Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
While I'm not sure if this such a good game for TASing, I played through it recently after I found this game's name again. And wanted to put some info here. The objective is to find your missing friend, a red mouse. You start out in a room in a square maze that's up by 36 rooms. Every 20 steps you take, or every time you leave a room, you lose cheese. You start out with 8 cheese and gain 3 cheese for every cheese piece that you obtain. When killing cats (by trapping them) a cheese piece will spawn in the room. But items such as cheese, cans or bombs can also lie around in rooms randomly. Bombs can be used to destroy blocks. You can push blocks in order to trap cats, but only 1 tile - you cannot push 2 tiles at once. There are 1~3 holes in each room that you can walk into that cause you to lose or gain items. This is frame dependent so it could be abused in a TAS to gain points quicker. Parts later in the game also require you to bomb through rooms that are practically full of blocks, so you could manipulate for bombs too. However, walking into a hole is kind of slow... I imagine a TAS could have a lot of control, just walking everywhere at high speed and with precision, killing cats and collecting items that lie on the floor already. When you reenter a room you've been to, cats and holes will reappear. I think items don't reappear (it might require a death or you might have to walk further away, I'm not sure). In order to advance the game, you have to first collect 10,000 points. Then one room will have a hole that has a key in it. In my playthrough it was a corner room (or close to it?) in the bottom left. Then you have to find a room with a door in it. In my playthrough it was bottom right corner room. Then the game tells you to look into another corner room. (Wrong ones are filled with impassable walls, the right one will have a hole in it) When you walk into the hole in the correct room (my playthrough: bottom left corner room again), you will enter a "dark maze" in which you have to find the correct input sequence to move on. If you fail, you have to redo the input sequence from the beginning. So it's trial-and-error but TAS could just get it right immediately. When you finish that, you will enter a new maze, and you won't have a map this time. You have to find the room where your missing friend is. Here is where I walked: Once you reach the final room, you will see the red mouse is surrounded by impassable walls. Game tells you for each cat you kill now, one of those wall tiles will be removed. Maybe with luck manipulation you need to just kill 3 cats at the correct frame. I needed to kill a dozen cats until there was a free way. ----- I took 3 hours to finish this, with savestates in Dosbox. But I think TAS could do it in 4~8 minutes. I don't know if the location of the key, the door and the warp hole are random. If they are, it may be possible to cut more time off by manipulating such thigns to be nearby. ----- I didn't find any glitches btw. I played Shareware 1.2. There might be bugs in 1.0 ?
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
Some very little thing I noticed: - If your next step would cause your cheese count to go zero (thus you die), you can still move one more step after that if you press the directional key quickly. If you moved to a new room with a cheese count of zero and the map is displayed, you can only close the map and move one step. - I didn't really test 1.0 yet, but I noticed 1.2 has a web address in its "help" section that isn't there in 1.0.
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
Played through this again, this time on 1.0. I think the two versions are the same gameplay wise. The key, door and hole locations were random. The 2nd maze (where you don't use a map) was slightly different - or perhaps the little map I made in MS Paint in the first post was not accurate - but the objective was still to go up, right, down, left, up like the green arrow. The grills in the last room that get removed for each cat kill are random too. This playthrough took me 2 hours again, but I think 3 minute TAS is doable. Is it possible to look for memory addresses in DOS? Or how should I know what room to go to next? Having this kind of info without having to "advance 1 frame and then play 20 minutes each room to check which one is it" would be obviously very helpful. EDIT: Oh, btw. I discovered a little bug that is present in both game versions: When a cat moves next to you, you can move onto it on the correct frame. Your sprite and the cat will just blink back and forth until it leaves, but nothing else special happens. The game only checks if you are next to a cat (if yes, you die) and not if you are inside it. Anyway, this bug could be used to bypass cats when necessary.
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
I'm investigating this game more and putting my notes here:
  • Advancing the game:
    • The room with the hole to the key will be determined BEFORE the 10,000 points message. Probably the moment you enter a room. If you enter another room, the hole will be in a different room. The room can be any other room than the one you are in. The hole will ALWAYS have the key in it, it is not random
    • The room with the keyhole will be determined when the message comes up after going into the hole with the key. In my testing, the room was next to a corner room again.
    • The corner room with the hole in it, in my testing on v1.0 the game crashed upon entering the corner room. This was not possible to fix. Perhaps this was the reason a v1.2 exists.
  • Cheese degradation:
    • For each 20 steps, you lose 1 cheese.
    • Each time you travel through a tunnel, you lose 1 cheese.
    • After traveling through a tunnel, your steps are reset.
  • Items lying on the floor:
    • Cheese gives 50 points + 3 cheese
    • Bomb gives 60 points + 2 bombs
    • Can gives 50 points
  • Holes:
    • Either you find or you drop something. The outcome is easily influenced by timing/RNG.
    • You can find:
      • NEWSPAPERS - nothing happens AN OLD SHOE - nothing happens ROTTEN EGGS - nothing happens NOTHING - nothing happens DUST BALLS - nothing happens EMPTY BOXES - nothing happens BROKEN GLASS - nothing happens AN OLD BOOK - nothing happens TERMITES - nothing happens SPIDER WEBS - nothing happens
      • 3-6 Cheeses
      • 4-6 Cans (+ 50 points per Can)
      • 2-3 bombs
    • You can drop:
      • 4-12 Cheeses It seems if you have less than 60(?) Cheeses, you can only drop a maximum of 6 Cheeses, otherwise 12.
      • 3-6 Cans (-50 points per Can)
      • 2-12 Bombs It seems if you have less than 60(?) Bombs, you can only drop a maximum of 6 Bombs, otherwise 12.
  • It is possible to have Cheese spawn in such a way, that another cat is trapped and another Cheese spawns.