I Hacked Squirrel Stapler To Discover Its Strangest Secrets

[@EphiTV]

Come hang out with us on Discord: discord.gg/s4en6wAcC9 Spent a couple weeks turning Squirrel Stapler inside-out to have this ready just in time for Halloween. Enjoy!

[@Lil_Dialga]

yolo

[@tarkatantapir7287]

After seeing the texture used for "God", it's pretty apparent that his texture and shape is two squirrel heads mirrored into each other much like the "Committing Sins" splash screen. Perhaps that image is supposed to convey that God is watching

[@EphiTV]

Interesting take on it. I can see the squirrels in there but there's also a bunch of other various animal parts. I think it's probably a collage of a handful of animal photos heavily edited.

[@daskampffredchen]

@@EphiTV Also the Horns that are responcible for those weird side pieces in the 3D model

[@TrueLunar10]

I seen a side profile of a squirrel mirrored, with the mouth of a cat photoshopped over it, and the horns of a goat. The rest I couldn't pinpoint to any animal in particular

[@trianglemoebius]

@@TrueLunar10 It's the "Goat of the Wood", I think.

[@ultmateragnarok8376]

@@trianglemoebius The horns seem to be pulling double duty as both goat horns and squirrel tails. It's certainly cleverly just out of identifiability.

[@daskampffredchen]

THe Jumpscare not working really fits the Indie Horror Game Vibe

[@EphiTV]

I don't even know if it was intentionally designed like that but it does really fit the theme.

[@smolmage316]

Its not a bug, its an *ASTHETIC*

[@theguymadofgears]

​@@EphiTVi like turtles

[@shaboinka.]

I lik kats

[@tire_iron488]

no you don't

[@thepwrtank18]

I was a playtester for the game before the rerelease. What happened was that when all 5 geocaches were unlocked, it was storing the fact that GIANT SQUIRRELS MODE was unlocked in the save file. Problem with that is that when the save file resets (which it does every time you beat the game), you lose GIANT SQUIRRELS MODE.

[@EphiTV]

Makes sense. I ran in to a similar issue with my game having data for the current run and data that carries over between runs. Ended up just splitting 'em into two separate blocks in the save system.

[@GeorgeCowsert]

That honestly sounds hilarious and I feel like a joke could've been made with that bug.

[@Zombiemask4]

There's a jumpscare in the game where your wife will sprint up at you out of nowhere and stop right next to you. Maybe that's why it's called enemy?

[@scrittle]

When it happens, it scares the hell outta you.

[@HAWKEYESOLO]

@@scrittle I just completed the game and I never saw it. What day does it occur?

[@scrittle]

@@HAWKEYESOLO Sometimes you miss it, sometimes you don't. One of the days.

[@HAWKEYESOLO]

@@scrittle I just rewatched Markiplier play it. Day 4.

[@spaceacepl4636]

i thought she just appears behind you and follows you around until you look at her

[@Shadowsoul2701]

Looking at god's texture, it seems like a pair of ram horns, a fox's mouth, and two eyes slapped on top of two mirrored squirrels and some random gore.

[@shadowmaster435]

the foxes mouth looks more like the mouth of the screaming crying cat meme image "thingy"

[@Bubbly_Dragon]

It's a cat mouth, the snout is too short to be a fox. The background also looks like a random picture too, you can see a human face under the left horn, but it's too low quality to tell if it's anything specific. And the stuff on the bottom are either hooves or human legs, it's honestly hard to tell

[@elliot_rat]

i thought it was a cat mouth

[@ian-op5fv]

I think the mouth is from the Wikipedia article "fang". It's the first image you see.

[@POSSUM_chowg]

This game feels like it's based on a weird dream its creator had at some point

[@stevekovoc3939]

Especially the "God is coming" part of it. I've had nightmares like that before.

