Game: The Spirit and the Mouse
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Platformer
System: Steam (Windows), (also available on Nintendo Switch)
Developers | Publishers: Alblune | Armor Games Studio
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $ 19.99 | UK £ 15.49 | EU 16,79
Release Date: September 26th, 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to Game If You Are.
The Spirit and the Mouse is a narrative-focused adventure developed by an indie team of two developers, Lucie Lescuyer and Alex Strook of Alblune Studios. You may remember its appearance in the Wholesome Direct back in June.
Sainte-et-Claire
In the quaint French village of Sainte-et-Claire, the residents are hunkered down in their homes as a violent thunderstorm looms.
The residents may be safe and warm in their homes, but Lila, the mouse, is outside in the wind and rain. A villager’s scarf blows off the washing line and gets stuck on the village’s lightning rod. On the ground, Lila watches the event play out. So the mouse decides she wants help and sets out to retrieve the scarf from the lightning rod. Oh oh, I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Lila!
Lila The Mouse
But unbeknownst to her, life was about to take an unexpected turn. Lila’s timing for retrieving the scarf couldn’t be worse. Just as Lila reaches the top of the rod, a lightning bolt strikes it, and Lila falls injured to the ground.
The lighting strike also damaged the village’s electricity supply, and the Kibblins, who are tiny electric beings in charge of the electricity and well-being of the people, escaped, leaving a lot of unhappy and frustrated residents in Sainte-et-Claire.
The Lumion, the Spirit Guardian
The voice of the Spirit Guardian awakens Lila; she discovers that not only has she been struck by lightning, but The Lumion, the Spirit Guardian’s powers have transferred to her.
As you can imagine, the Lumion isn’t too happy to be parted from his electrifying powers. He tells kind-hearted Lila to find the Kibblins and restore full power to the village.
You control Lila the mouse in this wholesome adventure as she sets out to help the villagers of Sainte-et-Claire. With the weakened electricity power, the villages find that it impedes even the simplest of daily tasks. For example, Lila will help fix the TV antenna in the local bar so the patron can watch his favourite show.
In addition, she will restore power to the microwave so the young man can have his food heated up after a hard day at work. In this way she fixes many other villagers’ electricity-related problems.
Help the Villagers
You’ll search high and low from rooftops to the pavements to find the lost Kibblins. Once found, you will have to do a short puzzle quest to entice the Kibblin back to the Kibblin Box.
Lila can climb and use electric sockets and cables to zap up walls and traverse the village. The Spirit and the Mouse is an excellent mix of puzzling and platforming. For those players (like me) who don’t have good reaction time for timing jumps, you don’t need to worry, as this is a relaxing and stress-free jaunt around Sainte-et-Claire.
Complete Puzzle Quests
The Kibblins always have something for Lila to do before they agree to return to the Kibblin box. Such as finding the right combination of numbers for a Kibblin to press or rescuing a Kibblin who is about to fall off the wooden beam above a house.
Traversing the world from a mouse’s perspective is great fun as you ascend buildings, crawl through tight spaces, and use Lila’s newly acquired electrical powers to travel through the powerline. It’s a neat mechanic and works very well. You also collect lightbulbs which can be exchanged with a Kibblin for maps of the areas and power-ups for Lila.
Visuals and Controls
The village is split into four areas, north, south, west and east; each area is beautifully illustrated with soothingly appropriate french themed music.
The game has full controller support on PC. The responsive and intuitive controls make Lila a pleasure to control. In the settings, you can change them to make Lila automatically jump up instead of pressing the button to have her do the action.
One Slight Niggle
The only problem I encountered in the Spirit and the Mouse was the camera. Controlling the camera is done by using the stick, and it does have a limit on how far it will move. Unfortunately, the camera movement limit caused a hiccup for me during one puzzle section.
I had to follow the cable on the wall to find the electric box it was attached to. However, with the camera’s height limit, I couldn’t follow the cable up high as the camera doesn’t let you look directly up, so the puzzle took longer to solve than needed.
Conclusion – A Heartwarming Tail
The Spirit and the Mouse is an adventure game that will warm the cockles of your heart and leave you with warm fuzzy feelings. You can see the love the devs have put into the game; Lila is a perfect mouse. She can even squeak at the press of a button. It’s a game about kindness and helping others, something we could all do with remembering in this crazy world we inhabit.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up 