Facebook App Review: Mousehunt

Mousehunt is another "sporadic" app on Facebook, meaning that players are meant to check back every once in a while to play. In Mousehunt, every fifteen minutes players can "Sound the Hunter's Horn" to try and catch a mouse. This is also done automatically every hour. There are many places to go and things to be done, and hundreds of different mice to be caught and traps to be bought. In fact there's so much to do, it's kind of intimidating. It seems every piece of loot a mouse drops, and every item bought at a store, is an ingredient to something else. The game's nearly impossible without the wiki, and the developers are quite aware of it, linking to the wiki from the game itself.

Pros: Wide selection of traps, humourous tone, large game map, holiday events, constantly updated

Cons: Lack of direction, almost everything's an ingredient for something else

One good thing about Mousehunt is that unlike too many other apps, it doesn't require your constant attention, even at low levels. Players can even play the game only checking back every week or so, because when the player is inactive hunts are automatically conducted every hour.

Mousehunt puts on events for holidays around the year, like Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. It's a chance to acquire new traps and new loot, and, of course, see new mice. It's a nice touch, and adds a lot to the game.

But progress seems very slow, no matter how much you check back, keeping hunts going every fifteen minutes. Because almost every item you find is a piece of something else. And once you put the items together, you end up with some different item with a slightly larger range of colours and a slightly more humourous name, and you have no idea what it's for. There are only two ways to find out. One is to find "torn pages" that have recipes on them. The other is to look it up on the wiki. In most games that would be cheating, but this game is so vast and confusing that they link to it from the app.

I know that was all very confusing, but it's no better in the game. You'll have to try it out yourself.

Score: 9/10

You might think that 9/10 might be a bit high considering the rather large problem I pointed out, but the score's for the general impression, which the game did quite well at. I started playing the app when I joined Facebook in May, and I've been playing it ever since. It's the only app that's managed to last that long. While the vast game-world is intimidating and the items even more so, the humour, trap customisation and funny mice kept me coming back for more.

Screenshots

How can you not love the Missile Toe mouse?

Overkill? No such thing.