Players continue to spend hours with their friends in sandbox games every day, and the appeal is obvious. These worlds offer a bounty of reasons for friends to group up and bound around the open world, collecting materials, building impressive structures, tackling challenging enemies, and more. As fun as these experiences are, they add an entirely new layer of challenges for devs that many gamers are unaware of. The upcoming sandboxindie gameSquirrel with a Gunisn’t quite ready to support multiplayer functionality either—at least not yet.
Game Rant spoke with Dan DeEntremont, the solo dev behind the upcoming TPS-meets-sandbox-meets-platformer, to discuss fans' desires for the game to be multiplayer and why it cannot be, at least not right out the gate.
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Squirrel with a Gun Will Remain Single Player—For Now
Making a video game that supports multiplayer functionality is not an easy undertaking. One may ask “well why not just put it in?”, but like many facets of game design, it isn’t quite that simple.Designing a multiplayer gamemeans more infrastructure on the back end, more coding, and more obstacles. Any feature that could involve additional players now has to be rewritten to support all the possibilities of how another gamer could interact with the system at that moment, and what was already a difficult task for a team magnifies exponentially when the weight falls squarely on the shoulders of one dev working on a project alone.
DeEntremont shares that there were many ideas he had to toss aside once the weighty realities of solo game development began to sink in. One of those was the idea thatSquirrel with a Guncould be multiplayer.While the appeal of multiplayer is understandable, the challenge of writing that functionality as it stands remains a big challenge in the eyes of DeEntremont.
“A lot of people were saying it has to be multiplayer and, you know, I understand the appeal of that, but it’s a very tricky thing to write.”
This doesn’t mean all hope is lost, however. DeEntremont still flirts with the idea of bringing multiplayer capabilities toSquirrel with a Gunin the future. He briefly ideates aboutan experience that would be akin to the relationship of Sonic and Tales: a squirrely adventure where a friend could tag along as an “assistant,” helping them through the world and sharing in the antics—and that’s not all.
DeEntremont mentions among those countless ideas include the possibility of having more animal friends in the mix. He also hopes to diversify squirrel’s loadout with different classics like the shotgun, rocket launcher, assault riffle, and more. Each gun would come with unique abilities that help the squirrels solve different puzzles. Though nothing is set in stone, it’s clear he has more ideas up his sleeve for future iterations of the game.
“I would definitely attempt to do it for a sequel. Something I’d like to implement at the very least is a Sonic and Tails kind of deal where somebody tags along just being your assistant.”
DespiteSquirrel with a Gunremaining a strictly single-player experience, DeEntremont has still crafted a world rich with all theappeal of a fun sandbox experience. Players will be able to enjoy taunting government agents, harassing or helping their neighbors, and shooting their way through the town. One of the most notable features is the ability to “jump” by shooting the squirrel’s handgun and riding the recoil to new heights. DeEntremont intends for this tactic to be used in a unique take on traditional platforming puzzles.
WhileSquirrel with a Gunwill not include multiplayer functionality upon launch, fans shouldn’t write the possibility off completely. Despite this, players of the game will still be able to enjoya myriad of fun, unique gameplay featuresthat could in fact lend themselves well to a multiplayer experience in the future, should DeEntremont decide to pursue that route.
Squirrel with a Gundoes not have a release date just yet, but fans can wishlist the game now on Steam.
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