I think that as a lot of us gamers get older, we tend to forget that games are meant for the young. We romanticize the challenges of our first games while downplaying all the games we played that were more accessible. Yes, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, and Ghouls N’ Ghosts gave me many sleepless nights trying to finally beat them. But there were many other sleepless nights because I’d gained so many free lives in Pac-Man that I couldn’t lose, or spent late nights with Super Mario Brothers, Bionic Commando, and Castlevania, games that I had beaten many times, but I just wanted to do it one more time.
In that particular mindset is where I want to talk about The Spirit and the Mouse. Its story is simple and straightforward, the controls easy to understand, and the challenges within are easily surmountable with only a few harder challenges here and there. It’s a game meant to welcome the new kids, yes, but it’s also ready to offer some nostalgia to the older gamer not married to their hardcore pride. Perhaps best of all, it’s short, done and dusted in a few sessions. It stays around just long enough to be fun, and never overstays its welcome.
The story is introduced in a few minutes. A mouse living in a small village in France decides it wants to help people be happier. It sees a woman lose her favorite scarf and gives chase to retrieve it. Instead, it climbs the highest metal pole in the village right as a freak lightning storm delivers a guardian spirit. The mouse receives the spirit’s power and is tasked with making people happy, so it would seem that fate has smiled on the little furry dude.
Now, here’s where things get silly. You see, all over town, all people really need to be happy—truly happy—is electricity. Every problem comes down to needing le jus in la langue française as the locals would say. Yes, it’s dumb, but just run with it. The story is cute enough that it’s worth playing it through even if the idea makes your little grey cells quiver in rage.
In each case, making someone happy involves finding a magic fuse box, which is missing its sparks. The sparks are out and about doing goofy shenanigans instead of their actual jobs. So you do a little task for them, usually involving a fetch quest and some light platforming, and they go back to work, et voila the human is happy again. From there, you return to the guardian spirit to take on more jobs.
You can also collect sparks to level up skills and light bulbs to buy new skills, but this is the lightest kind of Metroidvania. There’s only two added skills to unlock new areas, and the village isn’t big enough that you can forget where to go. Like I said, it’s the kind of game you’d give to a very young kid to get them into the hobby before chucking the poor fools off the deep end into Dark Souls or The End is Near.
Once it seems like the mouse has made everyone happy, the titular spirit is ready to bounce, but the mouse insists there’s one last person who needs help. This requires going back to each section of the village to recruit help in helping this last person. And this is where my one complaint comes in.
Once the last mission is near completion, I’m tasked with climbing a tower similar to the one at the start of the game. But despite getting the button prompt to start climbing, the game got glitchy and refused to grant the mouse access. It was only after several minutes of pressing all the buttons and cursing that I finally got the prompt to work right. But then from there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to an ending that was adorable, worthy of a short kids’ cartoon from Dreamworks.
Setting aside that one glitch, I’d call this a perfect introduction to gaming for the young or young at heart. Every side quest has just the right length to invite that “just one more” itch that make so many genres of gaming addicting, and the mouse’s earnest desire to help is delightful even if the method of delivering happiness is a bit dumb and convenient.
In the end I’ll give The Spirit and the Mouse 4 stars. It’s a good time that lasts around ten hours if you go in for all the collectible stuff, and then you can just leave it in your library until a niece or nephew wonders what makes games so fun. Then you can have them play this before ambushing them with Metal Gear V.