MOUSE: P.I. For Hire Launches April 16 With Troy Baker

Six days out from launch, Fumi Games and PlaySide Publishing have dropped a "Meet the Cast" trailer for MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, and the lineup they've assembled for what looks like a niche noir cartoon FPS is not what you'd expect. Troy Baker leads as Jack Pepper, a former war hero turned debt-ridden private detective cleaning up the streets of Mouseburg. Baker playing a morally complicated protagonist in a story-driven game is basically his natural habitat at this point, and credit where it's due to Fumi Games for landing him.

The rest of the cast fills out quickly. Florian Clare, known for his role in the TV series Silo, plays Wanda Fuller, a journalist digging into Mouseburg's corruption. Camryn Grimes, who has appeared in over 1,300 episodes of The Young and the Restless, plays Tammy Tumbler, Jack's right-hand who handles weapon upgrades. Fred Tatasciore, a voice acting veteran with credits in Invincible and World of Warcraft, takes on John Brown, the landlord of the Little & Big pub. And Frank Todaro, who voiced Mugman in The Cuphead Show, plays Cornelius Stilton, a calculating politician feeding Jack information. That last bit of casting is almost too on the nose, and honestly, it's perfect.

The Cuphead comparison is going to follow this game everywhere, and it's not entirely unfair. MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is a black-and-white first-person shooter built around 1930s cartoon aesthetics, complete with hand-drawn cutscenes and creatively twisted firearms. But where Cuphead was a side-scrolling boss-rush that leaned hard into its run-and-gun roots, this is a full FPS with weapon upgrades, collectibles, clue-hunting, and apparently a baseball card minigame. That's a different pitch entirely, and the FPS framing gives it room to do things Cuphead never tried.

1.5 Million Wishlists Before a Single Copy Sold

According to CGMagazine's coverage of the trailer, the game has already crossed 1.5 million wishlists on Steam ahead of launch. For an original IP from a studio most people couldn't name last year, that's a real number. It suggests the art direction alone has been doing serious work, because MOUSE hasn't had the kind of sustained marketing push you'd expect behind a game with that much pre-launch interest.

The game launches April 16 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2. PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the original Switch are confirmed for a later date. The real question is whether the gameplay holds up to the aesthetic. A gorgeous art style and a stacked cast can carry a game a long way, but an FPS lives or dies on how the shooting feels, and nothing in the trailers yet has shown enough of the mid-game to know if the weapon variety stays interesting past the first few hours. We'll find out Wednesday.

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