One surprise from Gamescom’s Future Games Show, held on August 24, 2022, was Snaccoon, a new game that casts players as a hungry raccoon. It’s being developed by Christian Sparks. Otherwise a member of Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash developer Heart Machine, Sparks originally began the project as a hobby to occupy his time amid disruptions to work from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the game has entered fuller development and debuted with its first teaser trailer. Commentators online drew comparisons to BlueTwelve’s Stray, a cyberpunk cat game.
Check it out below.
In Snaccoon, players play as a hungry raccoon born with the misfortune to live in a city that has banned all snack foods. Of course, prohibition tends to drive that which is prohibited underground rather than stop it, and the raccoon stumbles on a black market of cake and chip sales. Possessed of “above-average intelligence” and an iron resolve, the raccoon must enter the black market to obtain the delectable goods. But the market demands goods for trade, and the raccoon will need to change from “trash panda” to “bandit vermin”, stealing items of value to trade in an elaborate series of deals. The final prize? A box of its favorite treats.
Snacoon is an exploration and adventure game with a focus on stealth. It features a locomotion system that makes it easy to move through dense environments. Players will need to arrange trade deals and go between trading partners on a timer. To do that, they’ll need to clear obstacles and packed environments efficiently, avoiding threats along the way. Dev logs from early August suggest that the game will employ a generative system to create NPCs dynamically, as well. The game is built in Unreal Engine but does not have target platforms at this time.
Snaccoon is in development, with no definite release window or platforms besides PC confirmed.
