For the longest time, I was under the impression that The Squirrel Game was one of the greatest board games that I’ve ever played. It was one of my childhood favorites, and I have many a fond memory of playing the game. So, as I did with The Hamburger Game, I told my friends the legend, and whaddya know, one of them just happened to still own it. And then I knew that I would finally get to play this game that I loved so much again. Well, there was only one problem.
As many happy memories of the game that I have, they don’t make up for how bad the game really is. It is truly one of the most confusing and redundant games I’ve ever played. The board is shaped all weird, and every player moves along it in his or her own direction, making progressing a tricky task. Then there’s the goal of the game: to collect pinecones. Why would squirrels want pinecones? I thought they liked acorns. But the way the pinecone collecting system works is very unrefined, and causes much anger in the hearts of the players.
But even after discovering that The Squirrel Game is nowhere near as great as I remember it being, I still wanted to compose an article on this game of yesteryear. Now I could just do a review, but most of my articles lately have been reviews, so this one is gonna play out a bit differently. Again, since I don’t own the game, I didn’t take the pictures. This time though, they are of much better quality, because this time the photographer knew the value of the focus feature. Some are still a bit blurry, but in the end, it’s much better that The Hamburger Game’s pics.
This is a story about a magical day in Carpet Land. Many strange things happen there every day, but this is one story that will put all the others to shame.
One fine day in Carpet Land, a large plastic bag appeared from out of nowhere. Nobody was quite sure what it was, and since the contents were so jumbled up, they couldn’t tell what was in it. The DVD player suggested that perhaps someone should try to open this mysterious bag, but the GameCube controller knew better and told him that they had best leave it alone. So everyone agreed and went back to their daily routines of sitting around unused.
Not long after it arrived, the plastic bag began to rumble and open, as if some giant unseen force were rumbling and opening it. After some ten seconds or so, a small area of forest appeared. It was quite square, and had a winding path going through it. Along with the forest appeared four squirrels, each clad in colourful suspenders. The final thing that appeared was a strange red tub full of pinecones. Nobody was sure what was going to happen, but it seemed as if the squirrels thought they were right at home.
The green squirrel and the yellow squirrel turned out to be a team of sorts, as they quickly put distance between themselves and the other squirrels. After they found a place to set up a small fort, they started talking in hushed voices and looking towards the red tub. Green and yellow were definitely in the mindset that they needed those pinecones, and it they knew that the red and blue squirrels weren’t going to make it easy for them. They knew they were going to have to take them by force.
Meanwhile, red and blue were also conspiring about how to get those pinecones. They also knew that their rivals were going to try to take the pinecones from them. But unlike green and yellow, blue and red were going to try to reason with green and yellow. They were the kinder of the four squirrels, and they didn’t want to have to resort to dirty tricks, so they simply headed out towards the tub.
But green and yellow were one step ahead! While blue and red were busy regrouping, yellow and green had already begun their warfare, and had created an earthquake machine! The machine started up and made some terrible tremors, causing blue and red to fall over! It wouldn’t have been so bad, but their wheelbarrows had fallen too, and squirrels aren’t too strong, so they had a hard time turning them upright again. Those dastardly green and yellow squirrels! What were they planning next?
Suddenly a large deity of sorts descended from the skies. It was simply a hand, and all the squirrels looked up in awe. They had never seen anything like it before. The hand came closer to the ground and suddenly it was apparent that it was holding something! The object was a strange cube with dots and pinecones carved onto all of its sides. The squirrels were mesmerized by the strange object and couldn’t take their eyes off it.
The great hand then dropped the cube without warning and the squirrels all felt compelled to move along the forest path. The hand kept picking up and dropping the cube and the squirrels kept moving along the path. They had no idea why they were doing it, but they kept it up anyway.
As they moved along, they discovered two things. The first was that there were pinecone symbols drawn into the path at certain places, and if they landed on these, some pinecones from the tub magically moved into their wheelbarrows. They each also discovered a secret hole where they could hide any pinecones they acquired. As they kept moving along, they gained more and more pinecones. At one point, green even managed to steal some of blue’s pinecones.
But at that point, green noticed that his wheelbarrow was getting far too heavy to push, and that if he were to acquire any more pinecones, it might tip over and spill them all. So he rushed to his hiding spot as fast as he could, making sure to avoid the pinecone symbols to the best of his ability. He made it there just in the nick of time, as he’d gotten very tired from all that pushing. But then he noticed that his stash had been emptied! What was going down here? Witchery? Kleptomaniacal forest creatures? No, it had to have been those red and blue squirrels.
