A Mouse Speaks to Death

Well... it ain't easy, being a mouse. In this game, a mouse recounts the many events in his life before he goes with... whatever a mouse calls the grim reaper.

It was actually an interesting read. The writing has a melancholy tone to it, and really got me thinking about those experiences a mouse might face. Experiences like getting abandoned by a parent, being caught by a human, falling in love with a mate and so on. You get a choice of cards to pick to see each experience (it's a bit hard to handle those cards on mobile screen) and to unlock all the content, multiple replays will be needed. Some of those experiences offer choices which provide a bit of extra story interactivity. The black and white color scheme for the background art and the font also help with conveying the vibe.

I recommend taking a look, drawing those cards and looking back before it's time to go well... where a mouse goes at the end of days.

There’s a running joke about the classic sci-fi tabletop RPG Traveller, which is that it’s the only game where you can die before getting out of chargen. It uses a “lifepath” system, you see, where a series of tables let you roll year by year for events in your military career before you decide to muster out, at which point the game proper begins. But buried in those tables are some options that will just kill you, and send you back to the drawing board before your poor character even gets a chance to start a campaign. The other running joke is that chargen is the best part of the game, and A Mouse Speaks With Death shows that actually there might be something to that: it uses a card-based storylet system rather than dice as you recall each of the events of your life, and per the title no matter how well you do there’s no way to get out alive. But just like Traveller, it’s compelling stuff that positively demands you try it at least a couple of times, just to see how differently things can turn out.

The other similarity with Traveller is that the game is based on the author’s own tabletop setting, a Watership-Down-style place where heroic mice scrounge, travel, and protect what’s theirs in the shadow of the overwhelming and arcane world of humankind. I was worried at first that this connection might wind up overburdening the game – there’s a very robust glossary running down in-world terminology, much of which felt unnecessary: did we really need to know that “thief” means someone “who steals from their own nestmates, a term of opprobrium” or that “trouble” is “something dangerous”? I presume that in the RPG some of these terms have mechanics attached to them, but in the context of this game, they’re superfluous.

Fortunately the game quickly proved that it’s a fleeter thing than that first impression might have suggested. Part of that is the lovely art: you’re greeted with a well-realized mouse skeleton wearing a robe and perched on a spool of thread, a near-perfect blend of dread and cute (this is the eponymous Death, to whom you’re reciting your memories before he moves you on to your final destination). Part of it is the no-nonsense interface: at each life-stage, you’re given a hand of three cards and can pick one to play, at which point you’re whisked into a storylet that offers more traditional choice-based gameplay (past the first choice, you can also use one of a limited stock of redraws to swap out your options). But mostly it’s just down to the writing, which efficiently delivers all the pleasures of this genre: the mice are doughty and resourceful, the mysterious human artifacts they encounter induce awe as well as a thrill of recognition, and there’s a lovely concreteness to it all. Here’s a bit from one of the opening vignettes:

"Our nest was tissue paper chewed into strips. When I first opened my eyes, the world was white and red in the gloom, the colour of the paper. We — me and my brothers and sisters — were all heaped up together. Those were wonderful days. We had full bellies; each other."

While you’re to a certain degree at the mercy of the cards, and no matter how well you play you can only make it through at most eight rounds, the game still feels generous and provides plenty of player agency. It helps that the framing lets you know that you’re going to die no matter what so you might as well enjoy yourself, but the storylets are also designed to let you coauthor many of the outcomes; if you feel like inflicting setbacks on your mouse, you’re free to, but for the most part you can also just decide to live a relatively charmed life before the inevitable happens.

While there isn’t any visible stat tracking or explicit connections between the cards, it’s clear that some storylets unlock others, like the way I saw cards enabling me to start a family after playing one that introduced me to my partner (I was a little disappointed, though, that the Red Beast storylet, which saw me boldly stride out to defend the nest, didn’t acknowledge that a previously one had seen me named the nest’s official Champion – this was actually just my job). The end of the game also shows you a little animated word-cloud based on how you played your mouse and what you accomplished; in my most eventful playthrough, I wound up with something like 17 tags, which maybe made the animation drag, but it makes for a nice incentive to try again and explore the possibility-space. The space around Death also fills up with cute bits of art representing possessions you accumulate or key events in your life, which similarly winds up rewarding experimentation.

Also contributing to A Mouse Speaks to Deaths’ grabbiness is the suggestion of a metaplot. Certain cards are marked with a special triangle symbol, and by playing as many of those as you can, you can learn scraps of lore about a fabled city whose inhabitants managed to obtain immortality. I’m not sure if the likelihood of getting these triangle cards increases in subsequent playthroughs, but in my fourth go-round I was able to find out the truth of these legends after some nerve-wracking derring-do; it’s maybe less climactic than I was expecting, and I still had three rounds left so this heroic mouse still wound up going out on a relatively simple note, but that fits the game’s unpretentious, wistful vibe better than allowing an epic fantasy theme to suddenly dominate.

