Mouse: P.I. For Hire Developer Interview

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire has been released for well over a month now, and we had the chance to talk with Fumi Games about the game. We discuss briefly the game’s background and what’s next.

We spoke with the following members of Fumi Games:

• Mateusz Michalak (CEO)
• Damian Czajka (Lead Audio Designer)
• Grzegorz Banasik (Lead Level Designer)

You can use our Table of Contents below to skip to a question you are most curious about:

Here is the full Question and Answer of the Interview with Fumi Games:

Q: How did Mouse P.I. for Hire come about?

Mateusz (CEO): Yeah, you’re right. It was a fun project. It was over three years ago, basically, when Michal came to me with the idea of creating a FPS black and white cartoonish game. And I thought this was a good idea. Basically, we started working on the game after hours. It was really more like a prototype.

And after a month, our elite programmer, David, has his own TikTok, and he asked me if he could post something for his audience. So I said yes, and he posted. And suddenly, after two days, we got two or three million views on this one particular video. And my email floated with emails from publishers, investors, and the press.

And I was basically in shock. And during the weekend, I prepared a Steam page. It was crazy because we didn’t have a Steam page back then. And the number of people who asked what the game is about, when they can buy the game, or play the game. I needed to basically move the whole traffic to the Steam page to gain wishlists.

Today, you need to get wishlists. And from that point, we knew that we were onto something, or something that people wanted to play back then. And yeah, we started to create some small demo, really, really small, only one level. We pitched it to numerous publishers. And one of them was PlaySight. And we signed a deal. And everything else is like a dream to me because we could create the game that we wanted to create. We released the game a month ago. It landed pretty well. The audience loved the game. The reviewers loved the game. And for us, it’s just the beginning of something bigger.

Q: Were there any Cartoons you got inspiration from?

Mateusz (CEO): I think it’s more about the whole era of Rubber Hose animations. It lasted, I don’t know, 20s, 30s, 40s. For sure, we watched all the Popeye the Sailor animations. It’s, believe, five series and more than 52 episodes. It’s really, really good reference for us and all the other animations from that era.

The diversity of animations that were created back then is enormous. And we forgot about most of them. And they basically, they are really good. And it’s a real pity that it’s really hard to see any of them today.

Tyler (Rectify Gaming): Yeah, and the 1930s style, there’s only one other huge game that I think everyone knows here is Cuphead. Is there any inspiration from that at all?  Or no, that was kind of just a coincidence?

Mateusz (CEO): Yeah, so me personally, because I’m from the animation industry, for me, first when I watched Cuphead, I thought, my God, someone made a full 2D animated game in Rubber House style, and it was a success. For sure, Cuphead discovered the Rubber House animations for the audience one more time, and it was something special.

People tend not to use 2D animations anymore, even though in the film industry and in the game industry, it’s because it’s hard. There are not many projects that can use this style. And for me personally, this is really important. The hand-drawn animation is crazy for me. I love it when people use their skills, 2D skills, to create something unique. That’s why, you know,

Cuphead was something crucial in developing the mouse because we also had a reference.

I think that we nailed it the first time. So we knew that we wanted to create a black-and-white game. The noir style and private detective, it clicked immediately. And the whole storyline is connected with 30s, 40s years of the 20th century. So everything clicked, and it was really easy, let’s say.

Q: Making a game in black and white, are there any challenges when it comes to Audio & Level Design?

Damian Czajka (Lead Audio Designer): 

With the audio, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make bold decisions about the direction of the audio because…The downside of the game was the kind of game. It’s a boomer shooter, and it has its own rules for the players that are very strict, like you have to run, you have to shoot, the shooting has to be very distinct, very powerful.

The gameplay is not overly focused on audio, aside from the bones flying and the blood flowing everywhere. But I wanted to incorporate that noir style and the way the sounds were recorded and played in 20s and 30s. So I decided to first make a decision and create filters for the sounds so we can degrade the sound the way we can get back in the past and hear how the old vinyl sounded, how the old phonograph sounded from Thomas Edison with the black wax or brown wax cylinders, where there was a lot of distortion for the sound. And that was something I could make this decision only once, and it was just perfect for this game. Of course, we gave players the opportunity to play with the basic setup of the sound, which does not distort the sound in any way.

I wanted to give them the feeling when they want to make the experience more noir, more like from the past, like they are sitting in a cinema in the 20s, 30s, and playing the game. And yeah, I think we achieve it, and people really love that. So that was the one thing. And also, we made a bold decision about the gunplay.

So the guns start with more cartoony poppy sound, but they expand their frequency range from lows and mids, from mids to lows and mids during your, during the gameplay when you upgrade your weapons. So you have this final boomer shooter feeling while you experience half of the game.

Grzegorz Banasik (Lead Level Designer): 

From my side, as a level designer on this project, I think it was quite a challenge from the beginning because the problems appeared even from the start, even when we prepared blockouts, the first blockouts for the levels.

