This is a
review of
Mice Tea using v0.9.15-Early Access. Even with my short time with it at the time of this post, I could already tell that the development team really put a lot of care into the game.
First, the game is simply *adorable*! It's a nice change of pace to see something that's not based on Daz or uses pregenerated assets. It's visually appealing. These are wonderful character sprites (with various layered facial expressions and poses) that are used intelligently in the game in a psuedo-animated way as they move about the screen. Event scenes were static but nice. The dev team even took the time to make sure the UI is aesthetically pleasing as well. Those little touches in the menu and interface may be minor but helps to convey and tie-in the theme of the game. And apparently it helps people with disabilities to also better enjoy the game. (In my "fun-sized" route, pocket Margaret was simply precious!
)
Secondly, the writing in
Mice Tea is splendidly done! It's quite imaginative and takes into consideration what the characters may be aware of and feeling in any given situation. Some of which are things I would never have thought of myself! At times, it felt like a kinetic novel with its lack of choices, it was nevertheless quite a fun, little read. I've enjoyed it immensely. Not only that, the quality of the writing in of itself raises the bar of where other visual novels should be at. It doesn't insult you with rudimentary chickenscratch from a second grader, but rather it has a good sense of prose and diction, and uses appropriate grammar and correctly spelled words. There were very few typos and misspellings in the routes I played through. I almost cried at the realization that there were writers out there that knew how to use a bloody spellchecker. Thank you Gunzil and Zoe for leading the charge here!
Lastly, the game also includes a number of aspects that really should be in any visual novel. These extras include things such as a CG gallery and content warning (enabled under options) at important junctures in the game. It also has a built-in character viewer and even includes BGM! Super! All of these are good indicators that the game will only get better as development continues!
Mice Tea is fun and well worth your time for anyone who was curious enough to peek over the fence. Good job to the team over at Cinnamon Switch! Wishing you guys the best and hoping for more! Cheers!