Squirrel is a high level imperative, object-oriented programming language, designed to be a lightweight scripting language that fits in the size, memory bandwidth, and real-time requirements of applications like video games.
MirthKit, a simple toolkit for making and distributing open source, cross-platform 2D games, uses Squirrel for its platform. It is used extensively by for scripting and was also used in '. It is also used in Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Thimbleweed Park, and War Thunder for scripted events and in NewDark, an unofficial Thief 2: The Metal Age engine update, to facilitate additional, simplified means of scripting mission events, aside of the regular C scripting.
Squirrel uses a C-like syntax, albeit inspired by that of Lua as well.
The language was made public in 2003 under the zlib/libpng license. In November 2010, the license was changed to the MIT license to enable the project to be hosted on Google Code. It is developed and maintained by Alberto Demichelis.