Don’t Kill the Squirrel! Review

The idea behind Don’t Kill the Squirrel is one I can wholeheartedly get behind. To get across the dangers of dangerous driving, the game has the player take control of a car while bombarding them with distractions. Unfortunately, the game is riddled with problems throughout, and ultimately ends up being extremely frustrating.

Don’t Kill the Squirrel doesn’t really have any story to tell, or levels to conquer. Instead the player is tasked with controlling a car (via the interior viewpoint) which is driving along a road. The game is all about the dangers of being distracted behind the wheel, and as such before the player sets off they are given a statistic regarding that particular topic.

When the car is in motion the game will, at random, bark out a task that the player must immediately do. This ranges from braking to avoid pedestrians, to changing radio stations, to texting a friend using a mobile phone. It does highlight just how dangerous it is to try and control a vehicle without paying attention.

Unfortunately the game feels almost broken in several areas. Graphically it’s extremely messy and glitchy, with a very low polygon count and terrible pop-up, with vehicles appearing out of thin air directly in front of the player, causing them to crash. It also seems to be a gamble if the game will actually load or not, with it failing a good 50% of the time on my iPad.

Then there are situations where the player is forced to crash through no fault of their own. This normally happens when there are two slow moving vehicles in front. The player will suddenly be told to “speed up to avoid being hit from behind”, but of course they can’t speed up due to the slow vehicles. That doesn’t stop the car behind from crashing into the player, causing a game over.

As I said at the beginning, Don’t Kill the Squirrel is a good idea. The game behind the idea, though, really isn’t up to scratch and is hard to recommend.