For people who will watch this or listen to it or read it, the stage where we create mock-ups of the levels and try to create spaces that then go to the level art. There was a problem linked to the black-and-white filter that we have in the game because our block of tiles was all white. So when you play it in the gameplay, it is all just gray. So then our level artist came up with an idea to put some colors, ironically, on those tiles to create different shading, grayscale on them to cut out the gameplay area better for us to create those levels. Yeah, of course, there were lack of colors. So it was a big problem because we couldn’t lead the play with them. For example, the legendary yellow paint, right?

But from level to level, we figured out some ways. For example, we created this kind of cell-shaded material that shows the players that something can be interactive here, levers and other stuff. Some of them are mixed with animations and those social materials, for example, explosive barrels that you can kick. That was awesome. Ammunition boxes, they are wiggling and much different from the 3D Environment.

And with all that stuff. We just tried to keep the player engaged and communicate to the players that, hey, here are some stats that you can pick up, you can interact with. And of course, we wanted to pack the levels with as many events that were inspired by some cartoons or other animations to actually keep the player engaged.

We try to keep people engaged as best as we can.

Q: Working with Troy Baker, how did that come about, and how important was it to work with such great voice actors?

Damian Czajka (Lead Audio Designer):

Troy is a great guy for working and puts a lot of effort into his role. And even if we are all happy with the recordings, with the way he sounded, he says, I’m not happy. I want to record it once again. I want to try it a different way. He’s a perfectionist, and this is a person that we love to work with for sure. And I was amazed with the recordings, how Jack Pepper finally sounded, and I knew it was a bullseye with this guy. Troy was great. So I’m not able to tell anything more, any details from the backstage because, as I said, Mateusz Lachowski and Joachim Snuch will be able to provide more details on that.

Mateusz (CEO):

We knew what kind of voice we wanted to achieve, what kind of voice we wanted for Jack Pepper, but we could never have expected such a big name in the game. because, you know, it’s an enormous game. Of course, there is also this marketing layer of having this voice in the game. But we, as a dev team, love the voice itself. That Troy is playing the Jack Pepper. He basically is a Jack Pepper. And yeah, and we really loved the voice and the whole vibe. It gave a big boost in, you know, experiencing the game itself.

It’s worth to mention that we had a lot of great actors and they did a great work. So everyone came to one point where they made this game level up.

I hate it when games, they don’t use full voiceover for their whole NPCs and so on. I hate reading the games. So, for me personally, it was really important to have the full voiceover game because it’s more immersive. Even though it’s a boomer shooter, we want to give the players this ability to immerse the world.

Q: Were you surprised by the reaction when MOUSE: P.I. For Hire Launched?

Mateusz (CEO):

Yeah, so we have done a lot of play tests, a lot of mock reviews during the whole development process, and we always got this, you know, this meat or semi-meat or semi-negative vibes, you know, because it’s play tests. People are looking for bugs, looking for mistakes in the game. So it was like we knew that we were creating something special, but we didn’t have a proper perspective.

And when we give some friends or random people a chance to play the game before the release, I personally didn’t know if they are just nice to me, or if they were saying, ” Ah, it’s a good game”, or “This is truly a good game.” It was basically a lottery for me. And the most stressful day wasn’t the release. It was two days before the release when the embargo went down.

This was the most stressful day. I’m still, I’m in shock that people not like the game, but they create fan arts from the game. They want to finish the game. They post things about the game on the internet. This is really shocking for me, you because it’s, I’m really happy, but still I’m in shock.

Q: Is there any DLC planned?

Mateusz (CEO):

There will be a DLC in the near future, but I can’t reveal more about this.

Q: Has a Multiplayer mode been discussed?

Mateusz (CEO):

I think that we got a lot of requests about the multiplayer from the community. 100%. Yeah, from the community. Right now, we are concentrating on DLC and post-launch support. And I can’t say more about any additional modes in-game.

Q: Has a VR version ever been discussed?

Mateusz (CEO):

Discussed, yes, for sure. After the release, we have had a lot of discussions about where to go, what to do. As I said, MOUSE was a single-player game from the beginning. It was for PC consoles, and we are concentrating on this. Still, we have post-launch support. We want to add some great things to the game that for sure community will be surprised. And yeah, so these are our next steps.

Q: Has a TV Show or Movie Adaptation been talked about?

Mateusz (CEO):

You know, as I said before, I’m from the animation industry. For me, the storyline and narrative line in the game are really important. And the storyline and narrative in MOUSE is prepared in a way that they would be easily transferred to an animation, TV series, or feature film. So I personally would love to have a TV series or a feature film, but it’s not up to me.

We are open to such things. I know that the community demands more comic books about MOUSE, about Jack Pepper. They demand it. But it’s crazy hard to do. Yeah, we will try to do something in the future for sure.

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is available to play on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. Check out our review of the game here.