If you’re a fan of survival games but dream of them being less murderous and more cute, you may agree with how Squirreled Away might just be the cutest survival game to come out of 2025. It’s a big claim considering it’s only March, but I’m standing by it.
Squirreled Away is a gorgeous indie gem from developer Far Seas and published by Amplifier Studios, the same publisher who brought us mecha-powered farming sim Lightyear Frontier. You play as a small red squirrel, an alien sight to me in the U.K. where they are all but extinct in 99 percent of places despite being native to the country. In the game, you can change your fur color, but that seems like a disservice to the red squirrel.
Along the way, you’re tasked with helping various forest critters with the problems they face. Armed with various crafted tools, you can gather all manner of resources, such as pebbles and twigs, eventually working your way up to rocks and sticks. I know that doesn’t sound like a big step up, but you’re a squirrel, so everything is large to you.
New recipes are unlocked after finding new resources and meditating on them at one of the Squirrel Sanctuaries located on each island. The process is impossibly cute—your squirrel floating into the air and adopting the lotus position with more ease than I’ve ever been able to, and I’ve been attempting to practice yoga for years. There are Golden Acorns to find on every island, and finding all of them on any given island will restore the Sanctuary and increase your stamina.
If all of this sounds good to you (which it absolutely should because there isn’t a single thing not to enjoy about this beautiful experience), there’s a demo available for free now through Steam. The demo lets you explore the entirety of the first island, meeting four new squirrel friends and a particularly buoyant turtle named Terry. You complete the first four squirrel quests, and then you can explore a tiny part of the second island.
Once you’re at the second island, you can use “Squirrel Vision” to see all of the various critter NPCs that you’ll be able to talk to when the full game releases on March 28, but you’re blocked off by an invisible wall. You can talk to one NPC—Lotta Land, the seagull—who is more than willing to tell you about the building system.
Yes, you can build bases in Squirreled Away, which somehow came as a surprise despite this having all the expected hallmarks of a survival crafter. The caveat is you can only build up in the trees, which is understandable for the squirrel theme, and you unlock more blueprints as you go with the same Meditation system that’s used to get more recipes.
The building system itself is smooth and easy to work with, reminding me a lot of the one used in Palworld, but with fewer quirks. Everything clicks together exactly as it should, and there’s no limit to what you can create, as long as you have enough sticks to see you through. If not, you can take your trusty Pebble Tools and grab more resources for building purposes.
I’ve always been a fan of taking a survival game and making it cozy. I even managed it with Sons of the Forest, which came as a surprise even to me. Squirreled Away taps into my bizarre little niche and has done the hard work for me, allowing for a remarkably relaxing gameplay experience while still scratching that survival itch.
Published: Mar 24, 2025 6:32 PM UTC