Publisher Noodlecakes and the development team comprised of Joon, Pol, Muuutsch, Char & Torfi have announced Nuts, a surveillance mystery game about observing and documenting the behavior of squirrels, will launch on PC and Switch on February 4 following its being released on iOS through the Apple Arcade later this week on January 22.

On paper, the idea of taking pictures and videos of squirrels might not sound like an interesting premise to sustain a video game, but I am also a person who takes thousands of photos and videos of his dog and finds that exciting. So tie an intriguing mystery to it and Firewatch-style relationship building with someone over a walkie talkie and my interest is piqued. Nuts also has a pretty striking, minimalist art style that’s lovely to look at.

The core of what you do in Nuts is place surveillance cameras around a forest in order to study the local squirrels, and based on the new trailer released alongside today’s announcement, the rodents may be part of something more insidious than originally realized. Check out the trailer here:

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“We grew Nuts into a game from a series of design experiments, and feel lucky that we were able to chase those into a finished game. All along, what has driven us to make this game is love and mischief. And we hope that all Nuts players will experience the joyful hum of our team as they play our game. The wonder of a new world. The peace of a quiet life. The joy of chasing squirrels. And the ever-present knowledge that out there in the real world, beyond our cozy bubbles, all is certainly not as it seems…” says Joon Van Hove, one of the five developers working on Nuts.

Nuts is being developed by a team of five remote independent developers, including: design and development by Joon Van Hove, art by Pol Clarissou, sound design by Almut Schwacke, writing and narrative design by Charlene Putney, and level design by Torfi Ásgeirsson.