If there is any type of game it feels like Disney well and truly owns, it’s the Where’s My…? series begun by Where’s My Water? and carried on by Where’s My Perry?, starring Phineas and Ferb’s pet platypus/secret agent. The latest in the series goes back to the very foundation of Disney by using Mickey Mouse, which ties in to the upcoming new-styled cartoon shorts the company’s animation division is producing.
If there is any type of game it feels like Disney well and truly owns, it’s the Where’s My…? series begun by Where’s My Water? and carried on by Where’s My Perry?, starring Phineas and Ferb’s pet platypus/secret agent. The latest in the series goes back to the very foundation of Disney by using Mickey Mouse, which ties in to the upcoming new-styled cartoon shorts the company’s animation division is producing.
The gameplay is by and large the same: Using your finger, you’ll carve a path through the soft dirt so that water will find its way to Mickey, trying to collect three tokens (in this case, stars) along the way. New mechanics come into play here, such as rainclouds that can store quantities of water and be moved by wind and other means to a more desirable location before being squeezed dry.
While the gameplay is as solid as ever, perhaps the true highlight of the game– versus its predecessors, at the very least– is the framing story around it. Or rather, stories.
While Swampy just wanted to take a bath and Perry needed to make his way to the O.W.C.A. HQ, each batch of 20 levels in Where’s My Mickey? contains its own unique scenario. In the first, Mickey is at a beach while the hot summer sun hammers down on everyone. As a busload of thirsty tourists shows up, Mickey shows his capitalist side and sets up a lemonade stand complete with lemons, sugars, but no– you guessed it– water.
As in previous titles, you’re treated to an opening and a closing scenario, but each individual stage also contains its small victory scene. In the lemonade scenario, Mickey tosses lemons into the pitcher a different way each time; it’s short, cute, and enough to make you curious without feeling like you’re missing too much if you get stumped. A subsequent scenario features Mickey deep in a cavern, where a mischievous flame is attempting to reach a pile of explosives; each stage there concludes with Mickey’s attempt to halt the flame’s progress being thwarted in different ways.
And that’s just Mickey; two samples of Goofy in-app purchase scenarios are included as well, with three levels each. The first has Goofy trying to paint a picture of Mickey, but rather than water, you’re tasked with helping paint reach him instead. This even incorporates the “contamination” aspect of previous titles, except here, it works to your advantage. The second scenario finds Goofy shipwrecked with nothing but debris to eat, but he finds that a substance from a flower can change tasteless junk into tasty junk food.
More paid scenarios are to come, though little is known about them except that they’ll feature more of Mickey’s friends, including his hapless dog, Pluto.
One flaw noted in previous games was the occasional difficulty with creating certain paths to perform certain tasks on the smaller screen of an iPhone. We reviewed this with an iPhone 5 and found no problems of the sort here among the levels we played. That said, there is an advantage to playing the game on a tablet, if you should have one: 20 special “extra-LARGE” levels, available exclusively for those larger devices.
It’s difficult to come up with any real flaws in Where’s My Mickey?, as it feels like the best iteration to date. If you just don’t like Mickey or are tired of the Where’s My…? series, then that might be enough of a grievance. Otherwise, there should be nothing stopping you from picking this one up.
