Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

MouseCraft is a platforming puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita. The game is a result of the formula Tetris meets Lemmings as you guide the mice to the cheese at the end of the level by guiding the mice through various puzzles.

MouseCraft tells the story of a crazy cat scientist called Schrödinger who is attempting to create a mysterious machine powered by mice, which sees you having to guide mice through the course of eighty levels set across four stages with a variety of puzzles and hazards.

You must collect Anima Shards as you progress through the game as they are ancient crystals that are worth a rather impressive value in the world of MouseCraft called Planet Cohesia. The importance of the value of the Anima Shards is that if you collect enough of them; it will fund Schrödinger’s research experiments for him to purchase more cheese to carry out his mice related experiments with 35 Anima Shards required to unlock the second stage of twenty levels, 70 required to unlock the third stage of the following twenty levels and 115 required to unlock the fourth stage of the final twenty levels, so if you do not collect enough Anima Shards, then you will not be able to continue progressing from stage to stage through the game.

New gameplay mechanics are introduced on a regular basis, such as the slow motion feature that allows you to pause time, while you add a new block for the mice to crawl or jump onto in order to affect their route of progression after the mice have collected the awkwardly positioned Anima Shard. Another interesting gameplay mechanic is the brick bomb, which can be collected in order to destroy bricks to carve a new route for the mice to navigate through. The introduction of new gameplay mechanics is a positive design choice as they always offer something new to freshen up the gameplay every few levels.

The level design is very puzzle focused as there is a new hurdle to overcome in perfecting the route for the mice through the level every two or three seconds, which has to be worked around by positioning blocks of various shapes to fit the surrounding puzzles or in some cases to even have to destroy a block with a brick bomb as the mice can walk forwards and backwards as well as jumping a single block upwards, but anything beyond that must be moulded to the abilities of the mice or they will not be able to navigate through the entire level.

The character design varies greatly from the mice that cannot hurt anything and are just minding their own business to attempt to find their way through the level to the ruthless Ratoid that are introduced as enemies on the twelfth level into the game. The Ratoids have been accidentally created by Schrödinger’s unsuccessful experiment to create mechanical mice that snap their jaws as they move just as fast as the normal mice with sudden death occurring for any normal rodent that unfortunately happen to make any form of contact with the Ratoid mice; resulting in the normal mice having to evade the Ratoid ones at all costs. You can take care of the Ratoids by setting traps, such as destroying the block that a Ratoid is walking across with a brick bomb or by leading the Ratoids into a pool of acid, amongst other devious traps that will help clear the path for the mice to navigate their way through the level without the Ratoids proving to be any problems.

The level editor allows you to create your own levels and test yourself with ones that are as easy or as challenging as you want them to be. The level editor really adds a lot of further gameplay to the game and makes the creative possibilities limitless. Unfortunately, MouseCraft suffers from the same problem as the level editor found in Stealth Inc: A Clone in the Dark as the only thing that is lacking with the otherwise feature rich and comprehensive level editor is the ability to upload and share your levels online with other players from around the world, which is a shame as it would have taken the game in a user-created content direction that has only previously been ambitiously explored by games such as the Little Big Planet franchise.

The rewards area includes a listing of your statistics; trophies; videos and credits and is approached in a rather interesting method as the stats are quite in depth and include the amount of levels completed; the amount of Anima Shards collected; the amount of levels completed with a perfect score; the amount of mice killed by accident and how they have been killed; the amount of Ratoids killed and how they have been killed; amongst many more statistics with the importance of such a feature being the statistical analysis, so you are aware of the areas that you need to improve your performance within. The trophies feature allows you to view the artwork for each trophy, which are initially presented in black and white until you have earned the full colour artwork for each trophy by achieving the appropriate requirements for that particular trophy and provides statistical analysis of how close you are to earning each trophy, which is quite helpful as it provides the full requirements for each of the twelve trophies, while the videos feature allows you to catch up on the story by revisiting videos that chart the path of the story, alongside the inclusion of the credits.

MouseCraft supports the share feature that allows you to upload a video clip to Facebook or Twitter; upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as you are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of your choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores your most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so you still have the chance to decide if you would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between your game footage and your reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

The game supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4, PS3 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that you will be purchasing the PS4, PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows you to sync the progression of your save file from your Vita to your PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so you can start playing the game on your Vita on the way to and from work, sync your save game when you return home and then resume were you left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading your save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.

Despite there being a number of new gameplay elements introduced regularly; the controls are easily mastered as they are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller. The control scheme consists of pressing square to release the mice into the maze of blocks; holding square to speed up the gameplay; pressing X to select a block and pressing again to position the block; pressing R1 or L1 to change the orientation of the block after it has been selected; pressing triangle to engage the destruction mode for using bombs to blast through an area of the maze that is blocking the mice from progressing any further, followed by cycling through the blocks with the left analogue stick or d-pad and pressing X to select a particular block to blast through with the bomb; pressing O to undo your most recent action; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to adjust the positioning of the block; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

The touch pad implementation allows you to freeze time as you delicately position new blocks as the mice in some scenarios are already attempting to manoeuvre through the level. Unfortunately, there is no light bar implementation and there is also no vibration implementation, which is surprising in both cases as the light bar could have been used to inform you when the mice are healthy by producing a green light and when a mouse had been killed by a red light with the death of a Ratoid enemy confirmed by a red flashing light, while the vibration could have been used lightly when a block has been dropped into position, alongside explosions and the death of mice and Ratoids.

