Mouse's Playground, An Affront To All Mice Everywhere

Unity

The rise of game engines such as Unity have democratised game development. Now, at least theoretically, anybody with enough drive can make their own indie games. To mixed success.

Unity has had the misfortune of becoming synonymous with many, many bad games. Merely seeing the Unity splash screen is enough for some people to prepare themselves for an unpolished, poorly executed adventure in amateur game design.

Mouses Playground is a game that falls firmly into this category.

Mouses Playground

I like to send this game to unsuspecting friends as a sort of prank. This is probably why nobody talks to me anymore.

You play as an MS Paint drawing of a mouse. The goal is to collect cheese.

I like the lonely vibes of Mouses Playground. You are isolated in this world, with bold coloured structures surrounding you. Somber piano music plays, reminiscent of The Sims 1 soundtrack. There is no rush. No danger. Just you and 100 cheeses.

Mouse gazes upon the landscape

When the player attempts to collect their first cheese, they may notice something strange. They can't collect it. This is because, for some reason, the cheese's hitbox is to the side of the cheese. This simple cheese collectathon becomes unecessarily difficult, requiring the player to blindly jump to the cheese's side hoping against hope it'll be collected.

If one is to suffer through the drudgery of slowly walking around, collecting all 100 cheeses scattered around the sparse, esoteric environment, you will be rewarded with...absolutely nothing. There is no purpose to this futile exercise in frustration. This game doesn't have an ending.

I always thought I was pranking my friends with this game, but I think it is actually I who has been pranked. Surely these off-centre hit boxes can't have been an accident. Unity does these things for you, it must have been deliberately sabotaged.

Once you have finished your cheese gathering endevours, you may now wander towards the horizon, contemplating your futile existence.

Eventually you fall off the edge of the level, for in Mouse's Playground, the world is flat.

There is no kill plane.

Mouse plummets into the vast void of nothing, for the remainder of all time

Mouse falls for all eternity into the infinite void of meaninglessness. No doubt a deep metaphor to describe our own lives.

Methlab's Next Move

It has been several years since I have beaten the Mouse's Playground. After this write-up, I decided to explore creator Methlab's itch io profile and I see they have a new release in 2023 - Cigarette Simulator. The description simply says 'simulate'.

I cannot wait to play it.

Get Mouses Playground on Itch IO.