Randomice was first introduced to me through a Steam Next Fest. It jumped out at me thanks to its Sunday afternoon cartoon key art and promise of a non-combat Metroidvania play style. Needless to say, I loved what I experienced through that demo and have been eagerly awaiting its full release ever since. That time has finally come, and although it lives up to its promise from the demo, there are some surprising gameplay elements that I didn’t expect which gave me some conflicting thoughts as I played.
In Randomice you play as Suri, a mouse that is trapped in a lab with a bunch of other mice. You plot a way to escape with your fellow cellmate by disrupting the experiments you’re made to complete each day in the scientist’s bid for more research. Luckily your friend has a remote control that can seemingly disrupt the experiments in the hope that they can wake the other mice from their mind-altered state to find out where the lab is and attempt a breakout.
It’s a surprisingly dark plotline, especially as the visuals are telling you otherwise, and although it’s a narrative that stands out for many true-life events, this darkness never bleeds into the game in general; it’s only implied, which makes for a fascinating mixture of a friendly, cosy exploration game with some unseen darker implications running throughout it.
As you boot up the game, you’re thrown straight into a tutorial which introduces you to many of the tools you’ll find and how they work. Straight away I started to feel slightly concerned that I was being exposed to everything with no surprises left for me to find during the actual game. This concern was slightly true, but there were still some discoveries left for me to find.
The actual gameplay is set within a house, and you have to explore the different rooms to find items for the other mice scattered about the place, who will, after numerous steps, give you a key. You need to find a set amount of keys to unlock the exit and end the day. Of course this isn’t as simple as it sounds with many areas of the house gated off or you needing to find a particular tool to gain access to that mouse or area. A Metroidvania at its core, and the first couple of days were quite enjoyable.
Although most of the house unlocked in the second and third days, the goals were exactly the same, with the same interactions and speech from the mice. Repetition built up, which meant that I was getting slightly bored by this part of the game already, and this is a meaty game with more than 12 hours of gameplay, and the developer told me that QA players had reached over 100 hours.
With procedurally generated mechanics included, it meant the items were in different places each time, and it did give a slight unpredictability, but I was ready to end my playtime after day 3, but I kept going, and after a couple more days, something happened, and the game started to really come into its own by completely screwing with the expectations that the game itself had placed on me. All of a sudden the repetition from the first few levels started to make much more sense.
This repetition still never left, but it dissipated enough for me to really invest in the hunt and help these mice escape. One of the reasons why was through the fast pace you find and unlock items. Some instances saw me reaching and unlocking multiple things in very quick succession, which fed into many dopamine hits and gave me that very rewarding feeling of success all in a quick period of time. It was a good feeling, and the game kept delivering that serotonin for the majority of my playtime, even through the more challenging later levels.
The items themselves were a lot of fun to use too; all were usual household objects, and the traversal was well planned out and considerate of these items. From notice board pins to a lighter to a grappling hook made from string and a magnet, they really fed into the cartoony vibe of the game. Jumps and double jumps were unlocked by the “cheese” and “double cheese” jumps, which see a wedge of cheese appear from nowhere for Suri to jump from. My favourite was the rocket, as it really opened up the map and the speed at which you could travel around the house. Plus, every time you used it, Suri would sport an old-school pilot helmet and scarf.
This would all be for nothing if the design of the house itself were poorly done, but thankfully the developers did an excellent job on not just this aspect but the visual tone too. With every room you would expect to find accounted for, each was deliciously created full to the brim with clutter and detail. The hand-drawn backgrounds were incredible, with such care taken, with the watercolour style used perfectly. The character models were also wonderful, each with their own distinct personality through the clothes they wore or the way they spoke.
These both coming together set the mood and tone of the Sunday afternoon cartoon to the letter, and all I wanted to do was sit down next to a fire with a hot chocolate to play this game. I often stopped at random points to admire the work, but there was an instance where I slammed on the brakes as I sped through a room on my rocket as I noticed one of the pictures on the wall was depicting the moon from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. After that I kept an eye out, and to my pleasant surprise there were many references to many different games held within many of the pictures, with each day bringing new ones – a really nice touch that I highly appreciated.
Sound design was also on point, with a jazzy, piano-filled soundtrack filling my ears. It never got old, and I caught myself humming away after putting the game down. There’s a playfulness in the sound effects too, with whistles used for certain reactions, and the noticeboard pins’ “doing” sound effect being a favourite as you springboard from them. One warning I will give is that all the character talk is met with a blabbering sound effect which is usually a turn-off for me, but this one didn’t grate as much as it usually does. Thankfully, there’s a setting in the options to turn it off completely if it’s getting too much for you.
One slight niggle I do have is the many fortune cookies you’ll find throughout the game. At the start I thought they were to serve a certain purpose, but as the game went on I soon realised they are here to fill a gap for when there’s not a critical item or tool available. You read the fortune, and that’s it. I would have liked a more interactive experience with this side of the game, whether that was collecting stickers to put in a book or building a collection of interesting and wacky cheeses, just something to give it a lift, because as it stands, it’s the poorest part of the game.
