Personally I was dissapointed in the game, normally I'd say that I would be interested to see the devs next project, but apparently after 6 months since release, they got completely nuked from orbit, there is no announcement on their twitter or steam update posts, but they did confirm the obliteration on their official discord (then closed that down too it seems). Their YT cannel, where devlogs were uploaded, is also down. I don't know if it's some weird THQ policy to not properly disclose studio closure like that, but there you go.
The store description states: "Explore, gather, craft and build incredible treehouses", I would swap around first and last item on this list, because it felt like the treehouse building mode was given a lot of love, while exploring is just kinda there.
"Cozy" games are a bit of an epidemic, making them is often less difficult, as you don't need to spend as much time designing challenge in the game, their market has also some really fishy influencer marketing scheme, but this one is probably not guilty, if dev studio couldn't survive. I thought that this, while not difficult, will actually be a bit interesting thanks to possible fail states, you have a breath meter when swimming, and the second area features an aggressive dog that will take chunks out of your HP bar. But after accessing the next area, the only thing that can damage you afaik, is thorny bush in a tiny hedge maze, by the end I wasn't sure why the HP bar is even there to begin with.
All the climbing, jumping and other movement, requires no stamina. The only thing affecting that bar is mining resources, if you do too much of that in a row, you will have to eat a snack or retreat to your bed.
When placing beds, you will need to build a house with a roof over it, you don't need to make anything fancy, but at the same time you have only specific areas you can build in.
Creating all the necessary crafting stations + chests and bed, will require a chunk of resources, but one of the updates introduced an easy to make teleporter, so the easiest thing to do is having one big base, with just the teleporters sprinkled around.
The inventory space is also quite limited, most items have max stack of 8, with max slots being quite limited for most of the playtime.
In the end I liked animations and feel of the movement, yet none of the other elements were all that fleshed out. The platforming was mostly unengaging, sometimes you had to place a jump pad item somewhere, or climb nearby tall tree, to access the roof of something you couldn't normally climb. Getting the glider was very underwhelming, as it felt like it had barely any additional speed over just dashing across ground or tree branches. Spring boots had funny tech, where they would jump higher if you activated them shortly before hitting the ground - it was the most fun thing to do in platforming, but if you had tall trees in the area, you didn't really need to bother with the boots.
Mining was just a bit of a chore, go to specific spots where certain item respawns, select correct tool, gather until inventory's full or stamina is low enough, then retreat. At that point I don't know why the game doesn't have tool auto select, pressing L1 or R1 several times until I select a pickax, just seemed like wasting my time.
The two movement upgrades and new craft stations were the most exciting goals to work towards, but in the end it wasn't really changing much, the end goal seemed to be giving you tools to make fancy treehouses, which didn't really serve any additional purpose, besides being a vanity project with a teleporter inside.
Helping the other squirrels I thought would be a bit like questing in survival games, they just kind of ended up being a set of static tasks, that you can finish in like 3 hours, in order to unlock next areas, and then the ending.
I don't know what this game wants to be, for survival craft, it has no survival. For base building, it's just a building by the end of the game, the most you do inside is queue up plank crafting on the saw. For platforming exploration, it's a cakewalk from the start, with your moveset being so swift, that the 2 upgrades end up being sidegrades at best. The exploration part is optional, a resource highlight function, that completely hides tree leaves, so that your entire screen is not covered by them, is always there under a single button press. I don't even know what is there to do in multiplayer, besides showcasing treehouses, or getting more slaves for the construction site, the emote wheel was like the last update they ever did.
The visuals carry this game hard, it's a shame to admit that I was mostly playing it for the novelty and smoothness of controlling a squirrel, while enjoying some of the park views, even the music was so repetetive I muted it at halfway point. It's a very forgettable experience, that I don't think I would go out of my way to recommend to anyone. Even if it's confused, I don't think it was worth killing a small 6 people studio over it.
