Mousehunt is a game originally hosted on Facebook, essentially sort of an 'idle game'. You set up a trap, and the gameplay consists of you sounding a Hunter's Horn that refreshes every 15 minutes in order to see if you catch a mouse -- and the stats of your trap's components, and the type of your trap, will determine whether you catch the mouse. As you progress, areas became progressively harder and grindier as you have to 'farm' ingredients in order to attempt to capture an area's boss mouse, to make more powerful traps, or to obtain special types of bait to catch other mice. Originally starting with relatively humble artwork, Mousehunt has became a pretty modest long-running game, with thousands of different mice themed after different areas to catch.And the game admittedly isn't the most engaging, but it's a neat little break for me when I'm busy doing work or doing a lot of typing, to just Alt+Tab to my Mousehunt page and click the horn. It's pretty neat that way.
I've always wanted to dive into Mousehunt as part of my "Reviewing Monsters" segment, but never really had the chance to, and every time I tried to start it I tend to really not find a lot to talk about the earlier area mice. So I guess this is me biting the bullet and just going through a lot of the earlier areas, particularly the kingdom of Gnawnia. We'll be blitzing through all of these, just like how new players will be blitzing through all of these areas in under a week!
White Mouse, Brown Mouse, Gray Mouse
These three are meant to be the weakest and the most regular of the mice, basically representing what the equivalents of real-life mice end up looking in the land of Gnawnia. It's actually lampshaded and noted in one of the many 'torn pages' of the first mouse-hunter, Plankrun, that the proportions of mice in Gnawnia isn't quite right. Obviously, it's a way to handwave the fact that the art team is allowed to give the mice somewhat anthropomorphized bodies, to make them more expressive. The artwork in Mousehunt has also gone through many updates over the years, with some older artwork replaced with those of a newer style. Out of the three basic mice, the brown mouse and the grey mouse used to look very different. Overall, I do like the newer artwork, which made them a lot more expressive as they are about to fall into the cartoonishly Looney-Tunes-esque traps.
Field Mouse, Cowardly Mouse, Lightning Rod Mouse
Most of the mice we're covering here are part of the "Indigenous Mice" group, a group that was in older versions a lot larger and essentially covered every single mouse in the older areas. Basically, well, the Indigenous Mice are the simplest, merely being mice that are slightly different from the norn with a few alterations, either physically (like the Field Mouse, who has grass growing out of its body in order to allow it to sneak near humans and steal their food), in behaviour (Cowardly Mouse, who's afraid of butterflies) or in one of those cartoon-animals-have-a-human-job deal (Lightning Rod Mouse, sort of copying the experiments of Benjamin Franklin).
The Lightning Rod Mouse just looks so, so hurt, by the way. The blurb given to these guys note just how it doesn't make sense and no one knows why the Lightning Rod Mouse seeks lightning so. The Cowardly Mouse, meanwhile, has one of the most delightful write-ups, noting that it's "traumatized by a terrible experience with a swiss army trap... in a nightmare it had once", and it's so afraid of everything from blades of grass to butterflies. You, as a human mouse-hunter contracted by the King of Gnawnia, can make its dream a reality! No, wait.
Scruffy Mouse, Spotted Mouse, Spud Mouse, Longtail Mouse
Another trio of 'slightly different' mice, the Scruffy Mouse is a cross-breed of the brown and white mice, and is apparently hated by the other mice by being filthy. Somehow, it apparently pretends to be a sheepdog to follow packs of dogs? How big are these mice, for the scruffy mouse to masquerade as a sheepdog? The Spotted Mouse, meanwhile, is a mouse with a backpack. That's all there is to it, it's noted to be easy to catch because it lacks the teamwork that makes other advanced mice more dangerous. The Longtail Mouse, meanwhile, looks like some kind of mutated jerboa or something, and it's noted to use its super-prehensile tail to let it reach hard-to-reach cheese.
The Spud Mouse is perhaps my favourite, for the simple fact that it's a mouse that ate a whole potato and ended up having the rest of its body be stuck in the shape of one, cartoon-physics style. It's a hungry potato mouse and it apparently stumbles and rolls around as it tries to reach your trap. Silly Spud Mouse!
Pugilist Mouse, Flying Mouse, Speedy Mouse, Tiny Mouse
Another batch of fun mice. The Pugilist Mouse is an extremely fun design, with those short fists being raised up and that absolutely smashing mustache and monocle really selling the look while looking absolutely minimalist. It really does sell the old-school gentleman-pugilist look of someone who probably goes "jolly good, sir, have at you!" or something along those lines while he punches some nincompoop in the schnozz. Apparently, Pugilist Mice have their own 'guild'!
