The Story Behind Mousebusters’ Pixel-Art Ghost Hunting, Out Now on XBOX

Daigo Sato, Founder of Odencat

Summary

Mousebusters is available today on XBOX One and XBOX Series X|S.
From the creators of Meg’s Monster, this cozy pixel-art adventure combines humor, action, and a heartfelt story.
Learn about how the creator’s real experience of living in apartments around the world inspired the game.

Mousebusters is available now on XBOX consoles. To celebrate, I wanted to share why I made a game about a mouse sneaking through an apartment building and blasting ghosts.

A quick question to start us off: Do you know your neighbors?

When you live in a city, it is surprisingly common to share a building with people you know almost nothing about. Every now and then, you catch a glimpse of someone else’s life through the walls: someone practicing an instrument, an argument in the next room, or a loud party down the hall.

That idea became the starting point for Mousebusters. As a mouse, you sneak into the lives of different residents and learn more about them than any polite neighbor probably should. Somewhere along the way, those small encounters begin to form a strange but meaningful connection.

This feeling also comes from my own memories. I have studied abroad, traveled often, and lived in Switzerland, Australia, the United States, and Japan. During those years, I often lived in shared houses, where people from different countries and backgrounds lived side by side for a while, sharing a kitchen, a hallway, or a meal before eventually going their separate ways.

I have always found something precious in that kind of relationship. It is not quite friendship in the usual sense. It isn’t family, but it is still a long-distance connection: a ways away, and yet people are somehow linked.

That feeling is in Mousebusters too. There is a scene where residents of different ages and backgrounds gather for a BBQ. They don’t immediately become friends, but for a moment, they share the same place, the same food, and the same time.

Once I decided to make a game about sneaking into the lives of apartment residents, I needed a protagonist who could do that naturally. At one point, I considered something like a ghost. But eventually, I chose a mouse.

That choice changed the direction of the game. A mouse made the idea feel smaller, funnier, and more charming. It also led naturally to the title Mousebusters. Once that title existed, the tone became much clearer: a cozy apartment adventure with ghosts, parody, strange gadgets, and one very energetic mentor mouse.

After that, the big question became this: What makes a mouse game feel like a mouse game?

The answer was perspective.

A mouse does not see a room the way a human does. A game controller is something you operate with your whole body. A TV remote is something you climb. The space under a bed becomes a secret viewpoint into someone’s private life. A refrigerator, if you are trapped inside, becomes terrifying.

I tried to include scenes like that throughout the game. A mouse sneaks around, climbs over everyday objects, hides from a cat, and sees human life from places humans normally never notice. The game has tense moments — a cat is still a cat, after all — but Mousebusters is mostly cozy. The fun is not only in surviving as a mouse, but in discovering what small things a mouse can do.

In Mousebusters, you exorcise evil spirits, but you also create tiny changes in people’s lives. You might fix a broken record and play a song connected to an old woman’s memories. You might secretly make instant noodles and change how someone thinks about food. You might set a new high score in a game so that a young resident can move forward and focus on practicing guitar.

These are not grand heroic acts. Most residents never even know that a mouse helped them. But that was exactly what interested me. Sometimes a person does not need someone to solve their whole life. Sometimes they only need a small trigger: a memory, a surprise, or a strange little accident that helps them look at things differently.

Mousebusters is a silly game about a mouse with an exorcism gun, but it also carries that positive feeling. It is about ghosts, but it is also about neighbors: People who live close to each other without fully knowing each other, and the small connections that can quietly change someone’s life.

I hope XBOX players enjoy exploring the apartment, meeting its residents, finding hidden jokes, and following this tiny mouse’s very strange new career all the way through to its conclusion.

That is all for now — squeak you later!

Mousebusters

Odencat

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★★★★★

$12.99 $11.69

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◆ Welcome to Mousebusters! You just moved into your new place, and are excited to settle in…when all of a sudden, you get turned into a mouse! Thankfully, you soon meet a fellow rodent who knows how to help. He asks you to call him “Chief,” and explains that there’s only one way to break the curse: by ridding the whole apartment building of the ghosts that haunt its inhabitants! ◆ Get to Know Your New Neighbors In each apartment, you'll find a different ghost—but it won't be that easy to track them down. It seems they prey on negative emotions, so in order to smoke them out, you'll have to do some major recon to figure out each resident's biggest insecurities. Just don't get caught! ◆ A Partner You Can Count On Luckily, you won't have to go it alone, because you'll be in frequent contact with the Chief throughout each mission. From his comfy desk at HQ, he'll offer plenty of guidance and comedic commentary as you scour the building and solve puzzles to find each ghost. ◆ Engage in Ghost-Zapping Action! Once you've tracked down the source of each resident's woes, you'll have to whip out your trusty ray gun and perform a good ol' fashioned exorcism. Protect yourself from projectiles while targeting their weak points to expose their spectral cores! ◆ Venture Down the Rabbit Hole Over the course of your investigations, you'll slowly uncover more and more evidence that suggests something far more ominous is going on with this building…and it seems the Chief knows more about the curse than he's letting on. Just how deep does this conspiracy go?