MouseCraft is a puzzle game. You have to do things to get mice from A to B. You use Tetris-like blocks which allow the mice to reach their destination, but it all depends on what you do with the blocks that determines how they get the cheese.
As cute as the game may be, it’s not the simplest of games. It’s the typical ‘build up your confidence, then hit you with a doozy’ puzzler, you know, the kind which give you nice and easy puzzles (which also work as a tutorial for the first several levels), then BAM! Hit you with a right head-scratcher.
Fortunately, because MouseCraft is already available on the PC, it’s easy enough to go on YouTube and find the answers to the ones you can’t figure out and believe me, you’ll want to do that a few times. I’m usually pretty good at these kind of games, but if it takes more than a few minutes to figure out a level, I think that’s just bad design.
Sure, you don’t want to make the game too easy, but when you’re stuck at the first level after the tutorial levels, that’s when you have a problem. The level designs are great, the problem is down to some of them being too perplex too early in the game. I don’t want to be stuck and searching YouTube videos fives minutes in, that’s just stupid.
The cat, who is supposed to be the professor behind all this just stands behind a big glass window and offers no help, he’s more of an observant than anything. It all boils down to trial and error, putting things in places, then changing it all around, you end up just quitting and moving on to something less irritating.
I started off liking MouseCraft, but when I realised after a while that I actually dislike games like this, I just stopped playing. Many people will love it, no doubt about it since it’s not a terrible game by any means, it’s just not for me. I even seemed to suffer what appeared to be a glitch at one point.
Every so often you unlock something new, like robotic mice you have to crush or avoid and jelly blocks for the mice to drop on to so they don’t go splat. It’s just that when the levels become a little ridiculous, then the fun of playing disappears and the game turns into a chore.
It’s the old system of needing at least so many things to progress to the next stage. In the case of MouseCraft, these are Anima Shards of which there are two or three per level and 35 are required to unlock Section 2. The levels also get longer, meaning you have to scroll across to see where you’re going, just in case you wanted things to get even more complicated.
If you like challenging platform puzzlers, then you’ll want to give this a go. Personally, I was glad to be given the chance to play it, but it’s just not my thing and would most likely just have given the demo a go. MouseCraft is a great looking game, just not for me.
Tuesday, December 10