The Flying Mouse is another interesting 'mutant', in that it has giant wings for arms, and they've apparently driven away all the birds from Gnawnia. As funny as all of these wacky mice are, I do like that sometimes we get a little detail or two on how much the mice infestation has absolutely fucked up life in Gnawnia.
In contrast, I really don't have much to say about the Speedy Mouse or the Tiny Mouse. The Tiny Mouse's got adorable artwork, and the Speedy Mouse is a decent nod to Speedy Gonzalez, but they're... y'know, they're just not that much different from the regular mice. Also, the Speedy and Tiny Mice are the many, many mice that will only show up to your trap with the super-rare bait Super|Brie+, which originally could only be purchased with real money.
Dwarf Mouse, Steel Mouse
A lot of the other Indigenous Mice were added later on, but I've been playing long enough to know that the Dwarf Mouse and the Steel Mouse were one of the original mice. The Dwarf Mouse still has its older artwork, and it's... well, basically a mouse with buff muscles, a beard and a huge axe. Pretty neat -- we never really learn what makes it look like this, and while I adore the themes going on in the later areas, I really do like just how some of the older mice are just kinda random.
The Steel Mouse used to look like this, and it got new art alongside some other classic mice in 2014. I kinda do like the weird, DIY-robot-kit feel of the original Steel Mouse, and I absolutely adore the massive spiky set of chompers. Instead of going in on the robot theme, however, the new artwork picks a completely different way to interpret a 'Steel Mouse', making it a knight with an adorable little sword. Absolutely love the visor and the needle-point feet, and that's some neat detailing on the tail, too. I do really like the new Steel Mouse art, but I kinda wished it didn't replace the concept of the original Steel Mouse. They could've been buddies, y'know? One could be Sir Steel Mouse and one could be Steel-Mouse-o-Tron.
Farmhand Mouse, Magic Mouse, Nibbler Mouse
The last of the Indigenous Mice before we get to the 'bosses' are a bunch of others who are also attracted only to Super|Brie+, and... they're more mice-with-jobs. The Farmhand Mouse is in a stereotypical farmer outfit and is only found in the Windmill. The Magic Mouse has an adorable top-hat and cape and totally thinks you can't see the string. And the Nibbler Mouse is a reporter (it borrows its name from the original forum community-newspaper, I believe) with a neat little hat.
Design-wise, they're not super-impressive, but I do like the description in their flavour text about how the Farmhand Mouse actually grows their own crops and only tries the new-fangled cheese that them city-boys like only if a particularly good one comes along, while the Nibbler Mouse actually reports on trap data and the like of the humans onto other mice.
Burglar Mouse, Master Burglar Mouse
Sort of forming the original 'quest chain' in the Gnawnia areas (before areas like the Windmill, the Town of Gnawnia and the Mountain got their own 'quests' and bosses) were the Burglar mice. The original Burglar Mouse looked like this, and as much as the artwork is certainly far more detailed and improved, I do really miss the dynamic pose of the Burglar Mouse dangling down going through some Mission Impossible shit as it tries to steal cheese. Anyway, the Burglar Mouse is only attracted to Brie Cheese, the most expensive cheese for the very beginners. Burglar Mice will drop Gilded Cheese, which, in turn, will attract the Master Burglar Mouse, essentially the same design as the original Burglar Mouse but he's sitting on a crown so you know he's important. This sort of mice-drops-better-cheese-which-attracts-better-mice is, at its core, the basis of the mechanics of the game.
The Master Burglar's stolen one of the King's crown jewels, though, and you need to get it back to unlock one of the subsequent areas! Ultimately, while not the most creative designs, I do like the nod to the fact that these mice are essentially thieves and burglars if we assign a human role onto them -- they steal our cheese and food, the bastards!
Black Widow Mouse, Crown Collector Mouse
And here we go with the Black Widow Mouse, a lady-mouse with a colouration based on the Black Widow Spider, and despite just looking not too different from a regular mouse, she's apparently able to spin webs, targeting exclusively mice who manage to steal the oh-so-awesome Super-Brie+ from hunters, killing the unfortunate mouse and stealing the cheese for her own. The Black Widow Mouse essentially had something like a 0.1% chance or something to show up in any area as long as you hunt with Super|Brie+, although it might very well show up in very, very rare chances with regular cheese. It's the original holy grail, a mouse that is super-duper-rare and catching it requires lots of luck and patience. Mostly luck. There are a couple more of these super-duper-rare mice later on, but over time it's mostly phased out.
