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STAFF REVIEW of MouseCraft (Xbox One)


Monday, February 7, 2022.
by Peggy Doyle

MouseCraft Box art You know the theory about Schrodinger’s cat, right? Well, I’m telling you he’s alive and well and toying with a trio of mice in MouseCraft, a delightful game by the team with the most adorable logo (Crunching Koalas).

In simple terms, MouseCraft is an A to B puzzle game where your job is to use a variety of blocks and skills to allow three mice to navigate a safe path to the end of the puzzle and get the cheese. It’s like a combination of the games Tetris and Lemmings. Over the course of eighty levels, you’ll learn new mechanics and tricks to help you solve increasingly difficult puzzles. You’ll use your skills to collect gems, defeat enemies of robot rats, blow up obstacles and navigate environmental hazards. It’s surprisingly addictive, and I quickly became obsessed with making sure all three mice survived every round.


Each level starts you with a set number of each style of block. Until later in the game, the blocks can’t be moved once you place them. You can, however ‘rewind’ a step if you make a mistake and want to change a blocks placement. Once you have your path completed, you hit the button and release the three little mice off their wheel. You can have them run at the standard slower pace, speed them up slightly, and even pause if you need to make any adjustments. This is an especially important feature late in the game when you are only given 1 or 2 bricks that have to be moved multiple times to get your mice to the end. The mechanics are relatively simple and, if you are a fan of puzzle games, you’ll find a solid balance of easy and brain teasers in the 6-10 hours run time.

The goal of each level is really two-fold; get as many mice as possible to the cheese at the end, but also picking up the gems scattered in each level. These gems are required to open up the higher levels as you move through them. Once a level is completed, you can jump to any previous levels that you have finished if you didn’t complete it to 3-star level or if you need to pick up some gems you missed.


One thing I loved about MouseCraft was that it introduced each new skill in its own level, you didn’t just get shown a tutorial, you actually completed a level with each new block type uncovered or mechanic unlocked. There was enough variety to keep me engaged and I played through the entire thing without getting bored.

I had one bug that was consistent through the game though. If I wanted to pause the game, I had to use the center button on the Xbox controller and then go back to the game for the pause menu to show. Not entirely sure why that was always the case, but hopefully it will be patched. A slight annoyance, but didn’t ruin the enjoyment for me. Pausing the levels while playing didn’t have this issue, just if I wanted to pause the entire game.




The animations were great with a fantastic cartoony feel to them. This gives the game a more family friendly feeling in my opinion and can be enjoyed by a variety of ages. Music didn’t stand out as anything special, but it’s a puzzle game and the soundtrack is a simple backdrop to the puzzles. It didn’t stand out as being out of place. MouseCraft’s simple aesthetic, and somewhat generic name hide a really polished and highly enjoyable puzzle game that had a sort of magic hold on me. Maybe the mad scientist cat is smarter and more influential than I originally thought.

**MouseCraft was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**




Overall: 8.3 / 10
Gameplay: 8.5 / 10
Visuals: 8.5 / 10
Sound: 8.0 / 10

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