A mouse in a trenchcoat walks into a gunfight…
Here's the thing about Mouse: P.I. For Hire: the name is a little misleading. You are not playing a detective game. There is no interrogation system or deduction mechanic. What you are playing is a fast, aggressive boomer shooter dressed up in one of the most distinctive art styles a video game has ever worn.
Once you accept that, everything else clicks.
Jack Pepper gives this game real flavor
Fumi Games built Mouse: P.I. For Hire around the visual language of 1920s and 1930s rubber-hose cartoons, the kind of animation where limbs stretch and snap back and characters move with a bouncy, almost liquid physicality. Set in the noir city of Mouseburg, you play as Jack Pepper, a war veteran turned private investigator voiced by Troy Baker. A missing-persons case spirals into something much darker, pulling together three separate investigations into a single conspiracy with real political weight behind it.
The game launched on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on April 16, 2026, and I personally tried it on the PS5 for the purpose of this review.
Gameplay
If you've played Doom Eternal, you'll recognize the rhythm here immediately.
Mouse: P.I. keeps you moving. Standing still gets you killed. Enemies pressure you constantly, and the game rewards players who use the environment rather than just the weapons in their hands. Shoot an anvil hanging above a group of enemies, grab a barrel and throw it into a crowd, and so on. The tools are there, and the game actively encourages you to use them instead of just spam-firing at everything.
Gotta keep your eyes peeled for environmental hints
The arsenal covers 12 guns, each with an alternate fire mode and its own upgrade path. Watching the Tommy gun flex and twist in rubber-hose style as you fire it never stops being satisfying. The weapon feedback is excellent across the board, with each gun feeling distinct enough that swapping between them is a genuine tactical decision rather than a chore.
The levels are surprisingly large, with secrets tucked into almost every corner. Hidden safes reward players who take the time to explore, and shortcuts open up as you push through each area. There is a genuine satisfaction to finding a path that loops back to where you started, and the game has enough of those moments to keep exploration feeling worthwhile rather than obligatory.
Safe cracking feels like a nice break after intense gun fights
Two mini-games break up the shooting in ways that genuinely work. A baseball mini-game and a safe-cracking mechanic are small additions, but they show a development team that understood pacing.
After a long firefight, cracking a safe or stepping up to the plate gives your brain a different kind of problem to solve, and both are fun enough that they never feel like padding. Although I found trying to win 20 baseball matches to get a specific reward a bit of a chore.
The one real criticism of the gameplay is the lack of enemy variety. The same enemy types show up across different environments throughout the game's roughly 10-hour runtime. The visual context changes and boss fights offer a contrast in fighting styles and environments, which helps, but by the final act, you have seen most of what the enemy roster has to offer.
Graphics and audio
The game has some ridiculous animations that never betray the art style
The art direction in Mouse: P.I. For Hire is genuinely special. The choice to render characters as 2D rubber-hose sprites within 3D environments creates a look that is immediately striking and remains so throughout. Every gun animation, every enemy death, every cutscene carries that hand-crafted cartoon energy. Cuphead gets cited often as the benchmark for rubber-hose aesthetics in games, and Mouse: P.I. makes a credible argument for the crown.
The black-and-white palette is not a limitation. It is a design choice that gives the game a visual coherence that most shooters lack. Mouseburg feels like a real place with a real history, partly because the art style is consistently applied across every element, from the UI to the level geometry to the character animations.
The audio matches the visuals step for step. A 1930s-inspired jazz soundtrack fills the game with exactly the right atmosphere, and Troy Baker's performance as Jack Pepper is one of the better voice acting turns in a game this year. The inner monologue narration hits the noir beats without tipping into parody, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds.
The game has interesting political undertones and parallels
Jack Pepper's investigation covers three interconnected cases: a murdered actress, a missing magician, and a series of kidnappings. The writing is witty and self-aware. Mouse: P.I. knows its noir tropes and plays with them deliberately. The femme fatale, the cynical journalist, the hardened bartender, they are all here, and the game has enough fun with them that they feel like affectionate nods rather than lazy defaults.
There's plenty of political subtext spread across the storyline as well. Mouseburg's shrews occupy a lower social tier than mice, and the game uses that to draw parallels with real historical oppression. With police corruption, the result of political extremism and dangerous ideologies leading Mouseburg down a dark path. The game makes a solid attempt at creating a meaningful story that is more than just silly shooting fun.
The pacing in the final act rushes through beats that deserved more space in my opinion. It does not ruin what came before, but it felt slightly rushed in comparison to the majority of the game.
Verdict
TLDR: Mouse P.I. for Hire is a fun game
Mouse: P.I. For Hire is not what its name suggests, and that is fine once you know going in. It is a fast, aggressive, stylish shooter with one of the most fully realized visual identities in the genre. The gameplay loop is tight, the weapons feel great, and the world Fumi Games built is the kind you want to spend time in.
The real question is whether the style-to-substance ratio holds up across almost 13 hours. And it mostly does. The mini-games add variety, the level design rewards exploration, and the jazz soundtrack keeps the energy and overall vibe just right.
Enemy variety thins out by the end, and the story does end up feeling rushed in its final act, but neither issue is enough to undercut what the game does really, really well.
If you are the type of player who loves a boomer shooter with genuine personality, or if you're a fan of the game's art style, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is definitely the right game for you. The game is fun, the art direction is one of the most unique styles we've seen in years, and the story doesn't take itself too seriously.
But if you're looking for a genuine deduction game to scratch that L.A. Noire itch, you're better off looking elsewhere.
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