The Thinky team had a lot of fun at this year’s EGX / MCM Comic Con (and if you visited the booth, thank you for stopping by!) and nestled between the overpriced anime mystery bags and parades of fabulous cosplay we found lots of puzzle games! From the handful of games on the show floor Rules and Rodents by Gravy Crew Games was a standout. A game selected to be part of EGX’s Leftfield Collection, this puzzle adventure truly rewired my brain in the best way possible.
Rules and Rodents is a grid-based puzzle adventure where you play as Piper the mouse. Piper is in a tough spot, having been caught stealing cheese and thrown into the dungeons of a tower, they need to work their way through each of the tower's devious floors and escape. Each level tasks Piper starting on one side of the dungeon floor and traversing the grid to reach the stairs and escape.
But here's the kicker: each level has specific rules, which can be turned off and on with the press of a button. Stick with me here, as it’s a little tricky to explain. A guide to the right of the screen shows you what rules are available to use and are each assigned a button (1-4 on a keyboard, A,B,X,Y on a controller). One rule might be as simple as moving Piper around the grid - easy enough - but other rules affect your surroundings: how the looping rat guards move, activating switches, immunity to toxic splats, activating portals and other tricky obstacles.
Many of these rules can only be activated one at a time so you'll need to constantly switch between them as you make your way through each level.. Timing becomes more important as the levels progress, and keeping track of what rules you have, which ones to activate at what moment, AND avoiding all the dungeon's deadly obstacles results in an incredibly satisfying and crafty puzzle game. There are even pleasantly lightweight 'boss' encounters which are less about confronting the boss head-on, and more focused on using the rules you've learnt to outsmart them. The game's presentation is lovely too. Everything on screen is colourful and readable, the animation is utterly charming (like how the rat guard's noses squish when they hit a wall), and the music loop is upbeat but not intrusive.
Each of the handcrafted levels I played was super satisfying, and interestingly one of my biggest takeaways from Rules and Rodents was how it made me think about the relationship between what my brain wanted and what my hands were doing. Maybe this was just my experience, but part of the satisfaction I found was how I was always acutely aware of what my brain wanted, and then carefully executing it with my hands. My right hand controlled the arrow keys and my left fingers were placed on the 1-4 keys to activate rules. Working out what rules I wanted to activate and when, and then making sure my hands followed the right choreography I had set out in my mind scratched all the right parts of my brain. It's wonderful how the game taps into both your mental and motor skills, but in a puzzle-y way rather than how quick or nimble your fingers are.
Rules and Rodents was an absolute highlight from our time at EGX, and you can also play the demo as Gravy Crew Games has made it available on the game's Steam page. There's no exact release date yet, but the Steam page says it'll be out sometime in "Q1 2025". Could we possibly be looking at a Thinky Games 2025 GOTY contender? Possibly!
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