In a fit of rage, green denied the power of the cube and ran towards the tub with all his might. The other squirrels hadn’t noticed, and they all continued on their merry ways. Though his payload was heavy, green knew that he had to heist the whole tub, or else the others would be able to make off with his pinecones. And that couldn’t happen. Not to green. He knew that yellow was a traitorous bastard, and that he was secretly plotting with red and blue, so he felt no pity for his former partner.
Green got to the tub, pinecones in tow, and only then did he realize that there was no way he could load all of those pinecones onto his wheelbarrow. He sat and thought for a minute and then came up with a plan. He figured that since the tub was so very magical, it wouldn’t be very heavy, and so if he loaded that onto his barrow, he would be able to carry them all.
As magical as it was, the tub was just far too heavy for little green to lift. He tried and tried, but there was no way it was going to happen. He even tried pushing it, but he had very little success, and he didn’t have time to dawdle. In the end, he managed to fall into the tub! Now he was faced with the challenge of getting himself and his barrow out of the tub. After trying very hard, he managed to finally overcome the challenge and escape from the magical dish.
Though he had escaped with his life, green was still unsatisfied. He thought some more, and then it came to him. In the forest, he had seen one place with a symbol of three pinecones. There was nothing else like it anywhere else, so perhaps it was the key to getting all of those pinecones. He rushed back to the forest as quickly as he could in hopes that he had found the secret of the pinecones.
After much searching and stealthily avoiding the other squirrels, green finally found that spot with the triple-pinecone symbol. He moved closer and placed his wheelbarrow over it. Then, to his surprise, he saw the stream of pinecones fly toward him. He had done it! And not only did they come to him, they followed him around too, floating magically in single file.
Green ran back to his hiding spot, with the pinecones in hot pursuit. He almost stepped out right in front of red once, but quickly jumped back into the trees and just barely avoided being seen. As soon as red was out of sight, he continued his trek towards home base. He made it there, and all the pinecones flooded into his hiding spot. He had won! He had all the pinecones to himself! Now that he had them all, he could skip town and head to Closet Land to live the good life.
But then out of nowhere, a giant robot came crushing through the forest! Green turned to run, but the robot was clearly following him! As much as he didn’t want to, he knew that he had to leave the pinecones and save his life. He kept running, but the robot was gaining on him. There was no way he could escape, as the robot was very tall and would be able to see him no matter where he ran.
But then he came to a clearing, and he stopped in shock. In front of him stood the yellow, blue, and red squirrels. They looked very agitated, and green knew that he had been had. He tried to plead for forgiveness, but then the robot appeared and they got frightened and ran away. Green was surprised that they hadn’t been controlling it to get revenge on him, and he just stood there in shock. The robot grabbed him and started shaking him around violently. Green saw the error of his ways, but it was too late. The robot kept up his fierce attack, and green finally passed out.
The robot then threw green to the ground, and started chase after the rest of the squirrels. Yellow tripped on a rock and since red and blue never turned around to look back, they could only presume he was shaken silly. Then the robot managed to catch up and grab red. He squirmed for his life, and blue could only stare in shock as his partner was shaken around ferociously. After the robot was done with red, blue knew he was no match, covered his eyes and curled up into the fetal position.
After a while he noticed that nothing was happening. He opened his eyes, and saw that the robot was gone, along with red. Blue got up and wondered what had just happened. After finding no trace of his friend, blue decided to make the best of a bad situation and took all the pinecones from green’s stash and moved them to his own. Then he laid back and stretched out under the sun and fell asleep.
Since all the other squirrels had disappeared, blue no longer had any worry of losing his precious pinecones. Life was good, and he was the king of the forest. And so ends our little tale of squirrels and pinecones.
Or does it?
I like to think that I pulled that one off pretty well. My English teacher says I should write a graphic novel, and at this point in my life, this is about as close as it gets. Hell, I’m not even sure what a graphic novel is. I guess it’s just a story with pictures, right? Well, in any case, I think the story played out pretty well, even if it did get a little evil near the end. I wasn’t planning on having that happen, but I had to work with what pictures were given to me, and that’s the best I could do.
So just as a little reminder, The Squirrel Game is a very bad game, unless you’re making a little story out of it. If you use the squirrels as toys, it’s all well and good. I actually never planned to do this “review” as a story, but I got sick of the normal review-type stuff. I know it took me a lot less time to do it this way, because it just flows when you’re writing a story, and for reviews you have to pick out certain information, and omit things that aren’t pertinent, and it’s just a lot harder. So I might do more stuff like this in the future too. I enjoyed doing this and Hylian Idol, so there’s definitely potential for more.
~Ryan
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Tuominenator[at]gmail[dot]com