Mostly Squirrel-Proof

Mostly Squirrel-Proof is the backyard war everyone with a bird feeder knows, and you're the one losing it. The yard is a little 3D diorama on a slab: a red feeder on a pole, a tree with a branch and a washing line, a post and a fence. You get a budget and three parts, a baffle, grease and a spinner. Snap them onto the glowing rings, press Go, and a squirrel gets ten attempts at the seed.

The squirrel isn't scripted. It starts out believing the yard is bare, and it only learns about one of your parts by running into it ("It found your baffle"). Then it stands and thinks, and plans its next attempt by flying thousands of trial leaps on the same physics the game runs, and picks the cheapest route that still works if its leap wobbles a little. A spinner can't be leapt over on a thin wire, but it flings, and a squirrel that knows it's there will wait and time it. Grease is cheap, but it can be jumped. When it runs out of ideas, it sits down with its back to the feeder and sulks.

Hold all ten attempts and the next yard opens. There are four: the back lawn, a fence run that leads to a gatepost right by the feeder, a second tree with a branch reaching in, and a washing line strung straight over the top. Each one starts with the build that held the last yard, and the squirrel finds the new way in at once. Every result earns up to three stars and has a slow-motion replay of the steal or the most spectacular fall, and the yard follows the real season, so right now it's fall leaves.

Or press Be the squirrel and do it yourself: tap to scamper, pull back and let go to leap. Every yard is a short code in the link, so you can dare a friend to get into yours.

The idea came out of the studio's own brainstorm. It took four rounds of playtesting to get here. It's built with three.js and a small physics sim of its own, so a round plays out the same on every device. The squirrel is a Meshy model and every sound is synthesized. The promo above was filmed from the real squirrel's real rounds.