[@W00dland_90]

​@@stevekovoc3939same

[@420N_light]

@@stevekovoc3939always had dreams as a child where god literally would reach down to me with his giant hand, the sky would separate for it as it came down, and then lift me up to the sky while I felt the g-force of it, I now have megalophobia and fear of giant statues.

[@mrdan4192]

​@@420N_lightI had a fever dream where i threw hands with jesus for some reason

[@viunok]

​@@mrdan4192 have you won

[@m.i.g.2023]

I think the story about a painter and a witch is actually in the game and you can read parts of it every day, as seen in Jolly Wangcore's playthrough

[@EphiTV]

All the stories are in the game, but you have to visit each of their locations every day to get the full text. It's nice to have them compiled in one place to read through.

[@Kiritomens]

honestly i kinda wanted to see if anyone would comment on this. But since someone did. I will just say it here. Those little stories or text seem to be based on old fairy tales, and scriptures to me. Like the story off the woman being eaten, seems to me to be based on a fairy tale of Grimm called something like the child ragout. I actually got read all the original Grimm fairy tales when i was a kid, and some of those are real disturbing to be honest. For me that line seems to be based on that story that's about a mother killing, and grinding up her daughter to ragout. Then feeding it to the kids father, with the father commenting on how tasty the food was. Although i don't remember allot of the Grimm stories those sometimes come out from the back off my mind at times like this lol.

[@Flowerbarrel]

There is a legend of a hunter who holds a rifle in his hands while psychically controlling five others with his powerful mind.

[@spaceacepl4636]

some say that he spent thousands of days in the forest others say that he hunted so many squirrels that the forest is completely silent and then there are people who saw a ball of squirrels through the window

[@FissionMetroid101]

Love love LOVE these kinds of deep dives into games to see all the lil hidden goodies that are tucked away. There's one game called Tunic that is completely built around being filled to the brim with secrets--seeing an extensive deep dive into that game would be fascinating, although going in blind would be the best way to initially experience it.

[@EphiTV]

I've heard some good things about Tunic, never played it though. On small projects like these I can really dive in to every detail, but in the past when I did Cuphead and Hollow Knight I had to be a little more selective to cut things down.

[@FissionMetroid101]

That's completely understandable! Having to fit a whole Cutting Room Floor article's worth of content into a video would leave it pretty darn long

[@ghost_ship_supreme]

My guess is the enemy character used as your “wife” were possibly going to be enemies in the world instead of squirrels?

[@fluffytowels1145]

The emoji sheet is really weird. I am pretty sure it's for some reason included by unity itself since I also found it in the demo for Peripeteia

[@AmantePatata]

as someone that makes games with unity I can say, you are correct. Its by default included with the standard package used for text (Textmesh Pro)

[@cpucat]

I believe that it's included in the TextMeshPro asset package because I've seen it in some of my own projects

[@dorkfishieSailor]

I've also seen it in Everhood!

[@Damian-cilr2]

Its probably part of some asset pack that he uses

[@FantasmaNaranja]

6:25 looks like an image of a squirrel sideways mirrored so that it's two squirrels looking at eachother then it has a squirrel mouth with sharper canines slapped on top of it to make the mouth and a couple of ram horns for good measure

[@AsherRocks]

Ephi looks like I’d find him under my floorboards.

[@EphiTV]

Don't look under your bed

[@ZackShark1]

Hey I'm here too

[@AsherRocks]

N O you are not, I know that.@@ZackShark1

[@ZackShark1]

@@AsherRocks :(

[@vappyenjoyer24]

his house looks like hes under floorboards too

[@spooklass3588]

God appears to be two squirrel heads facing each other, the mouth of a bit cat, ram horns, falcon eyes, and some miscellaneous gore.

[@mistydayremainsofthejudgment]

i had a random enemy attack once that the dev said had a small chance of occurring once i asked steam forums about it. the character model of the wife can appear in the woods and attack you. scared the absolute sh!t out of me

[@thepwrtank18]

i think it shows up behind you whenever you get 4/6 squirrels in day 4 100% of the time

[@scrittle]

When she reaches you she stops moving altogether. She immediately rushes to your location after hitting 4/6, and probably gets stuck in a bush for some players.