The Crown Collector Mouse is another mouse that's pretty rare, and only shows up if you have enough amounts of King's Crowns, little achievement-style trophies that you got for catching mice in the multiples of 10, 100 and 500. The Crown Collector Mouse will show up the more you have crowns, and it's sort of made a career of showing off the crowns it pilfers from super-powerful mouse-hunters. Apparently, it's so badass that other mice come to it for advice. I kinda felt like there's a huge disconnect, though -- sure, it's rare, but it's not even that difficult to capture.
Relic Hunter Mouse, Captain Croissant Mouse
The Relic Hunter Mouse is an interesting one. She's also not a particularly interesting design, although comparing her to fellow backpack-wearing mouse, the Spotted Mouse, you could see just how much the art philosophy of Mousehunt has evolved over the years, with the art style basically being more likely to add a lot more human-clothes-style accessory. Not that I'm complaining, though -- with the sheer amount of mice in the game, we've had a neat balance of both art-styles. Relic Hunters basically move to a different area every day, and they only appear in front of hunters who have Ancient Relics (a common drop from most 'boss' or difficult mice), stealing one Relic in exchange for a rolled-up treasure map, something which hunters can open, hunt down one of each mice in the map, to obtain sweet sweet loot. Design-wise, she's kinda boring.
Here's a boss mouse for you! Added as the developers slowly revitalized older areas where you just hunt and wait for the 10-15% rare mouse that will drop a map piece to show up, they ended up revamping some of the older areas to make them a lot more story-oriented. For the Windmill, this means that it gets a new boss in the Captain Croissant Mouse, a mouse golem made out of bread, and I do love that everything from her stilt-like legs to her huge loaf-chunk-boots and even her ears are all made up of different types of bread. The flavour text isn't sure if it's just a mouse made up of bread, or if there's a tiny controller of the bread-gestalt within the thing. Overall, a pretty cool-looking design that does look pretty impressive for a boss-type enemy, but, y'know, it's a bread golem, so you don't have to go too far to justify why this thing is actually nowhere as strong as half the things on the Indigenous Mouse page.
Click under the break for the Dock Dwellers, Mountain Mice and Lab Experiments, all of which give a taste of the insanity that the later areas will bring forth!
Originally, these three separate mice groupings were all part of the Indigenous Mice group, but as older areas slowly get revamped and new mice were added in, they end up splintering off and becoming new mice-groups.
Pirate Mouse
First up is the Pirate Mouse, originally the rare encounter in the Harbour area, and... it's basically what you'd expect from a Pirate. Peg leg, hook arm, pirate hat, beard, eyepatch... and... uh.... is that a butter knife it's holding as a sword? One of the earliest mice that wears full clothes, I think. Kind of an expected trope, to be honest, but a neat one nonetheless. Always thought the perspective of the knife covering those legs looked weird. Basically, while the original Harbour adventure just had you hunt a Pirate that's lurking in the area, the revamped one has you basically hunt down entire groups of Pirate Crews, which felt more like a quest, y'know?
Barmy Gunner Mouse, Bilged Boatswain Mouse, Cabin Boy Mouse
All of the other members of the Dock Dwellers were added much later, as you can see with the far more intricate artwork. They're basically pirate mice and sailor mice doing piratey stuff, yeah? The Barmy Gunner's got a pretty fun artwork, with her clearly not giving a shit and just having a good old time shooting cannonballs, and I love the tail being the limb that's lighting the fuse. The Bilged Boatswain is pretty simple, but there's never anything wrong with a badass pirate holding an anchor, and the art detailing on that blind eye is cool.
The Cabin Boy Mouse is just cute. He's just so adorable and also you're probably going to murder him with your Mouse DeathBot, you monsters, all he wants to do is play pirate.
Dashing Buccaneer Mouse, Corrupt Commodore Mouse
I've never really had a good look at the Dashing Buccaneer Mouse, sort of handwaving him as another pirate mouse with a striped sailor's shirt similar to the Barmy Gunner. He's got a peg-leg and a peg-tail! That's funny. Not much to say here. The Corrupt Commodore is apparently a 'defector from the Royal Mouse Navy', something that has certainly never shown up ever before in Mousehunt lore. She's got a neat mop of purple hair, a swanky naval outfit and a neat treasure chest. Again, it's sort of expected with the pirate theme, being a corrupt, renegade naval officer. She's kinda cool.