The graphics have every slight amount of detail that a side scrolling puzzle game could have and then some as the player will see patterns on each of the blocks; mechanical cogs spinning around in the near distance; the crazy cat scientist Schrödinger in the far distance in a room surrounded by his inventions and blueprints; the Ratoid mice with their snapping jaws and menacing looks, amongst many more impressive graphical touches, such as the central characters of the mice that appear to be cel-shaded, while everything else around them is not, so even that effect just adds that extra touch of diversity to the graphical performance of the game, which stands out and looks excellent.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, story level selection menu, level editor, options menu, rewards menu and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad, face buttons and touch pad, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens consist of scientific blueprints for various inventions and a variety of symbols coming towards the screen representing particular elements of the game with each selected menu or option highlighted as though it was a thick block of cheese.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including bricks and Ratoids exploding and the selection and movement of the bricks, amongst other sound effects, alongside a funky soundtrack composed by Mikolai Stroinski who has also composed soundtrack music for Dark Souls 2 and The Witcher 3, amongst other videogames, films and television. Unfortunately, there is no DualShock 4 controller speaker implementation, which is surprising as it could have produced the sound effects or music.

The trophy list includes twelve trophies with eight bronze trophies, four silver trophies and one gold trophy. The majority of the trophies or possibly even all of them will be earned just by naturally completing the game, although there are a few were you may have to replay certain scenarios within levels to achieve particular trophies, such as the Scuba Diver bronze trophy for mice spending a total of 600 seconds underwater and the Wrecker bronze trophy for destroying 100 Tetromino Bricks with bombs, while there is the Designer bronze trophy for designing a level using the level editor. There are also five trophies for exterminating the Ratoids by various methods, such as the Pyrotechnic bronze trophy for exterminating ten Ratoids by using Explosive Bricks; the Chemist bronze trophy for exterminating ten Ratoids by leading them into Acid Obstacles; and amongst other methods is the Anarchist silver trophy for exterminating an accumulation of fifty Ratoids. Three of the harder trophies include the Gold Digger Enthusiast bronze trophy for earning 40 golden cogs by completing 40 levels with a perfect score by guiding all of the mice to their end destination and collecting everything along the way during half of the levels; the Collector silver trophy for collecting all of the Anima Shards; and the Gold Digger Expert gold trophy for earning eighty golden cogs by completing eighty levels with a perfect score by guiding all of the mice to their end destination and collecting everything along the way during all of the levels. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around five to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

Quite surprisingly, there is no multiplayer, online leaderboards or any form of online functionality; as there is certainly the potential to have a multiplayer component in which both players are attempting to perfect the level quicker than the other player with the possibility of a player disrupting his opponent by using a temporary power-up, such as a reversal of the controls, which would be earned by outperforming his opponent for a quarter of the level. There are no online leaderboards meaning there are no rankings for the fastest times of completing each level, stage and the entirety of the game, while further online functionality could have came in the form of an online multiplayer version of the local multiplayer and being able to share your user created levels with the world, although unfortunately none of this content is available, which is a shame as it is the only backwards step and wrong turn the game makes.

There are no difficulty levels, although the difficulty curve naturally increases as you progress through the game as it starts out relatively simple, but gradually becomes more complicated as you are faced with having to overcome the introduction of new gameplay elements ranging from the ability to destroy bricks with bombs to ruthless enemies, such as Ratoids, amongst many more gameplay elements that really shifts the pace of how fast you are having to approach each closely positioned puzzle.

Despite the lack of multiplayer, online leaderboards or any form of online functionality; there is still plenty of replayability, which stems from a couple of key areas as there are eighty levels across four stages with plenty of puzzles and new gameplay elements introduced regularly to keep everything feeling fresh, while the level editor will allow you to create your own levels to test yourself, which extends the length of the game far beyond the initial eighty levels from the story mode.

Overall, MouseCraft provides amazing gameplay that is always shifting pace every few levels to keep the flow of the game feeling fresh, while including an additional layer in the form of a level editor that will allow your creativity to run wild and your puzzle solving skills to be put to the test in as many levels as you want to create. If you are a fan of puzzle games, Tetris or Lemmings, then MouseCraft is an absolute must purchase and even more so for the exceptional value that the game represents with a £9.99 triple cross-buy purchase for eighty levels of pure puzzle solving gameplay comprising of a perfect mix of Tetris and Lemmings.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: MouseCraft
• Developer: Crunching Koalas/Curve Studios
• Publisher: Curve Studios
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4, PS3 and PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Multiplayer: No
• Hard Drive Space Required: 310MB