Today we review this game on 3DS eShop, Of Mice and Sand.
When I first heard of this game, I did like most of us do, I Googled what this game was all about and on the Nintendo site, they had this description:
In Of Mice And Sand, the mice drive a Desert Ship as their mobile fortress to travel around the planet.
By ordering the mice crew living in the Desert ship, you can build facilities on the ship and make food for breeding the mice with various items. With the development of the ship, more mice will join in and they can accomplish more jobs. Don’t let them starve and make them rich.
Your final goal is to reach the other side of the desert and find the legendary land of gold to the east, El Dorado!
So yeah, after reading this, I was a little skeptical about what this game would really bring, is it really just maintaining a desert ship on the way to El Dorado?
First of all, this game is quite complicated, going from one place to the other, keeping track of everything you can imagine, ranging from fuel for your desert ship to food for the mice you play with. Building and upgrading the ship as you keep playing.
In the beginning, the ship is pretty much useless and the training mode kicks in and teaches you how to do basic things like building rooms, this part involves way too much reading, to be honest, most of the times I felt like I was doing nothing but reading instead of actually playing a game.
And that is not where the game went wrong, it is incredibly slow to pick up, upon finally reaching my first stop, where I could refill my desert ships’ fuel, I felt lost, where do I need to go next?
At that point, I had 4 options, buy tips, refuel my ship, buy items or take on quests, that last one being the most important part of all. This game is quest driven, at first they appear to be very easy. Have your mice build a workbench inside the desert ship and you can convert the pieces of scrap you pick up along the way.
The game however mostly felt boring to me, in a way, it felt like I would play this more on my smartphone or tablet, on the go. Most of the tasks your mice perform, need a certain time to complete and gave me a Farmville/Simpsons feeling. I would just start up tasks, put away my mobile to pick it back up later. But alas, the 3DS version only has a fast forward function that advances time, but you need to keep it open and running…
In conclusion, this game feels very gimmicky and became boring very fast. I would gladly give it another try but not on 3DS, most likely on my iPhone or iPad…
I am rating this game a meager 20%, too much reading, not enough guidance and I can think of many ways to improve it myself…
