Eek

My playtime: ~2.5h (25 levels completed)

Intro
Eek is a puzzle game where you have to help the mice that come from an "entrance" door to reach the other "exit" door. There are 25 levels in total and the game doesn't have a save feature. Instead, the game offers a password in each level that you can use to unlock certain levels.

Music
The game's bgm has a mysterious vibe. It didn't feel strange with how the game is though.

Graphics
The game has quite a simple graphics. The game only has buildings and mice where the buildings will change in color in each level. I find that the graphics are okay for such an old game.

The game
To be honest, i didn't know how to play the game at the start because the game doesn't offer any tutorial. The only way i can know how to play the game is by reading the instruction pdf that is attached with the exe file. I read the pdf a bit just to find that you need to click on a mouse and apply any "power up" that are available on the bottom side. There are 9 "power up"s + 1 restart "power up" button in total, each with different effect. However, there are limited amount of each power up that you can use although you don't really have to use all of them in order to finish the level. The restart "power up" button can be used as many times as you want and it will explode all mice in the area and force you to restart the level. Strangely, you need to wait around 5 seconds before you can restart the level.



As i said before, there are 25 levels in total. The beginning level mostly serves as tutorial and quite easy to finish while the later levels are quite tricky to finish (especially the last level). As for the last level, i don't think it's possible to finish without using pause button, which is triggered by space, which i didn't know until i reached that level. I'd prefer if there's a hotkey button though. It's quite annoying to keep on pressing space just to make sure your cursor is on the right place.

The game wasn't really smooth when i played it; it'll often run very slowly and sometimes it'll go very fast. This tend to catch me off guard, especially in the levels where you need to time your action well. The first "power up", walker, also doesn't help. That power up will cause your selected mouse to turn around and you actually can spam it by holding left mouse button. This "power up" tend to use more than one "power up" when the game is going very fast and it's quite annoying in one of the level (i forgot the level, but it's where you have to free fall, with 30 walkers and 5 climbers).

Speaking of timing, yes, you need to time a lot to finish the levels. There are still some levels that need you to think how to utilize your "power up"s well, but the few last levels requires a lot of timing to finish.

The game also gives a password when you finish a level. I usually try to type down the password in case i need to use it. However, the game seem to still register my input even when it's in background. It even still register my mouse click even though i'm not clicking on the game window.

Speaking of password, you can type the password in the main menu, but the input registers very slowly so i tend to have a typo. Sadly, there is no backspace button so you have to retype everything from the start again if you do that. It's very annoying especially when you have to type 10+ characters password.

I also think it's better to have a 2x fast forward button. It's quite annoying to wait for your mice to walk and do their job, especially when you only need to wait for them to go to the exit door.

Pros:
- 25 levels
- Some challenging and tricky levels

Cons:
- No tutorial
- The game doesn't run smoothly
- The game responds to click when it's not on focus
- Unable to use backspace on password
- Password input isn't responsive enough

Conclusion
This is a puzzle game with no tutorial. The game has some good levels, but since it doesn't run smoothly, it might be hard to finish them all.

--
ps: Sometimes, this thing happens (your digging mice falls down although the hole isn't big enough for the others to enter)