The Sunlit Meadow
Open field, quiet pond, short-sighted field mice. A gentle place to learn what a mace is for, before anyone tells you the tree goes a long way in both directions.
💀 Boss · Old Warthopper, a grumpy toad with a puddle slam
SQWIRLD
Someone has to be the top sqwirl.
A cozy-but-deadly isometric dungeon crawler about sqwirls.
- No download
- Any modern browser
- No email
- Free
One world. Everyone who opens the link is already in it.
drop-in · drop-out · always on
What is SQWIRLD?
A whole tree, and one of you
Name a sqwirl, step out of a town built inside a giant oak, and pick a direction. Down through the roots, where the rot that's hollowing the tree is still awake. Or up the Elderwood, toward the top of the world. What you kill drops gear every other sqwirl can see you wearing — and one of the things down there will tear it off your head and fly away with it.
You are a sqwirl. Act like one.
Latch, leap, glide
The oak is vertical. So are you.
🧗
Climb anything with bark
Latch onto a trunk and go straight up until your stamina says otherwise. Take one hit and you're off the wall.
🪂
Glide off the top
Spread into a flying-squirrel splay and steer with your tail. You can't hover and you can't climb — you only choose where you land. Tap Belly Flop mid-glide and the whole thing becomes a dive.
🌰
Throw acorns at things
Acorn Throw spends actual acorns — the ones you were saving. Run dry mid-fight and the game tells you so, politely, while something bites you.
Loot
Gear you can see on every sqwirl
Weapon, head, body and tail-charm. Whatever you're wearing, everyone else is looking at it.
- A magpie the size of you drops out of the roots, tears the helm off your head and flies away wearing it. Kill it and it gives everything back — even if you'd logged off in the meantime.
- A dung beetle shrugs your mace straight off its shell. Fall on it from a height and the shell caves in.
- For thirty seconds a drop is yours alone. After that it belongs to whoever's fastest.
- No ordinary animal in this world has ever dropped a Legendary. Bosses do, about four times in a hundred.
Common
Twig Sword
Sturdy
Bark Vest
Fine
Nutshell Helm
Heroic
Pinecone Flail
Legendary
Oakheart Crusher
✨ of the Wind · of the Spring · of the Eagle
🐿️ No two Acorn Maces look quite alike
A sqwirl has two paws free · pick two
Stuff your cheeks
Materials never clog your pack — they stow in the Larder as counts, and crafting draws straight from it.
🍓
Foraging
Berry bushes, mushrooms and sap nodes, brewed into whatever keeps you upright.
⚙️
Tinkering
Trinkets and tail-charms that bend your stats.
🔩
Nutsmithing
Break gear down for scrap and forge better gear back out of it.
- Stitch a Cheek Pouch and your bag grows by four slots — and your sqwirl's cheeks visibly puff out to match. You can do it four times. Then the game tells you your cheeks are already at their fullest.
- Twenty is as far as a journeyman goes. Past that you climb to the Boughmarket, a second town of masters high in the Elderwood, and ask one of them nicely.
- Trade with any sqwirl you meet. The server holds both halves in escrow, so nobody runs off with the acorns.
Make it yours
No two sqwirls alike
Eighteen furs, four bellies, four eyes, four ears, five tails, a face patch — then two sliders for how chonky you are and how full your cheeks sit. Change your mind at the Preening Mirror any time, for twenty-five acorns.
🎨 Try it now → drag the sqwirl at the top
17 adventure zones · six safe havens · level 1 → 45
Root to crown
The deepest room in the story has two ways out. One drops into the Depths, which never end. The other climbs the Elderwood to the top of the world. Nothing ever respawns where it died — enemies, acorns and forage nodes all move on, so there are no farming spots.
Home base · the middle of the tree
The Great Drey
A town built into a giant oak — a ground plaza and three treehouse levels laced together by ramps and walk-under bridges. Everything above and below starts here.
- 🏪
Shops & a blacksqwirl
Maple stocks goods, Hazel forges gear, and Nibbles banks your acorns: "safe with me. Mostly. Almost certainly."
- 📜
Quests from Old Burr
"The roots whisper, young one. Something dark is hollowing our Oak." Twelve chapters of it, plus a noticeboard of odd jobs.
- 🔔
The Founding Bell
Ring it and the whole town fights ten percent harder for five minutes. Once an hour, to whoever gets there first.
- 🔨
Crafting lofts
Forage, tinker and nutsmith your hauls into charms and gear.
Bramblewood, Cellar & Warren
Thorn-caves, then a mossy cellar, then a warren thick with spiderlings and dusk bats. The floor keeps getting further away.
💀 Bosses · The Bramble Warden · The Rat King · The Broodmother
The Hollowed Roots
Ring corridors winding a great root column. This is where the rot stops being a rumour.
💀 Boss · The Magpie — steals your gear. Kill it to take it back
The Hollow Deep, the Rotheart & the Sunless Root
Three zones under the oak, where the roots turn black and the air forgets how to move. The thing that started all this is at the bottom of them.
💀 Bosses · The Gnarl · Heart of the Hollowing · The Heartrot
The Depths
A hole under the oak with no bottom, sealed until you've ended the Hollowing. Every landing is new and worse, and carries its own curse — frenzied, swarming, ironhide, gloom. If that's too kind, you can dare it crueller. Your deepest landing goes on the board.
💀 Every fifth landing has a Warden. None of them is the last one
The High Canopy
Branch-paths under moonlight, patrolled by hornets and shrikes. The first place you'll look down and mind about it.
💀 Boss · The Moonowl — oldest and coldest of the boughs
The Elderwood
Five tiers straight up — the Roothold, the Underbough, the Spiral, Crownreach, and the Sunthrone at the top of the world. Fall off one and you don't die; you land a whole tier lower and climb it again. Thornbeak knows this, and will pick you up to prove it.
💀 Boss · Skyreaver, the Redtail, waiting on the last bough
Stonebough, Scarp & Aerie
Past the last branch there is only rock, wind, and things with wingspans. Optional. Deeply inadvisable.
💀 Bosses · Longshadow · Stormcrown, the Golden Eagle
Four steps, one link
How to play
- 1
Open the link
Any modern browser, desktop or phone. There is nothing to install.
- 2
Name your sqwirl
A name and a passphrase — no email, ever. Your progress is waiting next time.
- 3
Scurry into the dungeon
The game shows you the controls as you go, and lets you rebind every one of them. Phones get a thumb joystick.
- 4
You're already with everyone
Chat, trade, party up, race the leaderboard down the Depths.
Start the climb
The oak is hollowing, the world is up, and you're one link away from being in it.
Play SQWIRLD Free