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If there’s one thing you can rely on Odencat for, it’s a game that might brighten your day while also respecting your time. They aren’t huge epics that will wear out their welcome. No, titles like Bear’s Restaurant and Meg’s Monster give you an afternoon or two of joy. Mousebusters continues the Odencat legacy of pleasant games, as it is another clever, often silly, story as you go on an adventure.
There’s an apartment building with a bad reputation, and unfortunately it’s your new home. Almost immediately after moving into a unit on the second floor, you fall victim to a curse that turned you into a mouse. Fortunately, there’s hope. Another mouse in the building drafts you into the Mousebusters, a group (of two) that deals with the ghosts haunting every person who lives in the building to deal with a greater mystery, protect people, and get back to your normal life.
While Mousebusters is part adventure game and part shoot’em up, it’s also a rather leisurely affair. There are two difficulty levels available at the start, with Story turning the ghostly encounters into absolute cakewalks. But even on Standard, I didn’t find the spirits to be too strong.
How things work is you get an assignment from the Chief. This sends you to one of the apartments in the building through the conveniently installed vents next to the door. Once inside, you first need to investigate different highlighted spots to try and pin down where the ghost haunting the space might be. This is also while avoiding hazards like the people and pets living there. Once you check out different spaces, which can lead to some hints as to what sort of spirit you’re dealing with and not-scary scares, you’ll uncover the actual ghost. It’s at that point you need to do some light puzzle solving using items in the environment to get the resident to do something or move somewhere so you can bust the ghost.
I love this part of the game. The conversations between the Chief and mouse are very cute and lighthearted, with some genuinely funny quips in there. Likewise, the commentary from the folks living in the complex can be interesting asides and help flesh out the characters a bit. The environmental and character design is exceptional, as expected from Odencat, with the spritework all looking great. I especially love the varying changes in perspective, since we see things from human-size, with a teeny mouse sprite representing us, and from a mouse-eye view with everything oversized. There’s a lot of care put into it.
Once you reach the spirit, that’s when the shoot’em up element happens. The ghost will send out bullets to attack you. You need to aim the reticle to shoot the ghost to exorcise it without getting attacked and knocked out yourself. It’s not too difficult, as I mentioned earlier. Yes, some later bosses are a bit more challenging. But this does feel like an adventure game with some environmental puzzles to work out first and foremost, with the ghost-busting being a secondary element to finish things up.
The main caveat with Mousebusters is that this is a short game. It’ll take you a few hours, so maybe you spend like two or three afternoons playing it and you’re done. Once you finish it, it’s pretty much all done. But it is a good and cute time while it does last.
Mousebusters continues Odencat’s trend of pairing adorably detailed, charming spritework with an interesting story. It won’t last long! It’s not terribly difficult. But it’s quite entertaining while it lasts.
Mousebusters is out now on the PC and will come to the Switch and Xbox Series X. It also appeared on mobile devices.