Granite Mouse, Gold Mouse, Diamond Mouse
Ah, here are the original three 'medium' Indigenous Mice, now shunted over with the Mountain Mice alongside a bunch of other mineral and snow-themed critters. I've always lumped the three of these alongside the Dwarf and Bionic Mice in my head thanks to their similar areas and relatively similar appearance rate. Anyway, these are pretty neat designs, even if it's just slapping an element or a material onto a mouse. Out of these, only the Granite Mouse still keeps its original design, but I do like it a lot -- a mouse made entirely of stone, glowing red eyes, huge chunky arms, mismatched buckteeth, and remnants of weapons still embedded in its body. Really does look pretty cool!
The Gold Mouse originally looked like this, sorta looking like a zen Buddhist meditation pose, whereas the modern artwork is not subtle at all at what it's trying to mimic. It's quite literally just a fat mouse made of gold, though, and, naturally, rewards you extra gold upon capturing. I'm not sure if the artwork's offensive? I dunno. The Diamond Mouse looked a lot more rabbit-like in its original artwork, and kinda looked like it's made up of glass. Loved those crackly-looking knuckles, though. Modern-day Diamond Mouse tries to look more like diamond, with the reflecting, shimmering surface really showing just how much the artist's artwork has improved over like a decade or so. The Diamond Mouse also has a disturbingly very humanoid body layout, which I felt sort of crosses over to uncanny valley territory. That's not a complaint, though, just an observation!
Fog Mouse, Pebble Mouse, Silvertail Mouse
In the mountains, you've got a bunch more Super-Brie+ exclusive mice, and these... aren't super-interesting. The Fog Mouse's the neatest, thanks to the ability to create fogs and apparently are able to band together to create massive hurricanes, but there's no real in-game event that relates to the 'oh no, Fog Mice are gathering and are creating furricanes' like the flavour text implies. The Pebble Mouse uses pebbles to switch with cheese, Indiana Jones style. It's got the most adorable art. The Silvertail Mouse just has a tail of silver that it can use to trigger traps. Overall, again, not the most exciting of mice, which really sort of tells us that these were originally meant to just be rarer Indigenous Mice.
Frosty Snow Mouse, Frozen Mouse
Originally released as seasonal Christmas mice (and hoo boy Mousehunt has a massive chunk of seasonal mice), the Frosty Snow and Frozen Mice stuck around as rare encounters in the Mountain, with the Frozen Mouse as a somewhat rare encounter, and the Frosty Snow Mouse as a Super-Brie+ exclusive critter outside of Christmas. I love the artwork for the Frosty Snow Mouse, with three mice in snowballs making up a snowman, and apparently this is a literal 'pyramid scheme' concocted by the mouse on top! Frozen Mouse, of course, is a reference to Ice Age's Scrat, but apparently the Frozen Mouse is permanently stuck in that ice and the other mice bully him and use him as a glorified doorstop.
Craggy Ore Mouse, Slope Swimmer Mouse, Mountain Mouse
These three mountain mice are essentially what, I feel, the Granite Mouse would've ended up looking like if it was designed in the modern day, or at least the artstyle would look similar to this. The three of them are the mid-bosses of the revamped Mountain region, attracted only to the Chedd-ore cheese obtained from cracking a rock. And... they're neat. I like the Craggy Ore Mouse perched on a rock peacefully, apparently curling up into a rock itself to hide and scavenge as its two larger cousins nom on larger rock. The Slope Swimmer Mouse just looks sleek and cool, and apparently uses webbed feet and the spikes on the rest of its body to literally swim through rock.
The Mountain Mouse, meanwhile, combines both the 'rock' and 'ice' theme that the rest of the mountain mice have, with gauntlets of ice and a rocky exterior. And pants, for some reason, despite the rest of the Mountain Mice not wearing pants. Not the biggest fan of this one, I feel, mostly because I like the Slope Swimmer and Craggy Ore a lot more.
Abominable Snow Mouse
The boss of the Mountain? The Abominable Snow Mouse, another originally-seasonal mouse. It's basically a snowman that throws snowballs, and I really, really liked its original art with a mouthless face (at least from what we can see) and looking less like a muscular mouse and more like a being made out of ice and frost. Sure, the detailing on the new artwork with the vivid musculature and the bearded face is absolutely pretty dang cool, but I felt like we did miss a bit of the mystique that the original design had.
