It is rare that you would have missed the teaser trailer for the upcoming indie FPS game because upon the trailer’s release – that wasn’t long ago – the game, Mouse, garnered instant popularity. One thing’s for sure, the developers have got the attention of fans and critics alike with Mouse’s combination of genres and art style. By genre, it is a first-person shooting game set in a cartoonish crime world where the player will fill the shoes of a private detective. The most interesting part of Mouse is its art style which resembles the classic era of animation and has clearly taken inspiration from Cuphead.
Cuphead is also an indie game that was an instant hit due to its art style of 30’s animation and established itself as a very successful game due to its creative boss fights, and overall challenging gameplay.
If I am correct, Cuphead gets the credit to popularise this particular rubber hose-like art and sound design. And now we see that inspiration in Fumi Games‘ products with Mouse’s trailer. Even though it’s not original at this point, making an FPS game with graphics like that sure is an innovative approach.
Alongside Mouse, Fumi Games has another title in production namely Galaxy Taxi. Yet another cartoonish-styled game taking even greater inspiration from Cuphead as it also features a side-scrolling platforming gameplay with crazy-looking boss characters. At this point, it is unknown when will both titles be released.
Coming back to Mouse, as mentioned above, the game features a noir film-like setting focused on the world of criminals and detectives that are portrayed in greyscale color tones. If you ask me, the trailer showed hardly any details about the game and gave a glimpse of something that is quite an early stage in the development process.
We got to see some character models, weapons and their usage, and the heads-up display but the environment was brutally lacking. I am very curious to see how the complete game would look and how further aesthetic the world design would be.
Judging from the trailer, the gameplay of Mouse doesn’t seem very impressive. I found it rather clunky and slow. The enemies didn’t seem very participative other than moving around and barely attacking us. Plus, the animation when the bomb was thrown also felt off as such when it hit the wall, the size difference between the bomb and the wall didn’t look very accurate.
Moreover, in some places, the sudden transition from 3D to 2D and vice versa felt very awkward. But hey, it’s the early teaser and as quite apparent, the game is far from complete, therefore, I can’t really judge at this moment. I just hope that they improve the fundamentals and make a stunning and spectacular game just like Cuphead.
That’s all on the indie game Mouse. We will keep you posted with all the news about Mouse and other indie games. Keep following Retrology.
