The flavors with which developers have built first-person shooters over the years are as varied as they are numerous, and Fumi Games has added another that comes out tasting like quite a mix: Mouse: P.I. For Hire. Set in a gritty noire story told through rubberhose animated-characters, Mouse: P.I. takes players into the seedy underbelly of Mouseberg, and while I often felt like more of a “Mouse Mercenary” than a P.I., the look and feel of the game had me hooked throughout the twisting and turning adventure.
The case stank like stale blue cheese
Mouse: P.I. for Hire is set in a world full of rats. And shrews, and other such anthropomorphized rodents. It’s also a world of black and white with various shades of gray, both literally and metaphorically. Mouse: P.I. For Hire is left in grayscale in the style of old cartoons, at least for the characters. The levels themselves are 3D modeled. The rubberhose 2D sprites in 3D environments almost immediately make for a striking visual look that gives Mouse: P.I. uniquely-engaging character throughout the whole case.
And what a case it is. Private investigator Jack Pepper is a grizzled veteran with a long history, and when he goes looking into a seemingly simple lead from his friend, that history threatens to catch up with Pepper. Set in an alternate 1920s, Mouse P.I. is ripe with references to old wars, poverty, alcohol smuggling, and other topics of the time. However, being that it’s a bombastic shooter, it doesn’t always handle those topics with grace. In particular, there’s a level where police raid a shrew neighborhood (shrews are treated poorly in this game compared to other rodents). It was a bit of an off-putting disconnect for me to navigate an area where police mice were rounding up and abusing fleeing shrews when seconds later, I’d be gunning down waves of nameless thugs which, from then on, often included shrews.
Mouse: P.I. For Hire is not a highly investigative-minded game for having such a name. It has more in common with a classic shooter like Duke Nukem 3D, and that clashes with the narrative sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, there’s value in searching the levels because they are full of secrets that have plenty to add to the adventure, and the story is at least intriguing, with a solid voice cast delivering its beats and a jazzy score to drive the mood. You’re just also going to spend far more time perforating bouncy cartoon thugs with funny guns than dusting crime scenes for fingerprints in a missing persons case.
But they are funny guns
Mouse: P.I. For Hire’s run-and-gun escapades are still quite fun. Once you accept the Duke Nukem-ness of it all and lean into the chaos, it serves up rubberhose-animated weaponry, enemy variety, and arenas that are fun to shoot your way out of and explore for secrets.
The weapons themselves were one of the highlights for me. Each gun has kind of a weird life to it (the bullets all have little cartoon faces), and discovering and each new weapon felt like a satisfying addition to the overall kit. Mouse’s pistol might be one of the strongest starting weapons I’ve seen in a shooter like this, but it’s also just satisfying and it sets a great baseline for the rest of the arsenal. They all have solid purpose, and you can upgrade each gun to get more out of them, like being able to charge the shotgun to stun enemies before you blast them with another load of buckshot. The game has good escalation of what you can do with your weaponry and abilities compared to what you face as you go through its challenges.
Enemies also have a ton of animation based on how you dispatch them and with what. The Devarnisher, in particular, fires globs of acetone at enemies that will burn them over time and, eventually, melt away their “ink,” leaving nothing but a crumbly skeleton. Meanwhile explosive barrels in arenas will turn enemies to blinking piles of ashes, freezing barrels will lock them up for you to shatter into bits if you hit them after, and hits to specific body parts from certain weapons actually trigger different animations. It’s easy to see that a ton of love went into the gunplay and the way that damage and pitfalls interact with any character. The only thing that kind of breaks the flow for me is Mouse P.I.’s sprites (especially defeated enemies) only have one angle, so they’re always facing you. It might be a classic aesthetic thing (again, Duke Nukem did that, too), but it feels like a weird choice given how much animation is in this game already.
These levels are packed with bonuses off the beaten path, too. Mouse: P.I. is broken up into a hub where Jack’s office, a weapon shop, an upgrade shop, and a few minigames await, and every clue takes Jack to a different part of the city where he chases down leads in a hail of bullets that often leaves the places in ruins. However, by being diligent and poking every corner, you’ll also find classic shooter-styled secret areas that have things like money for upgrades, comics, baseball cards (for a minigame), collectibles, and newspaper clippings that all mostly serve to add to the lore of the world. They’re also just pretty interesting levels to explore in general. Unfortunately, at least along the main story, once you complete a level there isn’t an easy way to go back and play them again without starting a new save or completing the game. Even so, Mouse: P.I. certainly isn’t lacking for things to do, well and beyond the mainline case.
More PO’ed than PI
I’m a bit split on how I feel about Mouse: P.I. For Hire. I find its take on a mousey 1920s Prohibition Era fascinating. The cartoonish nature adds charm and personality, but it also sometimes dips its toes into heavy topics it feels like it wants me to invest in beyond the vibes of a Duke Nukem-like shooter, and I actually feel everything else clashes with that. It’s a game in which you take funny weapons into a series of arenas and kill everything in them. It’s really good at making that feel and look exciting! But then its story is one about hardboiled sleuthing, exploring intense topics of the Roaring 20s, and facing one’s painful past, and I’m just not sure that combination of beats is a synergistic fit for a bodycount this high. Fun? Yes. Quite. But it’s may simply be best to not think about it too much as you’re getting to the bottom of this mystery by aggressively de-inking every cartoon rodent that stands between Jack Pepper and the truth.
This review is based on an early PC copy supplied by the publisher. Mouse: P.I. For Hire comes out on April 16, 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
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