[@RecombobulatedStuff]

That emoji sheet actually comes from the text mesh pro asset as a default font texture, as funny as it is that it’s still there I don’t know that it was there intentionally

[@marialelenatantopeti]

everyone talking abt the emojis and god but that "jumpscare" in the joke game does actually scares me, like i cant look at it, i feel stupid

[@EphiTV]

Lol

[@purplepeak8575]

David's games are some of the games of all time.

[@Hovezipwn]

Meanwhile your post is just a copy pasted overused shit. It's ok trying to be funny, but at least be a bit creative next time.

[@ILYA_WYSHKA]

I feel like Ephi is flirting with me when looking into the camera

[@Division_Galicia]

Same, in a really gay way

[@olliefischer]

it's the eyebrows 🤨

[@asleepyb0i400]

6:25 actually! I can see what God is made of in this picture!! It looks like two mirrored squirrels facing each other, with what looks like the mouth of that crying cat meme, enlarged fish eyes, and the horns of a ram on the sides! It’s a squirrel-fish-cat-ram!

[@Imabadge]

The emoji texture comes packed with TextMeshPro, it's the default texture when using the tag on any TextMeshPro component, it is probably replaced by an actual icon atlas to be used with text on some tmp component

[@DarkKnightofIT]

6:24 there's two squirrels, goat horns, what looks like a housecat's mouth (but could easily be something else), either organs or skeletal structures at the top? All around, very disturbing.

[@Cowboybeardie]

The top kinda looks like an exposed brain. And on the fourth day you can see a note of someone going crazy and thinking a monster is trying to take its brain.

[@seriousnorbo3838]

6:25 this answers some questions actually, it is supposed to be a squirrel with horns, his face are 2 mirrored squirrel jpgs

[@alinpass2246]

"God" is a squirrel jpg mirrored

[@Cat_Sandwiches]

God looks to be multiple pictures and parts of squirrels put together (an upscaled squirrel mouth and eyes, two squirrels/a mirrored picture of a squirrel for the general face, squirrels in the "background" of the face). The only non-squirrel stuff appears to be the horns, but even then they might be distorted squirrel tails.

[@hisshoes1107]

6:15 This joke is not even remotely funny to me, yet you just seem so happy and proud of yourself I couldn’t help but smile, your optimism is genuinely infectious. While I wasn’t feeling bad or anything beforehand, watching this video genuinely made me feel better, again, your optimism and smile are really infectious!

[@user-qv2mc3dw5o]

Protagonist:’Gee, it sure is nice stapling squirrels’ God:’HI SQUIDWARD’

[@ayowhatdadogdoin8619]

The 2 logs in a bucket are not logs, its another type of log

[@bluegum6438]

He's right that they're repurposed wood logs, but really funny that he didn't realise the intention

[@Kolljak]

when recording pixelated games you have to turn compression off or the video recording software will try to compress and fix the pixels. making it blurry and cursed.

[@Person-who-exists]

I think you should try to decompile one of the Room games, specifically Old Sins, I tried to deconstruct the game but I couldn’t find anything and the game must pull a lot of cool tricks. Overall the game is a very fun play and I think it would be very interesting to see the game decompiled.

[@LyrisTheCat]

the emoji is a default asset library for unity, i also asked the same thing when i was doing QA and freacking around on the games asset for Kaze, and the devs told me it was just something that unity comes with when you are on the mobile branch if am not wrong.

[@p3tux024]

the texture for "god" is from what i can see 2 squirrels mirrored to one another with non mirrored goat horns in each side, the squirrels abear to either have fish eyeballs and at the bottom we have what apears to either be the mouth of a bat or another mamel creature i do not know about, also the thing on the back i could not recognize but if i had to guess its either another random animal png found on google or a painting dont ask why i think of a painting, it just feels like it

[@rookiedriver6672]

just now realized the god is one side of a squirrel head with mirror, edited eyes and mouth, added horns and some god knows what image in he background

[@Krizalid3YE]

4:35 Pause right here. The Game's Map looks like a Imperial Class Destroyer from Star Wars.

