Mouseward Is A Surprising Twist On Soulslikes That Already Works Wonderfully
A cuddlier take on hardcore combat.
Dark Souls-inspired games tend toward grim and gritty aesthetics, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As 2024’s Another Crab’s Treasure proved, sometimes a colorful game with a cute animal as a protagonist can make a surprisingly good fit for the Soulslike genre. Now, a newly announced game is taking a similar tack, this time with a sword-wielding mouse in the lead, and Nintendo 64-inspired art and gameplay thrown into the mix.
Finite Reflection, developer of the cult hit minimalist Soulslike Void Sols, just announced Mouseward, a very different take on the genre that looks just as promising as its last release. This time around, the developer is ditching the abstract style of Void Sols for a cute, low-poly look that brings to mind old-school collectathon platformers. And after getting an early look at its demo (available now on Itch.io), I’m convinced it could turn out even better than the last game.
Mouseward is an unlikely mix of Soulslike and collectathon platformer that somehow works.
Technically, the whiskered hero of Mouseward is undead, brought forth from their grave by a mysterious meteorite, but that doesn’t make them any less cute. Mouseward takes place in a setting reminiscent of critter-based fantasy like Redwall, populated by all manner of rats, badgers, and other woodland creatures. The preview version available now takes place in a town built across the banks of the river, with criss-crossing bridges and scaffolding turning the small settlement into a sprawling maze of back alleys and rooftops.
If you’ve played any Soulslike before, you’ll have a good idea of the basics of Mouseward. Attacking and dodging uses stamina (as does jumping, which is as useful for evading attacks as for platforming), and getting defeated means being sent back to the most recent bonfire you rested at for another try. I’ve gotten a bit tired of stamina mechanics in general and Mouseward’s use of it isn’t going to change that, but at least it’s more forgiving than other Soulslike in how many actions you can take before needing to rest.
Finding a less punishing way to use Soulslike mechanics seems to be a pattern overall for Mouseward. It’s still a challenging game, but it’s clear Finite Reflection has a lot more on its mind than difficulty. Exploration is a cornerstone of the genre, and Mouseward uses that fact to make it a natural blend with the collectathon platformers of the N64 era — games like Super Mario 64 or PlayStation’s Spyro the Dragon that fill their worlds with hidden collectibles to uncover. As you explore the demo’s town, poking your nose into every corner can reward you with new equipment and optional enemies to fight, but also coins and stars to collect. Being curious will reward you with shortcuts and new powers, but sometimes just stumbling against a cache of coins is reward enough, scratching the completionist itch that old-school platformers use so effectively as motivation.
Mouseward puts all the satisfying bits of Soulslike combat in a less punishing package.
There’s a sense of tension inherent to Soulslike games, as you know that one false move can lead to your demise, forcing you to replay the same challenge that bested you after you respawn at the bonfire. That’s fully present in Mouseward, but the feeling I got from playing it was one of joy more than dread. Some combination of the charmingly retro art and music, the slower pace of its combat, and of course the fact that the world is full of fuzzy animals tamped down the frustration that I often feel when I get walloped by a boss and need to retrace my steps in other Souslikes.
In darker, more difficult variations of the Soulslike genre, it often feels like exploration is punished as much as it’s encouraged, but here, I went out of my way to collect every pickup I could get my paws on, regardless of whether it offered me any benefit or not. However strange Mouseward’s mashup of genres seems on the surface, it works better than I could have imagined in action.
