Squeakross: Home Squeak Home ★★★★☆

Where can you buy?

• Available on Itchio
• Available on Switch
• Available on Steam

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Explanation to Negative Feedback

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No notification for new mail

This is going to be my biggest peeve for the game, and it’s not even a really bad one, but as you go through puzzles, one after another, you’ll sometimes receive mail. The problem is, you don’t know when you’ve got mail, until you close the catalogue and return home.

At which point the mail icon will have a notification on it.

And when you open your mailbox…you end up with a whole lot of mail to go through, depending on how many puzzles you flew through before going back to your home. It’s just really annoying having to sift through mail that could’ve been read earlier, because they were meant to be read earlier, but without an alert on the screen, we remain oblivious.

Mouse blocks the corner of the board

I love the fact that our mouse persona stands at the bottom corner of the screen, however when you get to the longer boards, you’ll notice that the mouse blocks a small portion of the bottom of the board, and it sometimes just throws me off when I’m trying to figure out where to place blocks and Xs and such.

I just feel like perhaps the mouse is a bit too big, especially with some of the costumes (such as the cone of shame).

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Explanation to Positive Feedback

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Challenging puzzles

These puzzle boards can be as small as a 5×5, and then become pretty darn big, especially if you’re doing the Nini’s Challenges portion of the catalogue. So…I appreciate the challenge. This isn’t a game that I can play for hours on end, even though it does suck you in and make you want to keep playing, but only because figuring out puzzles like these and dealing with the smaller blocks on a big board causes eye strain for me and triggers migraines.

I mean, I did play this game for about 6 hours straight, definitely got a migraine from it, and had my regrets without regretting it too much, but yeah.

I like the challenging board sizes and shapes of items.

Thorough manual

This game offers a tutorial as you do your thing in the beginning and it does a pretty good job with explaining what you need to do, along with animated videos. But even after these little tutorial drops, you can look in the Manual for even more information on the puzzle side of things, decorating your home, and even what to do with stickers you collect.

It’s a lot of information split into segments, and I appreciate how thorough it all is.

A lot of decorations

The thing is, when you’re done with one catalog of items, there’s another one with even more items, so it’s a lot of stuff to decorate a little mousey home.

Interactive help

Nothing is worse than realizing that somewhere on the board, you’ve placed a block in the wrong location, maybe more than one, and you’ve got a lot on the board. Switching things around can cause even more damage, so if you’re really frustrated, you can actually request help from the mouse in the corner, and they can reveal the mistakes you’ve made, place a random block or X down where it needs to go, or try to help you figure out a column or row by guessing at it.

The guess isn’t always right, but y’know.

And it’s not like the game wants to deter you from seeking help when you need it, because there are achievements attached to requesting help.