I’m not usually one for retro games, primarily because they generally just feel too dated for me to enjoy. I’ll admit I’m very spoiled as a gamer, despite being obsessed with classic games during my childhood because, back then, they weren’t classic. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I would even have a difficult time going back to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64—one of my favorite games of all time—simply because its visuals and gameplay are so dated now, I don’t think I could get into it. Fortunately, the Ocarina of Time remake is coming out soon, but that’s largely beside the point. The main thing I want to set up here is how adverse I am to retro games, and yet, I just played one of the most charming, surprisingly addictive action RPGs on Steam, and it happens to be designed to intentionally feel and play like a game from the N64 era.
Mouseward is about as straightforward as it gets when it comes to soulslikes, but that’s precisely what I love about it already. Developed by Finite Reflection Studios and still without a release date, Mouseward puts players in control of a loyal Mouse Guard who had fallen in the line of duty but is revived by the arcane power of a calamitous starfall that shattered the kingdom. They are then tasked with protecting the kingdom once more, which eventually sends them out into a world that feels like Ocarina of Time reimagined as an N64 soulslike. After playing the Mouseward demo on Steam, though, what surprised me most wasn’t how convincingly it pulls that combination off. It’s how little it seems to need beyond the basics to keep me exploring, fighting, and constantly telling myself I’d stop after just one more area.
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Mouseward Has the Basics Down, And That’s About All It Needs
Check Out Mouseward’s Demo on Steam
Calling Mouseward a soulslike might immediately bring to mind something far more complicated than what it actually is, at least based on the demo. Its combat is very simple for an action RPG, with stamina management doing most of the heavy lifting while attacks, dodges, blocking, and parrying make up the bulk of what players will be doing in a fight. I don’t think I ever felt like I was trying to wrap my head around Mouseward’s combat, and that’s honestly one of the things I enjoyed most about it. I could just fight. Enemies still punished me when I got greedy and completely drained my stamina trying to squeeze in another attack, but I also never felt like I needed to spend a bunch of time learning some complicated combat system before I could actually start enjoying myself.
There is some variety here, though, especially once Mouseward starts handing over different weapons. The demo includes a sword, dagger, and a great hammer that looks hilariously large in the hands of such a tiny character, and each one is different enough that I could immediately tell which one I preferred using. I also eventually got my hands on a bow, which I found useful for more than just fighting enemies at a distance, since there are things in the environment that can be interacted with using arrows. Again, none of it is especially complicated, but I think that’s kind of the point. Mouseward gave me enough to experiment with without constantly introducing another system I needed to learn, and considering how bloated some RPGs can get with mechanics now, I found that pretty refreshing.
Progression is handled much the same way. Fallen Stars can be found throughout the game and used to improve the Mouse Guard through a skill tree, while coins can be collected and spent at the Mysterious Merchant. There are also different pieces of equipment to find and equip, and wearing the pieces that belong to the same set can provide an additional bonus. I liked that especially because it gave me another reason to pay attention to what I was finding without turning equipment into some giant spreadsheet of stats I needed to study every time something new dropped. I was still checking my gear and thinking about what I wanted to use, but I never felt like Mouseward was trying to interrupt the actual adventure to make me do it.
One thing worth noting is that equipment can only be changed while resting at a campfire, which also serves as Mouseward’s version of the familiar soulslike checkpoint. That puts a little more weight behind what I choose to equip before heading back out, even if the equipment system itself is still pretty easy to understand.
Even the skill tree seems pretty restrained in the demo, and I mean that as a compliment. Fallen Stars are essentially another reason to explore, since finding them means getting another opportunity to make the Mouse Guard stronger, and that connection between progression and exploration ended up being one of the things that kept pulling me forward. I started checking paths I probably would have ignored in another game because I knew there was a decent chance something useful might be waiting there. There are coins to find, Fallen Stars to collect, secret quests to uncover, and other hidden items scattered around, so I very quickly stopped treating the obvious path like it was necessarily the path I should be taking.
Mouseward’s N64 World Is Where I Really Got Hooked
I think the exploration and environmental design are probably where things started feeling like Ocarina of Time. Obviously, Mouseward looks like an N64 game, but there’s something about the way its world is laid out that reminded me of that era as well. I regularly found myself seeing something above me or off in the distance and trying to figure out how to get there, and the world has quite a bit more verticality than I was expecting. There are hidden ledges, ladders, ropes that can be cut with arrows, and paths that eventually wrap back around to somewhere I’ve already been. I’m a sucker for opening a shortcut and suddenly realizing I’m back in an area I visited much earlier, so Mouseward got me with that pretty quickly.
I don’t think I ever felt like I was trying to wrap my head around Mouseward’s combat, and that’s honestly one of the things I enjoyed most about it.
More than anything, though, I just really like being in this world. The whole thing has this gloomy, almost strangely cozy atmosphere to it, and I think the fact that I’m running around as this tiny mouse makes everything feel much larger than it probably is. Huge trees stretch overhead, buildings tower above me, and even some of the enemies look enormous next to the Mouse Guard. It gives Mouseward a sense of scale that works incredibly well with the chunky N64 visuals, because I never felt like the retro art style was there simply because retro games are popular right now. It actually contributes to the atmosphere, which is probably the biggest reason someone as generally resistant to retro-looking games as I am ended up liking it so much.
I think that’s also why I had such a hard time putting the demo down. There wasn’t some enormous revelation waiting around every corner, and I wasn’t unlocking a completely new layer of the game every 10 minutes. I just kept seeing another path I hadn’t explored yet, another collectible sitting somewhere I wasn’t sure how to reach, or another doorway that made me wonder what might be on the other side. Then, once I’d gotten there, I’d see something else and keep going. For a game whose individual pieces are all pretty straightforward, Mouseward somehow managed to keep that cycle going far longer than I expected it to.
Of course, I have no idea how well that simplicity will hold up in the full game, especially since Mouseward still doesn’t have a release date and this demo only shows the opening portion of its world. Based on what I’ve played, though, I’m not sure I want it to become significantly more complicated anyway. Give me more places like this to explore, more equipment and Fallen Stars worth looking for, and enough combat progression to keep encounters interesting, and I think I’m good. Mouseward already feels like someone took an N64 action RPG, gave it the basic structure of a soulslike, and resisted the temptation to pile much more on top of it. Somehow, that’s been more than enough to make me want to keep playing.
Mouseward is currently available to wishlist on Steam.
