Upon opening the story book and beginning to read aloud the two-page prologue, I immediately knew that there was something strange afoot with Mice And Mystics. It wasn’t that the writing was particularly bad or the setting and theme particularly trite — nothing so plainly damning as that. Very simply, it was just the length of the dang thing. By the end of my recitation my throat was sore and I didn’t feel like playing a game anymore. The pacing of the game had been thrown off before the first turn was even taken. And then it hit me: I still had to read the chapter introduction. Mice And Mystics envisions itself as a hybrid of sorts between children’s storybook and co-op dungeon crawl. Cool! Problem is, the game inherits the absolute worst of both worlds: a simplistic narrative that no well-adjusted adult could possibly care about and some mucky rules overhead guaranteed to stymie the vast majority of children that come in contact with it. It is clear that Mice And Mystics wants to be a bridge between young and old, to speak to kids of all ages, to bring families together and give them a grand adventure to experience. But instead, it is a game with no discernible audience and a heap-load of design flaws. In Mice And Mystics, players take the roles of a prince and his cohort who are magically transformed into mice as they plan a counterattack against the evil queen and her minions who have overtaken their castle. It is…