The Last Acorn

Synopsis

The player is a single-parent squirrel named Reed, whose entire winter stash of acorns has been stolen by Vex, the fox. With the neighborhood trees already stripped bare and a blizzard fast approaching, Reed must venture into increasingly dangerous territory to gather enough food for his three children: Pip, Chip, and Dash. Cutscenes will establish the narrative and build emotional depth to reinforce the stakes. These will strengthen the player’s investment in the journey. The core type of fun comes from navigating unfamiliar environments in a platforming survival experience. Players must complete runs before nightfall, navigate obstacles, and meet a target acorn count to keep Reed’s family alive. As the game progresses, players also get to explore and experience new parts of the forest, maintaining novelty by introducing new scenery and challenges.

Stories

Introduction Story
It’s a stormy spring night. Inside a tree hollow, Reed, a single-parent squirrel, tucks his three children into bed and gets ready to settle in for the night. Suddenly, he hears rustling near the family’s acorn storage. He goes to check and catches a glimpse of an orange bushy tail. It’s Vex, the fox, fleeing with Reed’s entire winter stash that he’s spent the entire year gathering to keep his children fed through the harsh winter. Reed chases after Vex through the pouring rain, but Vex is too fast and vanishes into the forest. Returning to the hollow, Reed finds the storage completely empty. With nothing left to feed his family, Reed steps into the storm, determined to find enough food to keep his family alive.

Changing Seasons
As Reed ventures deeper into the forest in search of acorns, the seasons change, each bringing its own challenges. The game begins in spring, where melting snow creates floods and unstable branches. In summer, food becomes more abundant, but so do predators and dense overgrowth, making navigation more difficult. Fall brings strong winds and thick leaf piles that conceal dangers. Finally, winter returns with ice-covered branches and a growing sense of urgency as the days become shorter and food is more scarce.

Final Face Off
Winter is at its peak and Reed is running out of time. His children are hungry and growing weaker by the day. While foraging in a new part of the forest, he stumbles upon a hollowed-out tree packed with acorns. He realizes that it’s his stash and Vex has been hoarding it all along. Reed quickly begins stuffing his acorns in his pouch, but just as he’s about to leave, Vex steps out of her den and growls with fury. She lunges at Reed and this kicks off the final level. It’s a frantic, high-stakes chase through the frozen woods. Vex is aggressive and tailing close behind Reed. Near the end, Vex corners Reed for a final showdown, and Reed wins. As they’re battling it out, Vex suddenly slips on a weak branch and falls, letting Reed escape. Reed watches as Vex tiredly limps back into the woods to her den. He sees her kits watching from the shadows, and the sight hits him hard, as if looking at his own children. He realizes that Vex is just another single-parent like him, desperate to keep her family alive, so he goes back to Vex to offer half his share and work together to survive the rest of winter.

Other Stories

Long before the stormy spring night when she raided Reed’s hollow, Vex had already lost more than her fair share. Her den, once warm with the presence of five kits, had grown cold over the years. Only two survived the last harsh winter. The others were too small, too hungry, too late. Vex had tried everything: foraging, hunting, even digging through human trash piles on the forest’s edge. But no matter how fast she ran or how clever her tricks, there was never enough.

So when the snow thawed and spring arrived, Vex made a decision: if she couldn’t gather enough, she’d outsmart those who could. Not out of cruelty, but out of desperation. She began watching other creatures, badgers, raccoons, squirrels, learning where they hid their food. She never stole out of malice. She picked her targets carefully, avoiding those with young of their own. But this time, she got it wrong.

When she raided Reed’s hollow, she didn’t know he was alone as a single father, just like her. She saw only a stockpile that could carry her kits through the next year. Vex didn’t relish what she did. She spent her nights curled around her children, whispering apologies they couldn’t understand, reminding herself that cleverness wasn’t wicked. It was survival.

Tone

• Tenderness – This is a game about family and the bond between a parent and their children. We want players to feel a desire to fulfil the needs of their children and provide them with love and warmth.
• Urgency – Winter is coming. The fox is getting away. Your child is getting weaker. Every level carries a sense of forward momentum.
• Curiosity – The more players explore the forest, the more familiar it becomes, revealing paths and shortcuts that make future runs easier and deepen their understanding of the world.
• Purpose – Every move the player makes is in service of a greater goal: protecting their family. This sense of purpose is meant to ground the gameplay in emotional stakes.

