Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first few minutes of Urban Space Squirrels have a pleasingly reckless energy. You play an experimental squirrel carrying bombs, and the bombs are not merely weapons or obstacles to avoid: they are your route upward. Setting one off beneath yourself to gain height gives the platforming a puzzle-box rhythm. Every successful launch feels like you have bent a dangerous tool into exactly the shape the level demanded.

That central idea has enough flexibility to carry the game. You can place multiple bombs and choose the order in which they detonate, so progress is often about planning a chain rather than reacting to a single jump. Switches and time locks make that planning matter. A route that looks obvious can turn into a small sequencing problem once you need to launch yourself, activate something, and get through before the opportunity closes.

The hazards are where patience can start to fray, especially when a solution requires precise bomb placement and timing. Still, that friction belongs to the point of the game: you are meant to experiment, fail, adjust the order, and finally find the explosive route that works. If you like platformers that ask you to think before committing to a jump, this is a much more distinctive proposition than its basic reach-the-exit goal suggests.

Each stage also hides ten collectible pages for you to chase. They are a smart fit for a game built around unusual movement, because they push you to use the bomb system for more than the shortest route to the exit. Completion-minded players will get more out of the stages; everyone else can treat the pages as an optional excuse to test whether a suspicious-looking corner has a clever solution.

Graphics

The action is viewed from the side, keeping the squirrel, bomb placements, switches, exits, and large hazards in the same plane. That straightforward viewpoint suits a game where you need to judge upward launches and map out the order of a multi-bomb attempt.

Story

Urban Space Squirrels opens from a deliberately absurd sci-fi starting point: an experimental squirrel with an alarming supply of bombs. It is a playful premise, and it immediately tells you not to expect ordinary woodland-platformer business.

The experimental-animal angle gives the bomb movement a little more character than a generic gadget would. You are not simply collecting a power-up; this squirrel’s explosive mobility is the whole premise, and that makes the repeated puzzle work feel appropriately strange.

The journey is framed around clearing stages and reaching their exits, with the collectible pages offering extra discoveries along the way. The story hook works best as a light bit of flavor around the puzzles rather than a reason to slow down and dwell on plot.

Overall Experience

This is a focused action-puzzle platformer with one strong idea: explosions are both your movement tool and your problem-solving language. When you line up a sequence of bombs, trigger the right switch, and launch yourself through a dangerous section, the game delivers the satisfying little burst of cleverness that good puzzle platformers live on.

It will not suit you if you want uninterrupted, momentum-heavy platforming. The need to reason through switches, time locks, hazards, and detonation order means the pace is intentionally stop-start. That is also why it is worth a look for puzzle fans: the stages ask for creative thought instead of using the platforming merely as a delivery system for straightforward jumps.

Give Urban Space Squirrels a chance if the thought of treating a pile of bombs like a set of stepping stones sounds more fun than stressful. Its odd premise and collection goals give it personality, but the payoff is the moment its explosive rules finally click and a route you could not see a minute ago suddenly becomes obvious.

Retro Replay Score

7/10