In Nuts, you are a recent graduate who has been sent out into the woods to research squirrels. But the squirrels, needless to say, are not as they seem. Getting to the root of this forestry mystery involves putting down remote cameras during the day, and then reviewing the footage in your caravan by night, to see what the little fellows get up to after dark. It is a superb, simple premise, and with each set of scamperings you track, a little more of the game’s story is doled out to you.
But well-told though that story is, I found it only just compelling enough to motivate me through an awful lot of trudging back and forth along the same paths, as I trial-and-errored my way through camera placement puzzles. It feels so cruel to say this, when Nuts goes out of its way to avoid feeling repetitive, and to make its environments pleasant just to exist in. Indeed, it’s not a fatal flaw, by any means. But it’s a telling moment when you wonder where the “run” button is, only to find you’ve already been pressing it for some time.