend this for. Kids versus adults? Enthusiast puzzlers versus newbies? It’s hard to say. It dips its toes across the line a few times. The puzzles are great for kids but the themes maybe not so much. The puzzles on the one hand were way too easy for folks who have played games like this before, but if you weren’t already familiar with popular ciphers you may not know what to google to get over the line. So maybe instead I’ll round this off and say that this game is for you if you appreciate light-hearted jokes and humour, and a range of puzzle types. As for kids or adults, you know your kids better than I do – so that’s not a recommendation I can make.

Squirrels Gone Wild can be purchased via the Kickstarter which is currently live.

Please note, we received an early access review copy whilst the Kickstarter is live. There may be some differences between the version we played and the final, since we played a prototype. We were also not charged for our game, but this has not affected our review.