Bless the baby angel that is in charge of producing 3D platformers. Well, it's more the work of small teams of passionate developers around the world, but regardless of the providence that has allowed it I've had another opportunity to partake in running around 3D environments picking up random junk for hours and boy is that just peachy. This particular opportunity was The Spirit and the Mouse by Canadian team Alblune; befitting that country's European roots, the game feels beholden to both the UK and France in its aesthetic choices. (Well, maybe more so France, but the language was in English at least so we limeys will take partial credit.)

In the Spirit and the Mouse you play as an electric mouse whose task it is to help humans become the very best, like no-one ever was happier by listening to their troubles and resolving them, provided it's a request that a mouse carrying some serious voltage is capable of fulfilling. A guy who is missing his favorite TV show after the signal goes down, for example, just needs for you to shock the antenna above the building to bring it back online. Added to this is an extra layer of complication where the electricity spirits that power these generators also need your assistance, and these tasks tend to be little mini-games and fetch quests that might involve gathering information from around the level to answer trivia questions or playing hide and seek. The "small guys in a big world" aspect combined with the emphasis on these little spirits and their unseen lives reminded me quite a bit of the Wii game Elebits, which works for me as it was one of my favorite obscurities for that system. Exploring the everyday from a different perspective, especially when that perspective is very low to the ground, definitely has an appealing quality.

As the Spirit and the Mouse is one of those rare platformers with no jumping, similar to Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker, much of the time you're having to fall from higher up to reach other areas. While it's a known scientific fact that rats can't jump or leave the ground unassisted in any way, it's equally known that they're excellent climbers. As well, given the titular Mouse of this game was filled with the awesome power of raw lightning during the prologue, she can also ride through power cables like the electricity gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which is something of a nexus of mine when it comes to apposite pop culture-based analogies. Through these two traversal skills the game makes ample use of verticality in its level design, having you explore the sleepy Parisian-esque town of Sainte-et-Claire on both street level and rooftop level. The rooftops are often where the power boxes that house the aforementioned electricity spirits (called Kibblins) are found, so the first task after listening to a human's problems—or overhearing them, I should say—is usually to make your way up to the nearby Kibblin-Box. It's also a case of the game's relatively small size working for it: the levels, compromising four areas of the town corresponding to the cardinal directions, are never so large that you're likely to get lost while exploring or spend too long sweeping up collectibles while still substantial enough for some clever circuitous design.

The game has three main sets of collectibles, usually seen at the top left of the screen: the happiness of the humans, which is the main story-critical type; energy, which can be gained by shocking metallic objects and earned in bunches after assisting the Kibblins; and lightbulbs, which are spread across town and can be exchanged for maps and a few power-ups from an NPC back in the starting area. The last of these lightbulb power-ups is actually a radar that pings whenever a lightbulb is close by for the sake of those hunting for the full set, which is the type of convenient QoL feature that I always appreciate in collectathons like this—that you still have to find more than half of these collectibles on your own before you can unlock it for purchase is a fine compromise. They don't really serve any further purpose beyond being something there to chase after, but it does have that beneficial side-effect of letting you appreciate the intricacy of the level design when poking around every nook and cranny. Most of the gameplay loop is contained within those Kibblin missions which, while simple enough, are at least varied in their approach: many are puzzle-based, while others might involve a traversal challenge or exercising the player's reflexes. (Thankfully, the game has its own journal tool to track any passwords or information you might glean, but that's really closer to something that should come as standard.)

As with most Indie 3D platformers there's not a whole lot of content to the game (it's about six hours long) but what's there is charming, stress-minimal, and eclectic (and electric) enough in its objectives to leave a positive impression. Visually and audio-wise it's pretty solid too, with some amusing characterization for the mischievous and work-shy Kibblins and a jaunty French accordion jazz number playing in the background that—along with its rodent hero—makes the game feel very Ratatouille in stretches (or, closer to my own interests, like the BGM of Dark Cloud 2's main hub city). Just a cute game about doing regular mouse stuff like turning into electricity and conversing with ghosts, all the while taking in the attractive view from your high-up perch on the rooftops—in fact, it's sort of like that part with the bat gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch after it got covered in cement and froze in place on an eave like a gargoyle.

Rating: 4 out of 5.