Setting

The game takes place in a dark, unfamiliar, and expansive forest where all the player can see is the branch they’re on and the branch they’re trying to get to. The massive trees with their sizable, long branches make for the perfect climbing playground for a squirrel with their very capable movement set. As time ticks away, the forest grows darker and darker until the thick canopy surrounds the player in darkness. Level by level, the player progresses through the year and the forest progresses through the season. Rapidly approaching the dead cold of winter.

Gameplay

Time Mechanic

• Timer: Dinner is at nightfall. The game uses natural lighting (sky color) to indicate the passage of time, with no explicit on-screen timer.
• The player must interpret the shift from golden hour to dusk as a cue to hurry home.

Player Mechanics: Squirrel Abilities
The squirrel is agile and adaptive, with a variety of movement tools to navigate the treetop terrain.

• Jump: standard hop between branches
• Walk/Run: adjustable movement speed based on urgency
• Glide: slow fall between heights (using tail or leaf)
• Climb: up trees, vines, or ropes
• Swing (vine to vine): Tarzan-style traversal across gaps

Environment Mechanics & Obstacles
To add strategic variety and tension, the forest includes dynamic challenges:

• Poisonous plants: located on the forest floor, punishes ground-level travel
• Wolves: stealth predators emerge from bushes if player lingers too long on the ground
• Branch gaps: forces careful movement planning
• Levers & switches: reveal hidden doors, acorn stashes, or secret paths
• Weak branches: collapse after one use, preventing backtracking

Level Design & Progression

• Seasonal Progression: Each level corresponds to a different season (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter).
• Time Per Level: ~3 minutes of in-game time, encouraging efficient navigation and collection.
• Dynamic Lighting: Levels begin in warm afternoon light and end in dusk.

Failure & Narrative Stakes

• If the squirrel fails to return home before nightfall, a cutscene plays showing the squirrel returning to a dark, cold home where their babies did not survive.
• The player must repeat the level, with a stronger emotional push tied to urgency and care.

Tone References

The game draws from a range of influences that incorporate emotional storytelling with playful exploration and survival. It combines beautiful, visually rich environments with satisfying, movement-driven gameplay.

Games

• Monument Valley – calming aesthetic and stylized environmental storytelling
• Super Mario Bros – playful level design, obstacles, and physical navigation
• Journey – environmental storytelling and emotional pacing

Film/TV/Anime

• Attack on Titan – vine-based traversal and movement
• Finding Nemo – emotional journey about single parent on dangerous journey to protect and provide for child

Key Challenges for Design

The key to a fun platformer is the design of its platforms. Building the perfect environment for a squirrel to move around with freedom and creativity while progressively getting more and more challenging for the player will be a monumental task. One way we want to implement difficulty will be a constantly nagging timer mechanic so the player feels like they are always under pressure when exploring. This will make explorations into the level feel more dangerous and stressful while also creating a sense of progression; as players get faster at the movement and more knowledgeable of the level, they will be able to get further into the forest before the timer runs out.

Key Challenges for Tech

Implementing the game in Unity poses key challenges like tuning AI for the fox enemy, handling collision and input smoothly, and optimizing performance across devices. Managing pickups, animating movement, and supporting layered environments (e.g. trees or burrows) adds complexity to physics and camera control. Cross-platform UI and overall polish will also require careful planning.

Key Challenges for Design

• How to make the squirrel’s movement look dynamic when performing each of the key mechanics
• Communicating the emotional tone of the story, particularly tenderness and urgency, in the introduction and opening scenes of the game
• Ensuring clarity to support fast-paced movement and intuitive navigation in the squirrel’s movements
• Using color, lighting, and environmental storytelling to reflect the emotional arc and seasonal changes of the player’s journey

Who is this for?

This game is designed for casual players who enjoy light platformers with personality, especially children, families, and fans of stylized indie games like Monument Valley or Untitled Goose Game. It’s accessible enough for beginners, but with enough polish and charm to engage older players who appreciate clever art direction, fluid animation, and whimsical storytelling. The visual storytelling and light challenge curve also make it ideal for short play sessions, educational environments, or cozy, narrative-driven play.

Appendix

• https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/05/individual-concept-doc-karina-li/
• https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/04/checkpoint-1-concept-doc-individual-karina-chen/
• https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/04/checkpoint-1-concept-doc-individual-14/
• https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/05/41770/
• https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/05/the-fox-and-the-squirrel-individual-mateo-lf/