Review: SPY Mouse

As a recovered Flight Control addict, I was looking forward to the latest iOS game to come from local Melbourne development house Firemint.

I’m sad to say that SPY Mouse didn’t really live up to my expectation. The title looks great, but with a number of studios releasing stunning and well-built games for the platform, SPY Mouse didn’t do anything special to separate itself from the ever-increasing pack of iOS games.

The idea of SPY Mouse is to get cheese — simple enough — by using your finger to guide your mouse to as many dairy delights as possible. At the same time, you need to avoid being eaten by cats as you rescue the delicious wedges of cheese and take them to the map’s exit. There’s a couple of neat mechanics to aid you on your quest; chillies make you go faster, and televisions distract your enemies. Admittedly, the mechanics definitely add flavour and variety to the different levels.

Levels are accessed from a neighbourhood hub-world, from which you can enter various houses to misappropriate the lumps of lactose. One thing that made this setup tedious was the graphically appealing, but surprisingly long animations. Like other puzzle games, you can earn up to three ribbons per level for things such as not being spotted by any cats, using a single path, or finishing within a certain time limit. Unlike other level-based puzzlers though, I didn’t really feel a draw to repeat levels just the sake of those ribbons.

The thing that I was most disappointed about this game is that it isn’t a universal app. I’ve probably just been spoiled, but I much prefer to play games on my iPad rather than the iPhone when given the choice. Especially with a game such as this that would benefit from the larger screen to assist in puzzle solving.

I might be a bit harsh on SPY Mouse, but I know that Firemint is capable of so much more — especially after their past successes. If this game was released by any other developer, I probably wouldn’t have spent my dollar on it — Firemint’s name alone was enough to inspire me to purchase the title. It’s a well-made game, but seems uninspired and very generic. It failed to get me coming back for more when I had a spare few minutes, which is what it’s all about in the casual iOS market.