About the game

Mont-Royal Squirrel is an original top-down arcade game set on Mont-Royal, Montreal's iconic central park. You play a city squirrel — twitchy, focused, deeply opportunistic — collecting acorns scattered across three zones: the Belvedere Kondiaronk lookout, Beaver Lake (Lac aux Castors), and the Sunday Tam-Tam drum-circle area at the foot of the Sir George-Étienne Cartier monument.

Acorns are everywhere, but so are off-leash dogs, careless picnickers, longboarders and the occasional SPVM officer slow-walking the path. Every threat has a different movement pattern. Memorize the loops, time your dashes, and rack up the highest acorn count before the sun sets behind Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau airport in the distance.

How to play

• Move: Arrow keys, WASD, or tap-and-drag on mobile.
• Collect acorns: Just walk over them. Bigger acorns = bigger points.
• Dodge dogs: Off-leash dogs zigzag. Wait for them to commit to a direction.
• Avoid the tam-tams zone at peak hour: Sunday 4pm = chaos. The drum circle expands and contracts unpredictably.
• Survive 90 seconds: Stay alive for the full timer to bank your score.

Mont-Royal park: the actual map

Mont-Royal is the 200-meter hill that gives Montreal its name. The park itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (the Central Park guy) in 1876, and the game uses a stylized version of his loop paths. Three zones in the game match three real spots:

• Belvedere Kondiaronk — the stone-railed lookout above the Chalet du Mont-Royal with the famous downtown skyline view. In the game, this is the highest-scoring acorn zone with the fewest hazards.
• Lac aux Castors — Beaver Lake, the artificial lake near the top of the mountain. In the game, the lake itself is impassable but the surrounding picnic lawn is acorn-heavy.
• Tam-Tam zone — the eastern slope where free Sunday drum circles run from May to October. In the game, this is the chaotic high-risk-high-reward zone with frisbees and longboarders.

Survival tips

The real Mont-Royal park experience

If you want to recreate the game IRL, walk up Mont-Royal on a Sunday afternoon between May and September. Start at the Sir George-Étienne Cartier monument on Avenue du Parc. The Tam-Tams are usually going by 2pm. Climb the steep path up to the chalet — it's the same elevation gain as 30 floors. The lookout view is the postcard view of Montreal: downtown towers, the river, the bridges, the Mont-Saint-Hilaire on the horizon on clear days. Real squirrels will absolutely attempt to mug you for your picnic.