MOUSE: P.I. For Hire

I will admit that the first screenshot stopped me cold. Every enemy, every NPC in MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is hand-drawn in black and white rubber-hose animation, frame by frame, then placed inside a three-dimensional world where they always rotate to face you head-on. The effect is stranger and more alive than any still image can communicate. Fumi Games, a first-time studio out of Warsaw, built something that functions almost as a moving art installation with a pistol in it, and for a substantial portion of the campaign's 24 missions, that is more than enough reason to keep going. At its mechanical core this is a boomer shooter, closer in spirit to the relentless forward momentum of DOOM or DUSK than to any actual detective game. Movement is fast, crouching is for other shooters, and the dash has invincibility frames that savvy players will learn to lean on hard. Over the campaign you unlock traversal abilities including a grapple hook, double jump, wall-running, and a tail spin that adds verticality to both platforming and combat. The arsenal runs to eleven firearms at launch, each with a two-tier upgrade path unlocked by collecting weapon schematics in the field and redeeming them at Tammy Tumbler's workshop. The Devarnisher shoots corrosive globs with a damage-over-time that keeps ticking even when targets move; the James Gun is your reliable mid-range workhorse; the Loose Cannon exists for moments when the room simply needs to stop existing. Consumable power-ups, throwable environmental hazards like fire barrels and freeze barrels, and three difficulty tiers (Rookie, Detective, Supersleuth) round out a system that has more texture than it initially appears. Seasoned boomer shooter players should go straight to Supersleuth, where weapon-switching and barrel tactics become genuinely necessary rather than optional flourishes. The honest caveat is that the gap between the visual ambition and the design ambition is real, and critics noticed it. Combat encounters are telegraphed openly, pacing loosens in the back half as new ideas slow down, and the investigative framing is mostly cosmetic. Jack Pepper, voiced with gruff charm by Troy Baker, solves cases primarily by shooting everyone in them. The lockpicking minigame, which sends your tail through a barrel in a snake-like puzzle, is a small bright spot of mechanical wit, and the hub area of Mouseburg does earn its keep as a narrative anchor between missions. But anyone arriving expecting the clue-gathering and puzzle density the P.I. branding implies will need to recalibrate expectations early. Some post-launch bugs including occasional enemy shots passing through walls and spotty lip-sync during dialogue have been patched down but not fully resolved. What holds everything together is the atmosphere, and I mean that with real sincerity. The soundtrack is a big-band jazz ensemble that fits the grimy 1930s setting so naturally it starts to feel like the game would be lesser without it. Level locations swing from film studios and opera houses to a showboat, a haunted graveyard, and a swamp, each rendered with enough environmental detail that arriving somewhere new still carries a small sense of occasion. Characters move with exaggerated elastic animations that make even simple idle moments feel expressive. The world-building in Mouseburg, with its factional tensions between mice and shrews, its crooked politicians and noir-pulp twists, is not literature, but it is committed and often funny in a cheese-pun way that works better than it should. This is the kind of debut that you root for. Its weaknesses are real and worth naming. But Fumi Games built something with a genuine handcrafted soul, and for players who have not yet burned out on the boomer shooter revival, the style-to-substance ratio lands comfortably in the positive. Kai, Scout Team