[@whynotll83]

7:42 when fnaf into the pit was decompiled, this emote sheet was also found, I guess some type of unity asset leftover.

[@doofus-noire]

You did this with Iron Lung and you cured my fears for that game, thanks. Now you’re doing the same for Squirrel Stapler.

[@doofus-noire]

:D

[@notloopers1110]

ok so what ive learnt is that the game is vastly improved by giving you 30 rifles and 30 pairs of arms to hold said rifles

[@pluvial-dude7348]

I dig this, I love the breaking and entering into a game like this, also he moves around and talks with a specific cadence I find interesting, not in a bad way wanna be clear

[@Ey_SmoKrac]

The rabbit hole going into what made one of 2 images in an entire game really fits in with the indie horror genre

[@monsterupdatewhen]

your face looks like the "ever dream this man" guy stretched vertically

[@light6532]

6:25 I had this feel that the God Image is 2 Squirrel looking at each other. Add 2 bloodshot eyes Horns And a Cat crying meme mouth

[@Matt-md5yt]

I'm glad you did this one, my friend.

[@scootyman3800]

So much power and you use it to mod in crash bandicoot…. A man after my own heart 💞💖💞

[@edenengland1883]

the squirrel god's texture appears to be two squirrel heads placed nose to nose with a fused mouth pretty weird

[@binterwinterboyii1095]

now I kinda wonder if there was a bigger scope to this game initially really hope DuskDev comments on this one Squirrel Stapler is honestly one of my favorites it's so much vagueness in such a short time it's so effective

[@mon0light]

very cool video, I love exploring out of bounds and digging through game's files offtop this guy emanates Lorraine McFly from Back to the future energy

[@EphiTV]

I see a lot of celebrity comparison comments but can't say I was ever expecting that

[@halley42]

I had no idea what you meant as I was only listening to the video while reading the comments, and you made me go up and watch, and now I know EXACTLY what you mean but I couldn't for the life of me say why, only that you're spot on.

[@keiranleeoates]

God is 2 squirrel facing each other with a weird mouth added to it to make it look like it's facing forward the screen and them some distortion, you can see the squirrel eyes and ears, the maw just merges in to the mouth.

[@tire_iron488]

the texture for god looks super funny now that i get a good look at it. it looks like it's two mirrored squirrels with maybe a possum mouth slapped in the middle and some random horns on the sides.

[@girl_rbxm]

6:27 Some cat meowing, two squirrels, fish eyes, and horns of a ram or a sheep idfk

[@kuroyame973]

When you showed god's face texture i think the things surrounding its eyes are actually squirrels! I think the eyes are in the middle of the head of the squirrels.

[@ILikeCornYouKnow]

I like the final version of the look, it's not objectively scary, but something about it is unsettling.

[@DarkSwordsman]

My guess on the video recording for the original: it seems the textures are pretty much identical, it was probably just a configuration setting for your encoder. Noisy textures, especially ones with a lot of saturation, tend to require a lot of bitrate. When I record things like this, I usually use x264 with CRF rate control. This allows the bitrate to fluctuate to maintain a decent quality. But the reason I mentioned saturation: Tarkov is a great example. It's a very grassy and noisy game most times. If you use post fx with boosted saturation, it tends to require 2-3x the bitrate. So it's kind of a double edged sword. If you use CRF with a number like 20 or 18, it will give it plenty of bitrate to look good, but if it's a noisy and saturated image, You could probably see the bitrate skyrocket to 30-80+ Mbps.

