A minus mark for this puzzle game for cannily, if cheesily, being named to hitch a ride on the wildly-popular MineCraft phenomenon. And another minus mark for its barely-a-concept-at-all of mashing together two massively enjoyable and enduring puzzle game series into one.
MouseCraft takes the block shapes from Tetris - literally the exact same block shapes: the square one, the S-shaped one, the long-thin one, the L-shaped one – and adds them to a very slightly reworked version of Lemmings.
Here, mice are sent scurrying across a laboratory maze by a fiendish cat scientist. The mice must get to the cheese alive, having collected as many crystals (because, of course, it's a videogame, so… crystals!) as possible on the way.
The mice move by a strict set of rules – they can't jump more than one block high, and will turn round when they encounter a wall; and they can't fall more than three blocks without dying. They'll also die if something lands on them, if a roborat enemy gets them or if they're underwater for more than 10 seconds.
You position the aforementioned Tetris blocks across the course to get the mice to the cheese. At any moment you can pause the game, adding in a block (if you have one). And different blocks have different properties (there are exploding ones and jelly ones your mice can fall further onto and survive etc.).
The result starts off fairly simple, hits a midpoint where you're having to rotate and place blocks with split-second timing to squash mice enemies and send your mice in different directions through the level, then plateaus, seemingly content to turn out a good stack of puzzle levels without really innovating or forcing competent players to break out too much of a sweat.
So, minus marks then for lack of originality or ingenuity. But several solid plus marks for turning out a rock-solid and determinedly involving, if not wildly innovative or immersive, puzzle game.
- MouseCraft is out now for Mac and PC. Developed by Crunching Koalas.
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