Anyway, at around the point that a mousehunter has gone through the basic areas of Gnawnia -- the meadow, the town, the windmill, the harbour and the mountains, basically a bunch of other areas are opened to them. The Calm Clearing leads to the Whisker Woods and a forest-themed set of mice. Eventually, they can reach the pagoda of Furoma, with oriental-themed enemies. But the longest and most essential bit is the Burroughs areas, where hunters go from hunting in the very spooky sci-fi themed Laboratory... and eventually discover that apparently, radiation and spooky necromancy come hand-in-hand in the lands of Gnawnia. Like all other areas, the Laboratory eventually got a revamp, and a bunch of previously indigenous mice ended up being moved into their own "Lab Experiments" tab.
Bionic Mouse
...because apparently the human scientist working in the Digby Laboratory can't leave well enough alone, leading to creatures like the Bionic Mouse, who is a cyborg mouse! As the very first in a long, long string of half-mechanical mice in Mousehunt, the Bionic Mouse communicates the design pretty well while also keeping things relatively simple, and even with the more dated (but still very damn well good) art, I really do love the sci-fi look of glowing chunky mechanical bits.
Mutated White Mouse, Mutated Gray Mouse
In addition to creatures like the Bionic mice and things like gold, diamond and granite mice (which I suppose would be impervious to radiation), the Laboratory is inhabited by the Mutated White and Mutated Gray Mouse, and I absolutely love how these are basically the original artwork, modified to reflect the horrifying mutations that has befallen these creatures. The Mutated White still looks somewhat adorable, even with its three ears and angry evil eyes and jagged teeth. And while it still looks very friendly, the three eyes and random extra hands on the Mutated Gray really makes it look a lot more alien and unsettling.
Also love the detail that the chunk of swiss cheese has been replaced with radioactive blue cheese.
Mutated Brown Mouse, Mutated Mole Mouse
Added in a Halloween update and quickly added into the population of the Laboratory is the Mutated Brown Mouse. Unlike the Mutated White and Gray, though, the Mutated Brown Mouse has an amazing flavour text that ran for quite a while, with the flavour text lampshading how the scientist thought how radiation had no effect on brown mice... but they just got smarter and more devious, until one point until the mutation reached critical mass, and apparently they slaughtered the scientists studying them. Pretty neat flavour, even if in practice the Mutated Brown isn't stronger than its two earlier-released kin. Artwork-wise it's pretty much a feral, werewolf-looking humanoid mouse.
The Mutated Mole Mouse is a mutated version of the Mole Mouse, a former member of the Indigenous Mouse group who's moved to... uh... -checks- Digby Dirt Dwellers? I guess that makes sense. As could be seen by the comparison to the picks and lanterns they once held, the Mutated Mole got super big. Pretty great artwork, love the bulky look and the still-peaceful look on the otherwise monstrous looking hulk. I think these are the rare encounter in the Laboratory.
Clumsy Chemist Mouse, Sludge Scientist Mouse, Squeaker-Bot
To actually show some scientists in the laboratory, the Laboratory revamp added a bunch of new lab-themed mice. The original story had there be human scientists that fucked up while investigating radioactive sludge, but I guess these mice scientists moved in? The Clumsy Chemist has adorable booties and an adorably broken flask, and whatever the fuck that fancy Ghostbusters backpack is supposed to be. They're bumbling and hilarious, whereas the Sludge Scientist Mouse is a more boring, serious scientist doing serious science work.
Squaker-Bot, meanwhile, are created from spare parts and I do love how adorable they are. Technically these are completely mechanical, but I do love how the two parabola 'ears' and the cord 'tail' sort of end up making a vaguely mouse-like anatomy, even if it does roll around in with a set of Wall-E style treads. There's even an adorable set of glowing red 'eyes' looking to the side! That massive electrical-tipped arm is apparently there to grab and gather cheese to return to their mice overlords. Okay, then. Pretty adorable, either way!
Monster Mouse
And here we have the original boss for the Laboratory, the Monster Mouse, boasting a once-impressive might. It's meant to be a homage to Frankenstein's Monster, which befits an insane laboratory, and a neat prelude to the horror-themed areas that would follow up after the Laboratory. I do like that its parts seem to be taken from other mice before it. The right fits is from the granite mouse, its left arm is from the steel and diamond, its crotch from the gold mouse, and its tail from the bionic mouse. Pretty horrendous looking, befitting a Frankenstein's Monster Mouse. Or, rather, a F. Romage's Monster Mouse.
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