Squirrel Stapler

About

Squirrel Stapler is a first-person shooter with survival horror and dark comedy elements. You play as a man in a remote cabin whose decaying love interest, a corpse pinned to the wall, needs squirrel parts to look pretty again. Armed with a slingshot and stapler, you venture into a forest teeming with twitchy rodents, predators, and an invisible force that violently opposes your mission. The gameplay loops around stealthily sniping squirrels, avoiding environmental hazards, and racing back to your cabin before something worse catches you. The tone shifts rapidly between slapstick and unsettling, with grotesque humor undercut by sudden scares. This indie oddball stands out for its relentless absurdity and willingness to shock. The narrative’s macabre logic and the game’s commitment to its bizarre premise, like a forest that punishes squirrel stapling, have earned it cult buzz since its September 2023 release. While not everyone’s cup of tea, its 72% critic score on Metacritic reflects its polarizing charm. Available on PC, PS5, and Switch, it’s a 4-hour sprint through one of the weirdest concepts in recent gaming.

Storyline

A lonely man living in a remote cabin wakes up one day and realizes his beloved--a dismembered corpse nailed to the cabin wall--has been made ugly and rotten by the flies that swarm her. He wishes she were beautiful, like the squirrels of the wood. And so he sets out to hunt the squirrels of the wood, so that he might staple them to her and make her beautiful again. But that is easier said than done. A sinister presence lurks in the deep forest, and it has only one rule: "Thou shalt not staple squirrels!"