Since the story of “The Royal Mice” focuses on a large population of mice living an extensive castle, my goal for a game to capture this story will be one akin to the Pikmin series. The gameplay will thus focus on resource management and strategy, but will still have lots of action elements. The player would control a large group of mice to accomplish certain tasks specific to the level.
The levels would consist of different areas of the castle, such as the kitchen, bedroom, tower and so on. Each level wouldn’t be relegated to a single room, but would contain the rooms surrounding that central key room. Each level’s objective would be related to the area. For example, if it is the kitchen level the goal would be to gather enough food for the mice to live off of in hiding, and the tower level would be about navigating to the top to retrieve the sword and horn.
Gameplay-wise, the player would be in control of a single mouse, who in turn would be guiding the whole group. The lead mouse would be Cadbury (since he is the one who uses the sword and horn). Most of the mice Cadbury is leading would be generic, but there will be special “units” that can make up the group. Little mice like Francis are more nimble than the regular mice, and are used to retrieve resources quickly. Elders like Gilbert are excellent at rousing speeches and will give the whole group a defensive or offensive buff. Additionally, once the sword and horn have been retrieved, spirit-mice can also be added to the group who have much greater attack power.
The group can be split up and assigned to different tasks in the level, much like in Pikmin. There will be food lying around the level which can picked up by the mice and used to heal injured ones. Key level items can also be picked up, such as a doorknob which can be used to open a door. The mice can be used to attack objects to break them; glass jars can be broken to retrieve the food inside. The mice can also be grouped to attack enemies, which can range from weak cockroaches to full on cats. These enemies have the ability to take out mice in the group, so the health of the mice must be taken into account. If the player needs more mice, there will be mouse-holes throughout the levels where more mice will spawn. These mouse-holes are a limited resource though, so they must be used wisely.
The game will be targeted to younger audiences (probably 9 to 13-year-olds). To make the game appealing, it will have a colorful art style that emulates vector art (flatter colors). Thus, the art will be more cartoony. To minimize the violence, enemies and mice will die in little puffs of smoke.
