Mouse: Rental PI may fill the cup head left with invalid animation
Blog Andrew Joseph 14 Jun , 2025 0
Cuphead did something in 2017, and it can be said that we have never seen it in video games, or at least not as good as Cuphead’s degree: it made animation from the 1930s around the entire entirely hand-painted art and animation. We haven't seen it yet because it might be because it's very difficult, time-consuming and laborious to do all the hard visual work by hand. But now, a new hand-drawn and manual animation project is ready to add color to our PCs and gaming consoles. This is called Mouse: PI for rent, and the art of completely handmade is the only thing that has something in common with Cuphead. The mouse is its own game, the same gorgeous game, and after watching a switchable demo, I was interested in it just like when I first saw Cuphead. That is, I am very interested.
Obviously, the mouse is black and white. This is reminiscent of the steamboat era in the early animation era, where they were always rocking guns even without use, as if they were made of rubber. (A little bit of a gun.) You can also clearly see that the mouse is a first-person shooter. In it, you play Jack Pepper, who plays a stereotypical New York accent in on-demand video game voice actor Troy Baker. After all, he was Gumshoe from the early 20th century, see? He sounds like one.
What I really like about the demos I saw with the mouse is that it's not just an unconscious running first-person shooter (that's not to say there's anything wrong with that). Instead, part of what I saw was set in an opera house where Pepper had to find and question the stage designer. We started at the back door, where we talked to a waiter and asked about the aforementioned stage designer Roland. He hasn't seen him yet, so we go and investigate ourselves.
Inside, the kitchen provides a better understanding of the visual beauty here. Notice how characters are in 2D in 3D space, unlike monsters in primitive doom. The peep through the porthole window of the kitchen door shows a detective of the mouse – Features: Scout, as Jack took a picture and saw some members of the Big Mouse Party – aka we don't want anything to do with it.
Moving to the back of the kitchen we met a sleek waiter who was happy to help us upstairs and quietly walk to where we needed to be quiet – costing $30. We refuse to bribe and find a vent that can sneak. People were appreciated for a huge pile of cash hiding in the vents, but the bottom fell down and crashed us outside where we started, which was not appreciated.
The second attempt took us back to the kitchen and into the same vent, carefully climbed into the newly made hole in the floor and took us to the locker room where there was a Thompson machine gun and some ammunition waiting. Of course, you shouldn't be here, and the Big Rat Party members will not be about your existence. Here we first look at the first person shooter battle, which includes a gorgeous reload animation.
We heard a sound that might be Roland, but first, the safe gives us a chance to see the locked mini-game, and what is hidden in the safe: a cup of coffee? Then things got very loud because the wall in front of us blew up and we had to put out the bad guy who came out of the smoke and dig holes in the floor by ourselves so we could get into the guts of the opera house.
Finally, we found Roland. Jack Defuc wasn't an extra extra activity at all, he was beaten by him.
Fast forward to more battles, including shotgun, which looks like a nice wallop, and also has a great reload animation. Take a look at the explosion bucket again to make the bad guys burn in the most cartoonish way. There's even an ice bucket – maybe liquid nitrogen? – Freeze nearby enemies when detonating, allowing you to kick them and break them into a thousand terminal 2 styles. A moment later, we also see the third weapon in the demo: the turpentine gun, which melts these cartoon characters literally made of paint, which is different from who fell into the dip of Roger Roger Rabbit?
After passing some platform and fighting the new helicopter tail enemy type, we found the way upstairs…just open the trap door at our feet and rewind us back to the basement. Here we meet the old mouse technician who teaches Jack the double moves. After testing and discovering a secret – a baseball trading card for “Brie” Ruth (get it because they are rats and love cheese?) – we find the way on stage to destroy cannons and save Steelton, which triggers the boss fight with a raging opera performer. The turpentine gun took him off, and we can take a look at its reload animation, which is cooler than the other animations we've seen if you ask me.
The fire on the stage spread to the rest of the opera house and we had to leave here. However, we will have to use all the weapons that can be used to fire. Jack Pepper is OK. Let's watch some battles now, uninterrupted.
Eventually escaped the building and we met with the stage designer, who coughed up his knowledge of the disappearing performer. About the secret laboratory under his mansion? No, that sounds like no doubt at all… So we exited the level and the demo ended.
So, although it seems like I haven't played it myself from the mouse I've seen and you just saw most of what I've seen, I really want to give it a try. It seems to be lighthearted, a bit comedy, and also self-aware, but provides a solid first-person shooter in its core aspect. After all, as gorgeous and admirable as hand-painted art and animation, it wouldn't be really beautiful if the gameplay couldn't support it and I kept my interest in it during its campaign. But at this point, I'm very optimistic.
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