Mousecraft

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Mousecraft is a family-friendly Puzzle game first released on PC and multiple PlayStation platforms in 2014 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game combines elements of classic Puzzle games Lemmings and Tetris, challenging players to use Tetris-like blocks to create a path for Lemmings-esque mice to reach the cheese at the end of a side-scrolling maze.

Mousecraft features a decent presentation where the centerpiece is the 3D model of an anthropomorphic cat scientist in the background watching over the maze. The cat is fairly detailed and pretty well-animated, and adds a lot of personality to the game. The rest of the game here looks good too, though not to the same extent, and the fact that all of the game’s visuals are pretty repetitive makes it lose some of its charm after a few levels. These visuals are accompanied by a plucky soundtrack that works well enough, but gets a bit annoying after a little while.

As for the gameplay, this is a good combination of Lemmings and Tetris, though it doesn’t do anything super inventive or original. Players must simply know where (and sometimes when) to place blocks to get the mice where they need to go. I wish I could elaborate more, but I feel like just looking at a screenshot of this game, you get a pretty good idea of exactly how it plays. To be clear, it does this style of gameplay well, just without anything to truly set it apart.

There is one other thing I should note about Mousecraft, and that’s what’s not here. Mouscraft doesn’t make use of any of the Nintendo Switch’s unique features, and in particular it seems like this game would have benefitted from touchscreen implementation. It’s not a massive loss, the game plays fine using traditional gamepad controls, but it still seems like a glaring omission considering this is a port of a game that’s over a half a decade old.

In the end, Mousecraft is a decent Puzzle game that does exactly what it sets out to do, but not really anything more than that. It incorporates elements of Lemmings and Tetris very well, though it’s nowhere near as compelling or groundbreaking as either of those games. It has a polished presentation that looks good, but the visuals get repetitive pretty quickly. Fans of Puzzle games should be pleased with this game overall, but they shouldn’t have high expectations.

tl;dr – Mousecraft is a family-friendly Puzzle game that has players placing Tetris-like blocks to help Lemmings-esque mice work their way through a side-scrolling maze. This game incorporates its disparate elements well, and the visuals look good, but it’s also pretty repetitive, and is nowhere near as inspired as the games that influenced it. Puzzle game fans will like this game, but probably won’t love it.

Grade: B-

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