A couple years ago, I made a simple request to the powers that be: Let Mickey Mouse have a gun. Epic and Disney, who I was petitioning at the time, have yet to follow through or probably even notice the glaring lack of bullet-spitting steel in Mickey’s four-fingered mitts. Fortunately, we have indies on our side.
During a GDC showcase this week of third-party games coming soon to Nintendo platforms, I spent some time with Mouse: PI For Hire, a shooter on the boomier side about a hardboiled mouse detective that wears its old-timey cartoon influences on its sleeve. Crucially, said mouse, who would not appear out of place in Steamboat Willie, has a gun—many guns, in fact. A pistol, a shotgun, a weird, blobby acid rifle thing; the list goes on. Over a dozen, according to the game’s Steam page.
Mouse: PI For Hire's look pulled me in, but what kept me playing were the details: bouncy animations for everything from characters to health potions and a general embrace of wacky unreality that mixes 1930s detective tropes with retro-style mad science run amok. It’s clear that a lot of care went into realizing the game’s setting, and more importantly, you can tell that the developers had fun with it. There’s a cheerful liveliness to the whole thing, even if you are, at the end of the day, killing many of its inhabitants.
Also, the game has a double jump, so it’s basically catnip for me (or an appropriate mouse equivalent). Mouse: PI For Hire releases on April 16, the day before my birthday. Probably not a coincidence.
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Nathan Grayson
