As an enormous fan of Luck be a Landlord, the quirky slot-machine-based roguelike deckbuilder the place you attempt to pay hire on time or die attempting, I used to be thrilled on the announcement of Maze Mice, Trampoline Tales’ new sport, releasing this 12 months… or relatively… now. I genuinely liked the demo that a lot.
Regardless of how a lot time you’ve spent of their prior sport, you’ll know the way nice the dev’s means to mix humour, absurdity and a stunning quantity of technique into this wacky mishmash of a reasonably compelling expertise is.
Maze Mice, their new launch, isn’t simply following in these steps however really units a brand new precedent. It’s humorous and really weird, but in addition makes numerous sense, and it’s stunning that it hasn’t been finished earlier than. It’s fairly darn nice, and at the moment I wanna share my ideas on why that’s.
Developer: TrampolineTales
Writer: TrampolineTales
Style: Indie, Roguelike, Bullet Heaven, PacMan-like?
Launch Date: Could 2nd, 2025
Reviewed on: PC
Out there on: PC
Copy was offered by PR.
Maze Mice might in all probability be greatest described because the lovechild of Pac-Man and any Bullet Heaven sport.
You run round as a mouse whereas being chased by cats and ghosts, amassing orbs to then stage up, deciding on considered one of many various skills. You’re restricted to solely 4 passive and 4 lively skills, which will also be levelled up and which is able to aid you survive within the maze. Thus far, very enjoyable. The twist, nonetheless, right here is that point solely strikes once you transfer, very akin to SUPERHOT, which I discover fairly darn superb.
Because it stands, the time-only-moves-when-you-move mechanic permits gamers to not simply take a breather, step away for some time, perhaps name their family members or seize a drink, nevertheless it additionally introduces quantity of technique and planning to the sport.
Everytime you choose up an enormous expertise orb, a brand new huge orb (and a few further expertise factors) spawns elsewhere within the maze, therefore incentivising you to go to these locations, too, in an effort to get stronger and survive.
The problem is that the cats that observe you’ll go wherever you go, and generally they could even take a shortcut, which makes it tougher. Moreover, the ghosts will simply ignore partitions altogether, which is why expert use of pathing and the screen-wrap is extremely essential… which is why it’s simply nice you can simply suppose generally. It doesn’t make the sport simpler or tougher essentially. It simply looks like an excellent high quality of life mechanic – and fewer so just like the puzzly and difficult mechanic from SUPERHOT, clearly.
Maze Mice is its very personal factor that doesn’t really feel like a duplicate or something, and that interprets right down to its many various lively skills (or weapons, I suppose?) and the best way they create cool builds.
As beforehand talked about, you may have 4 passive skills (issues like further expertise, extra pick-up vary, cooldown discount, max well being, and extra) lively at a time and 4 lively skills/weapons that may aid you cut back enemy numbers. With a restricted well being pool and 25 harm taken per hit, it’s fairly essential to skinny out the variety of cats and ghosts, which is why your arsenal must be perfected.
Sadly, nonetheless, you don’t essentially have rerolls or skips or banishes fairly but (the sport is in EA, so which may turn into a factor in some unspecified time in the future), so that you’ll have to improvise, strategise, and actually simply take your time with selections.
Taking a level-up for an current means signifies that you don’t should accept a brand new means fairly but. Equally, there are selections in what passive results to go for and what may be improvised and made to work.
You don’t all the time discover the “popcorn”, which provides you a dodge each x seconds, so perhaps you’ll spend money on well being regeneration or most well being as a substitute. Typically you don’t discover cooldown discount, so that you keep away from the weapons which have a excessive cooldown. Typically, you simply make do with what you’re given, and it really works fairly effectively.
Weapons-wise, we’ve obtained flaming trails, beams, mud, fleas, and extra… It’s wacky as heck and I like that for it. On high of that, the sport simply launched into Early Entry and can obtain extra updates, however has already been launched with 30 playable characters and a complete lot of things that you will discover and experiment with. Additionally, all through all of it, you’re accompanied by music that simply goes method too arduous and which jogs my memory of Jetset Radio… so it’s nice.
The sport has numerous merchandise selection by way of builds and gadgets nevertheless it generally can really feel such as you see the identical gadgets time and again… And that’s largely as a result of gadgets get unlocked by way of expertise, which is able to clearly restrict the merchandise pool early on, however has the advantage of not overwhelming gamers on high of giving gamers one thing to look ahead to.
That mentioned, I do hope that the sport will get tweaked a bit in order that it feels much less reliant on gadgets like Love and Popcorn. Having the ability to take successful is fairly essential, and it generally looks like two of your merchandise slots are simply occupied by these, creating a way of urgency once you don’t run into them… and generally it simply feels such as you may need as effectively finish it early should you don’t get these.
There are, clearly, different choices, however they’re simply not so good as therapeutic a bit each second or dodging as soon as, if that is smart.
This, nonetheless, is clearly very nitpicky of me, and once more, the sport simply launched, so, understandably, a number of the gadgets may be roughly balanced than others. For what it’s value, the sport has numerous content material already, regardless of being very early in its EA part, and a lot of the gadgets do really feel viable to make use of.
In case you’re searching for a extra informal roguelike with technique facets, a terrific soundtrack, and fairly lovely artwork, Maze Mice is unquestionably a sport value testing!
This put up was initially written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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