Fat Gus the Squirrel

Fat Gus is a grey squirrel with a little red about the ears, a tail bigger than the rest of him, and a tummy bigger than that. He is a long way from home. His friend Joey, a ginger boy with curly hair and glasses who loves him very much, lives in Tooting, and Gus is in Highgate.

So it’s over the garden fences, along the shed roofs, across the rooftops and up the trees, all the way across London.

HOW TO PLAY

Run and jump your way to the street sign at the end of each level. Holding the jump button jumps higher, and tapping it gives a short hop. The gaps between the gardens are a long way down, so don’t fall in.

The neighbourhood is not on Gus’s side. Cats patrol the fences, and if you stand too close one will crouch, hiss and pounce, so jump when you see it crouch. Mice and rats scurry along the sheds and roofs, dogs chase you along the lawns, and angry neighbours with air rifles shout “OI!” and then take a pot shot at you. A pellet costs a life, so jump over them.

You can beat any of them by landing on top of them, neighbours included. Hold jump as you land to bounce higher.

LIVES

Gus starts with 3 lives. Being caught, shot or falling costs one and sends you back to the start of the level, and any nuts from that go are lost. Finishing a level earns an extra life. Lose them all and it’s game over.

NUTS AND WALNUTS

Hazelnuts are everywhere, worth 10 points each, and your final score is built on them. Knocking out a troublemaker is worth 100, each level cleared is worth 500, and every life you have left when you reach Joey is worth another 500.

A walnut is something else. For ten seconds Gus glows gold, runs faster, and flattens anything he touches. Each level has one, and from the fourth level there are two.

THE ROUTE

Between levels, a map of London shows how far Gus has come.

1. Highgate, N6
2. Hampstead Heath, NW3, with the City on the horizon
3. Camden Town, NW1, by the lock
4. Regent’s Park, NW1, under the Post Office Tower
5. Marylebone, W1
6. Hyde Park, W2, past Marble Arch
7. Westminster, SW1, with Big Ben and the London Eye
8. Vauxhall, SE11, south of the river
9. Clapham Common, SW4, round the bandstand
10. Tooting, SW17, where Joey is waiting

Each level is longer, the gaps are wider and the platforms narrower, and there are more animals and neighbours in the way. The levels are the same every time you play, so you can learn them.

BEHIND THE GAME

Fat Gus is dressed as an early-nineties console platformer, so it’s bigger and more colourful than the Spectrum games on this site, with a square-wave tune to match. As with everything here, nothing is loaded from an image or a sound file. Gus, Joey, the gardens and every skyline are painted by the game as it runs, and the music is synthesised in your browser.

Every level is built from a fixed seed, and each one is checked against Gus’s own jump before it’s published. From every platform, the checker tries the jumps he can really make, and proves there’s a way from the start to the end. Then it takes on every cat, dog and neighbour in turn, with a spread of ordinary jumps and timings, and makes sure each one can be got past without a perfect jump.