I should mention some elements that are flaws, not just design choices: I noticed a few bugs in the Wind storylet, where several passages threw up angry red “bad conditional expression” errors, and the chronology of the different storylets sometimes got muddled (a few seem to take multiple years, whereas others are clearly over in a matter of hours or days and seem like they should certainly overlap with a few of the longer-term ones). One time I also died at my fourth or fifth card play without being sure what exactly had happened – I suppose that’s delivering the classic Traveller experience, but I definitely wanted a bit more closure. And I’m not sure the pool of different events is broad enough to keep each playthrough fresh after the third of fourth. Still, that’s more than enough to make for a meaty, satisfying experience; the well-judged game design structure and winsome prose were enough to induce me to see 23 of the 46 available stories, over the course of an hour or so, and I enjoyed every single one at least a little. The one downside is that I’m left with no desire at all to check out the tie-in RPG: I’m satisfied just rolling up and killing characters, thanks.

Played: 7/17/24
Playtime: 1.5hrs, 3playthroughs, 23 of 46 memories

I like mice. They have a clear-eyed view of cats.

This work is a choice-select piece, pretty much exactly what the title suggests. You are recalling incidents from a long mouse life to the Murine Reaper before your final curtain. The world is from a mouse based RPG, which, why not? There was a Watership Down one too. The big memory choices present as cards in a hand - you choose what scene to ‘play,’ then refine that scene with a series of subordinate choices. Ultimately, you have created a specific memory of your mousy life. After a series of these, during which a long and varied life is assembled via anecdotes, some pronouncements are made on your mousy character and… well, conversations with Death

I found it to be an interesting, melancholy, and effective construct. The variety of possibilities give some player authority to influence the mouse’s life; the limited number of ‘cards in hand’ effectively represent worldly events outside our control. By contributing to an entire lifespan, the seeming disconnected nature of these anecdotes actually thrive a bit. You could easily take snapshot memories from your own life - a patchwork that is technically accurate, but whose connective tissue is entirely missing and must be inferred. It is not an unsuccessful approach, and encourages the player (as we ourselves do in our own lives) to connect the dots.

But not totally. In life, we can’t help but carry ourselves forward in a continuum. If there is enough space to infer the continuum, great! But when details clash, or seemingly large events get summarily dropped or contradicted later in life (or in the body of the vignette itself!)… the seams show a bit. Most egregiously in two of my playthroughs my gender appeared to change during my life. (If that happens to mice, that is news to me!) Other times, my collection of ‘end words’ seemingly contradicted my life story, like when I was described as lonely after having a successful litter or a passionate first love. Let’s poke at that last one a bit. In presentation, first love was sold as a tremendously powerful event, as first love often is. Certainly for most of us, that first love is important, though need not define every subsequent relationship or even make our end-of-life top 10. But in a patchwork view of life, if it is important enough to BE in the top 10, wouldn’t the subsequent heartbreak/longing/supercession be equally or more important? It’s not that we HAVE to marry our first mouse love. It’s that if it’s important enough to recall on our deathbed, how that turned to loneliness (or lifelong partnership, or subsequent lifelong relationship) is maybe MORE important!?

Similarly, the language and lore of the place was 90% there, but seams showed. When world building with human-adjacent species, the temptation is to try to describe human artifacts through other species’ (here, mice’) eyes. When done well, it is very powerful to the human reader, and can really sell the alternate worldview. When not quite there, descriptions can be bafflingly opaque, where the reader is less drawn into the mouse’s eyes than pulled away to wrangle ‘just WHAT is being described here’??? The other pitfall is to throw up hands and occasionally just call them human things. This latter particularly jars, after the reader has grown accustomed to off-kilter mousey descriptions. The work is like 90/5/5 on those.

In the end, while I can’t shake the seams, the overall construct remains sound. The vignettes themselves are wildly divergent (as you would hope in a long life!), each with their own emotions and resonances. Their variety is fun, well written, and allow for player-driven maturation, trauma and changing approaches to life. (I think my favorite might have been a singular image of water, disconnected from context, that inexplicably stuck in my mousey memory. That kind of incomplete memory rang powerfully true.) The unspoken imperative to stitch these memories together in the player’s head is a powerful gameplay choice. The graphical presentation underscores that somber, reflective tone quite well. And the melancholy they assemble into is affecting, even with seams clearly showing.