[@EphiTV]

Interesting, but I recorded both versions of the game with the exact same settings. I assume the older one had some sort of upscaling effect in fullscreen that the new one didn't. They were exported in different versions of Unity too. Although I didn't look into the camera code too much.

[@DarkSwordsman]

@@EphiTV I see, interesting. What did you use to record?

[@EphiTV]

OBS

[@oodie6284]

The God texture is two squirrel heads mirrored, you can see their lil ears on the left and right during this 6:25 little segment!

[@b4ttlemast0r]

the body of the wife does appear in the map outside the house at some point as if its chasing you

[@sirmemes1225]

i like that both god and the fish in iron lung are two face textures mirrored and put together to make a new face. I think the fish from iron lung is an image of a deep sea Viperfish, mirrored and with an added mouth.

[@DogBat]

God is just two squirrels kissing

[@ordis5423]

With like an open cat mouth😂😂

[@DogBat]

@@ordis5423 ye

[@pauline_f328]

I hope I remember this sentence, because it'd be so funny to quote that if I ever get asked what I think God looks like lol

[@Chiller07]

Please don't take that out of context

[@Liquid_Mike]

1:21 you wanted to see how the _sausage_ was made, not sauce lol

[@elpepe9193]

6:25 god kinda looks like a mirrored image of a squirrel with some horns and a mouth added in

[@mmyr8ado.360]

6:26 That texture looks like a squirrel with a fish-eye and a horn that's been duplicated and mirrored vertically to make the face, added a texture background and slapped the mouth of one of the crying cat memes as garnish.

[@Icyangel10]

I weirdly remember a different version of the woman story(unless there's another story that wasn't mentioned since it's not as important) from the original game were some guy fell in love with some woman that's hair was used for a hair brush were he tried to make a copy or something of her which didn't end well as the brush had boar hair in it This is an interesting video & it's been a while since I saw Squirrel Stapler

[@EphiTV]

Interesting, maybe he updated the story at some point.

[@Rubbly]

The deeper dive we all knew we needed deeper down

[@Definitely_Not_an_Alien]

the texture for GOD is just two squirrels kissing with a big ape mouth slapped over their mouths, plus goat horns on the side and random stuff behind them

[@inkticious5787]

The texture for god is two squirrels facing towards each other, horns, and weord looking stuff photoshopped behind it, then eyes and a mouth photoshopped on

[@DEADRATCVLT]

to me god felt like it was meant to be kind of approximating the idea of how an angler fish looks, like it was luring the hunter to i guess kill his wife? but it was actually evil idk it just seemed like it was meant to imply that the hunter was being tricked somehow

[@C_Corpze]

Dude makes some very interesting games and world building. I would honestly like to know more about the squirrel stapler universe, like, why does the MC staple squirrels to a body? How did they get in the woods? What happened to his wife? So many mysteries.

[@kezo1410]

6:27 It looks like two squirrels with a cat mouth between them, goat horns and Weird owl like-eyes

[@sook-iii]

That emoji sheet comes with one of the most commonly implemented Unity packages. Don’t remember specifics, but I’ve seen it in several beginner projects

[@Vxlgon]

If you haven't already, Id want to see one on dusk, or maybe just one of the chapters because a dusk playthrough is around 10 hours, and squirrel stapler and iron lung are like 60-90 minutes

[@MissMavius]

2 squirrel heads, with goat horns and a cat mouth is all I can decipher from the squirrel god image.

[@JoseGarcia235]

4:24 😂bro found the poop bucket. Those are some logs alright😂🤣🤣

[@TheBaca219]

I refuse to accept pikachu as a squirrel. He looks and even behaves exactly like my Chinchilla and that's what he will always be.

[@EphiTV]

Chinchilla Stapler would make for a good sequel

[@eeyorehaferbock7870]

I thought he was supposed to be some kind of mouse?

