Spuuren von Nyssen

Squirrels are well-known for their habit to hoard nuts and bury them all over the place, even if most of them remain buried because they forget about them. However, you might wonder what would happen if more squirrels got in an argument about which one of them owns a specific stash. Whether you thought about it or not, the game at hand is here to provide you with answers.

Spuuren von Nyssen is a small and simple game in which your goal is simple: defend a tree from the invading squirrels by throwing nuts at them. The gameplay is about as simple as you would expect from a top-down shooter designed in a couple of hours for a coding jam, but that doesn’t mean you cannot have some fun with it, at least if you can get past the rather unusual control scheme.

The enemy squirrels come in waves, and the waves are larger the more you manage to survive. They also throw nuts at you, but their primary goal is to deal damage to the tree you are defending. While it may not make too much sense, it’s quite difficult to achieve your goal, because the enemy squirrels are never too consistent when it comes to whether they shoot you or the tree.

Speaking of which, you can reinforce your position by placing a few turrets or walls around the tree, which come in handy when you have to defend against too many squirrels at once. The structures are bought with gold collected from the dead squirrels, but it would seem like the coins disappear way too quickly from the ground, barely giving you time to get to them if you take a shot from far away.

As for the graphics, you should be prepared to deal with quite the disappointment, although it’s not necessarily because of the pixelated style. In fact, the problem is that everything looks pretty much the same, which means that there’s barely any level design to talk about. It may have been a jam game designed in a rush, but it’s not very cool to leave out such an important component.

When it’s all said and done, Spuuren von Nyssen is obviously not GOTY material, but it could turn into a hit with the casual crowds if more content is added. Obviously, the gameplay needs to be polished as well.