Mouse Maze

The Good
Gameplay is explained in the game’s title and the device’s facade. You play as a mouse inside a never ending maze, searching for cheese and avoiding cats. The arcade style of accumulating points isn’t the only feature. What really sets this game apart is the Energize function which allows the player to break through one wall when enough cheese has been collected, which implements a degree of strategy.

There’s decent presentation outside the game on the LCD device with cute cartoony graphics and the box art which has oddly different colors for the cat and mice. The figures of the mouse character are varied just enough to look lively so you can see what state it is in. Sometimes you might get tense as you hope that you won’t run into the cat, like you’re getting into the mouse’s character.

The Bad
While the gameplay is great in its simplistic mechanics, the major problem is the angle in which the maze is shown. It’s slanted so that you can see several walls ahead of you but only one wall to your immediate left, right and behind. You just need to memorise the ever random generating walls as much as you can to get far. Overcome this immediate problem and you’re good to go.

The Bottom Line
Virtually every Tiger handheld game looks the same in regards to short simple gameplay, with repetitive movement and no strategy, but not this one. In addition to unique gameplay, this game sets itself apart with a pseudo 3D perspective. Great time killer, highly addictive and good distraction. If this game had existed on very old computers like Commodore PET and TRS-80, it would have been way ahead of its time. It all goes to show how the smallest, simplest and innovative of games can be as much fun as pogs, marbles and building blocks.