[@sillykittywdym]

6:24 It appears to be 2 mirrored squirrels as the head, some sort of feline-like creature’s mouth, bulging eyes, goat/ram horns, and a brain at the top

[@MonkeyMode-er9cj]

The god picture might just be a squirrel god cause it’s made of 2 squirrel faces

[@Zombiemothzm]

i think god can be made by mirroring 2 squirrels so theyre facing eachother, adding goat horns unevenley, adding owl/fish eyes, and adding the tusedo cat screaming meme's mouth lmao

[@RadiantSkiddMarx]

According to the wiki, God is supposed to be some kind of horribly mutilated squirrel with horns and an exposed brain. If you look at the texture, you can actually see the shape of two squirrel heads, the same squirrel used in the main menu.

[@D-generon]

Well, if you look more closely at this "God" thing, you'll see that it is actually made of a side view of a sitting squirrel mirrored relative to a verticle plane with glowing eyes and cat mouth (or snake mouth?) imposed ontop of it.

[@JeanMarceaux]

Fun thing to note: Indie Horror Simulator 2015 is rather visually similar to David's other game, Fingerbones.

[@psychotronictangent781]

i thought the vid was only 9 minutes long when i finished lmao thats how entertained i was

[@jimmywarner7559]

“God is coming” is so much scarier than what actually happens

[@zombyjano]

One time I went walking and I saw a squirrel flee when I walked past however there was another squirrel like, chirping I guess you'd call it. I think it was like warning nearby squirrels that a human was close. Anyways I stare at it for like 15 seconds and it just keeps chirping in a rhythm, so I look down to get my phone and maybe take a photo of the little bugger and in that split second the chirping stops and I look up and he's gone. Tl;dr Does squirrel is god?

[@JohnyParuwka]

God texture looks kinda like two squirrels facing each other with horns where their tails would be

[@sovietproto]

6:25 i can make out 3 main things about this goober, its face looks like two squirrels looking at eachother, the goat horns, and the mouth looks like a cat's mouth.

[@ahereticsdoomvideos3216]

I think God's texture is an edit of a squirrel photo mirrored down the middle with goat horns pasted upside down, a cat's mouth, and random eyes slapped onto it

[@maxwell9784]

Honestly seeing the full texture for the god character really helped me in understanding what it was supposed to look like; two squirrels combined into one face with strange eyes and a mouth that definitely doesn’t belong to a squirrel

[@threehatmarbo8272]

this game absolutely obliterates KZbin's compression algorithm. artifacts like crazy lol

[@potionkister9981]

Gods head looks like two squirrel heads facing each other with a cats mouth smacked into the middle and two horns.

[@GreysonNugg]

I found out that God‘s heart shaped head is two squirrels

[@amonos-s6x]

6:24 is just 2 head of squirrel

[@GoofyGoober-hy1ot]

God is that one meme with the crying cat with the mouth open you can see it in the teeth

[@Jax49]

i love the way this guy delivers his lil jokes, this is enjoyable video

[@jon_swal4585]

Great vid. Really liking this long form video format :D

[@Deathman3]

The god is 2 squirrels on the sides a cat mouth and goat horns

[@freewheelbikesworkshoptime1894]

4:57 what da grand squirrel doing?

[@SharpMagnets]

The god is literally two squirrels nose to nose with the screaming white cat meme’s mouth.

[@dont_wake_up]

god is two jpegs of a squirrel mirrored side by side. little "arms" are the squirrels tail it seems

[@ProjectNetoku]

The squirl god image is two squirrels side by side facing eachother, two ram horns, a mouth stretched to cover both squirls faces (i have no idea what gor all i know its a cat mouth), some eyes edited on to the squirls and...idk what the rest is it looks like random nonsense.

[@AhmetTarıkIygi]

Facts: GOD texture is two squerrel with a mouth ( The horns are tail )

[@b4ttlemast0r]

I think David also worked on Gloomwood, so the mantle code might come from that game

[@EphiTV]

Yep, definitely possible.

[@TheSeabornGaming]

The picture of God looks like a squirrel side profile, Ram horns, and a cat mouth