Tag: "Puzzle Game"

Mouse Panic Review

There’s something rather intriguing about putting the word “panic” into a game.  It instantly puts visions (or hopes) of an elevated heart rate, sweaty fingers, and wide-eyed expressions while playing.  It’s the kind of gaming experience most gamers live for.

But how does it make you feel when the word “mouse” is put in front of that “panic”?  I mean mice are such cute little animals.  Can we really see mice in the same gaming experience that we’ve come to expect from the word “panic”?

That’s what we’re about to find out with Mouse Panic from Mobile Amusements.

In Mouse Panic your goal is to help mice get to their homes.  To do this you lay out a piece of cheese for them to eat.  After eating it they will move in the direction that the cheese is pointing.  Cheese is placed with a tap of the finger and then extra taps will then change the direction of the cheese.  You keep moving the mice along their way until they reach the base.  As the game progresses you’ll have several mice, each with a different colored base that they need to reach.

Oh, and did I mention that there is a time limit to everything?  That’s where the “panic” comes into play.  Getting the mice where you need them is simple enough, but having to do it while a timer counts down… that’s where all the increased heart rate stuff comes from.  I know it sounds silly to feel that way about a “mouse game” but as I got to the harder levels I was feeling all the right senses of panic… glorious panic.

There are various things that will foil your plans at getting these mice home.  Different blockades and a very frustrating “base changer” add to the challenge of seeing these mice safely home, and that’s all without mentioning the Black Rat who seems determined to stop you.

There are some helpful items on the board as well.  Mouse Transporters can be both good and bad, but if worked out properly it’s mostly good.  Time Bonuses are the most helpful thing because without them it’s near impossible to finish some of the levels.

What makes this game fun is that at its heart it’s a simple puzzle solver.  All you have to do is find the right way to get the mice home.  Throw in a timed element to it and you’ve got yourself a winner.

I really like the colored blockades that can only be destroyed by the mouse with the matching color.  This makes all the mice have to work as a team, which means that you (as the mouse controller) have to figure out how to move them all so that they hit the marks that the other mice will need to progress on.

Graphically the game is very nice to look at.  Everything is very clean and that’s a plus because you don’t want to be worried about what something is on the screen.

There’s not much to the sound.  The game is very quiet except for the occasional mouse squeaks and the frustrating beep of the timer as it gets close to the end.  The game does, however, let you play your own music which is nice since they didn’t put in their own.

As I mentioned above the controls are easy enough, though I do wish there was some other way to handle the direction of the cheese.  I found myself needing to get the cheese pointed to the left very quickly and you have to do four taps to get that.  Four taps might not seem like much, but when you have to get it done quickly it can be tough, not to mention that if you’re facing the wrong way the mouse goes that way and you’ve got to fix things.  Not sure if the developer is interested or not, but I can see an update where you put your finger on the screen and then drag it the way you want the cheese to face.  I’d be down for that.

Also, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of options for things like sound and, more importantly, color blindness.  Seems like games that are relying on color really need to keep this in mind for their customers.

The last little thing would be a scoreboard for top times.  There are 48 levels for the game, which is nice, but there’s not much reason to play them again once beaten.  If there was something to shoot for in terms of a time race, that would really help out.  They could even go for the Global Scoreboard and really have something.

As a quick note… I did discover a bug that seems to lock mice into a strange state where they are stuck into position.  They seem to flail about all over, but never move.  This happened a couple of times where I put a thing of cheese right on them while another mouse was near.  I would simply have to quit that level and start it over.  Here’s hoping a fix is on the way.

But everything leads back to the question, can you have panic in a game about mice?  The answer is yes.  Several times I got angry at my fingers for not getting the cheese down in the right place quick enough and the timer ran out.  This made me want to go again as quickly as possible.  It’s not a great game, but it is a good one certainly worth the price, but with a few little changes I think we’d have a real winner… and the panic could continue.