A Mouse Speaks to Death

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.