Sweating tears like Danganronpa‘s Monokuma, the mouse in Bad Cheese looks like a petrified version of Mickey Mouse with those puffy cheeks, and yet he’s so timid you may feel sorry for this particular rodent. Dressed in the black and white classic Disney presentation, and offering up spooky vibes, Bad Cheese is a peculiar little trip through a terrified mouse’s home environment as he works on his chores, but is this little slice of cartoon horror worth sticking around for, or is it a cobwebbed mess?
Bad Cheese throws you right in as the frightened mouse, and context is given through present boxes with tickets inside, allowing you to understand what your objectives are and how to keep mommsy and daddy happy. Mommsy is of course the mouse’s mother, and she wants her child to clean up the house, but she isn’t authoritative at all, rather she’s quite nice and pleasant. Mousey is lonesome and he’ll need to complete his chores by himself by navigating the darkly lit environments and swatting away pests that impede his progress.
The pace of Bad Cheese is slow and the mouse always has its hands stuck out during gameplay for some reason to elevate the level of eerie dread, though besides critters, pests, a few bosses and instances of disturbing imagery you encounter throughout, there’s not too much to fear in Bad Cheese… though some elements of the gameplay are woeful.
During your time with Bad Cheese you’ll proceed forward in a dark house slowly, pick up packets of crisps and kielbasa sausages for sustenance, and complete objectives that pertain to either a household chore you need to complete, or a room you need to access to move the story along. Such chores include feeding dishes into the dishwasher to be cleaned, swatting away spiders, vacuuming up drinks bottles, and manning a sock cannon to deal with pesky maggots.
The sense of fun using the various household gadgets and contraptions is where Bad Cheese draws its worth from, as it allows its cartoonish charms to pour out during times where you are given the tools to clean up messes. Maybe it would’ve been more enjoyable if you made messes rather than cleaning them up, as our mouse protagonist is merely a scared and obedient rodent—but even so there are some cool playful gadgets to muck around with during the one or two hours of playtime you’ll experience in this game.
Bad Cheese is a linear affair, meaning your focus will be on completing objectives and you won’t be able to progress until those objectives have been satisfied. This locks you into a predicament where you’re going to need to complete objectives until a new area opens, and once that area is opened up more objectives will need to be completed. This procedural rhythm is understandable due to Bad Cheese‘s short length, yet without character interaction or depth it quickly feels unappealing from a world-building standpoint.
Collectibles are prominent throughout Bad Cheese. Not only will you be trying to find all the Kielbasas and potato chip packets to munch on, but there are hidden figurines you’ll find in hidden places you can uncover. Finding these collectibles doesn’t mean much outside of collecting a few achievements, and there’s no health system—so the Kielbasas and potato chips collectibles are superfluous.
Sometimes navigating the environment can be irksome in Bad Cheese. Character movement is very slow, but if you tap the left bumper mousey can move quicker—though you’ll likely find this input by accident as the game does a poor job of explaining to you how it operates.
Another bigger problem is the climbing is very poorly implemented. To find certain collectibles, you’ll need to climb and jump across platforms, and this can be a very frustrating endeavour. One instance involves navigating your way up a chest of drawers to find a collectible. You need to jump from drawer to drawer and ascend until you reach the peak, but there’s no easy way to do this apart from tapping the jump button and hoping you can find your way to the top of the drawers to find what you seek.
Another annoyance, albeit more of a quibble, is the mouse’s voice. Of course with its Disney cartoon presentation, Bad Cheese will look and sound particularly quirky—which you’d have guessed if you see Steamboat Willie appearing on TV screens as you explore the foreboding house.
Not only does the mouse sound like a fatter vermin version of Sylvester the Cat, but the way he chomps down food is uncomfortably piggish. In all likelihood developer Simon Lukasik and publisher Feardemic wanted to conceal the gluttonous aspects of this mouse, but there’s no hiding how many times he eats sausages and crisps that’s for sure. The product description states he’s just a “little mouse” but you can’t fool anybody, the mouse is bordering on rotund.
You can’t fault Bad Cheese for its atmosphere because it’s certainly dark, dank and infested with creatures and uncomfortable imagery. You might feel sorry for the weighty mouse because the poor thing has to sheepishly survey rotten areas, take care of menial tasks and wipe out the blighters he encounters. At least the adventure is short, or it’d feel like prolonged servitude.
Conclusion
A lot should be forgiven when it comes to Bad Cheese. At only an hour or two in length it’s a comfortably brief experience, and it deserves kudos for the imagination lavished upon it, the cool gadgets, and for the aesthetics as well. For a one-person game it is very impressive and that can’t be denied. However, Bad Cheese enslaves you into performing chores and the mechanics could be improved. Overall, Bad Cheese is definitely a solid effort despite the sense it could be tightened up and improved in terms of gameplay.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
