The most fascinating thing Small Saga has to navigate is the idea of its own scale.
The opening hour of Small Saga sets its tone well. Anxious mouse Verm is traveling with his brother Lance to Heaven. A place where food is plentiful and sits out in the open. Where the Gods mingle and chat and live in their utopia. The grocery store.
There, the two brothers encounter an exterminator. A Yellow God, who effortlessly commits damage in the hundreds with even noticing, when your heroes have 12 health max at the time. The scale is clear. These are almighty beings that cannot be crossed. You are a mouse.
But the way the game toys with that line is so endlessly intriguing to interrogate. The general twee trappings I expected are present. Magical mouse society living beneath the floorboards, mouse governments and mouse politics, all hidden from the mundane reality of the humans. The humans finish their normal day jobs, unaware of this hidden world beneath their feet. In a normal game, humans regarded as gods would be fun little background set dressing.
Small Saga is about a mouse planning to kill god.
Suddenly, the set dressing becomes gripping to unravel as the game whole-heartedly commits to its ideas. Secret of the NIMH or its other analogues put a clear disconnect between Humans and Mouse. These are different worlds, never to interact directly. By making this connection so direct, by making it clear these worlds can and will interact, the narrative world-building suddenly gets really difficult to square in my head. Not even in a negative sense! But the sheer implications of a mouse’s ability to murder a guy doing his banal 9 to 5 shocks you into truly thinking about this divide between the above and the floorboards. If a mouse could kill this guy, what if the mouse killed me?
It's this tension that helps fuel the game’s wider examination of institutions and oppression. There are several different territories in the mouse kingdom with their own systems of government. They all answer, broadly, to King James, but the King himself tends to let Barons and Dukes run the show any way they please. This provides an easy excuse for the settings to vary in aesthetics. Mole Town of peasants. Mouse Capital with medieval knights and warriors. Grey Squirrel Tree with Fascist Squirrels. Roman Lego Town with Shrews doing slaving and gladiator games. Evil Science Lab run by cultist rats. Variety! And the kind of variety where you get to topple some corrupt systems and dunk on despicable dorks. It’s a hoot.
The gameplay I can mostly just describe as serviceable. Turn based combat, skill trees, effect stacking. It's not complicated, but it's fun to play around without thinking too deeply. Progressing and improving your character build requires very little thought. Nearly every battle in Small Saga is story-required, with level ups plotted out along the same terms. But you also can reformat your skill points at any point. As such, the upgrade system very quickly becomes easy to manipulate to an ideal strategy. This doesn’t mean a lot in terms of challenge for main story or bonus bosses. But the core adventure is also just so tight and fun that it's kind of hard to be annoyed.
The game politics are about what I came into expecting. There was some Steam review bombing for daring to have a majority LGBT cast or frequent Nazi punching. One enemy screams “debate me bro” talking points. The British Hall of Commons is regarded as “Hell” by rodent kind. It's not subtle, but I’m not even really asking it to be. The non-binary mole gets to be besties with the gay squirrel and the bi punk rat. It's good shit. I don’t expect a more elaborate thesis from the cute, if dark, mouse game. At the same time, the character writing of the antagonists is often a little off to me. It sometimes feels like they know that they're villains. One call his empire a "bloody institution", albeit as a positive descriptor. They are perfectly aware that their institutions are corrupt, but they take pride that its corrupt. Corruption is the point. Which is the truth in such matters, but I don't expect the corrupt figures to beso self-aware about it. Just an odd sort of writing distinction that itches in a weird way.
Which is why I was caught so off-guard by my favorite, easy to miss segment in the game. I don’t want to go too deep into broader plot stuff, but I feel it's safe to say you get to topple one of the evil governments in the mid-game. The fascists get owned, it's great. A new society is built over it, determined to avoid the despots of the past by avoiding leadership entirely. The dungeons are freed, the laws are repealed, it's a bright new era.
But eventually, some hours later, you can visit the dungeons to find Captain Aiden. The other fascists chose exile or reform. Aiden refused either option. He demands to be killed or imprisoned. He keeps coming back when they try to exile him. He is a True Believer in The System that used to exist. So, he’s the only prisoner of the town’s new era.
And so, you can sit down and talk to him.
Unlike the Debate Me fascist, Aiden has tangible beliefs to interrogate. When he hears about the new “leaderless” system, he offers counterpoints. Who is running the society then? How are laws and rules going to be governed? How are they going to be enforced? The current New Era system is vague and ill-defined by little else than that it's better than what it used to be. But how long can that last, once the cast as we know it dies out and the seasons change? The existing conditions of the town seem to be largely unchanged. If those conditions breed inequality, Authority and Hierarchies will take control once again.
You cannot change Aiden’s perspective. And like, it goes without saying, fuck him. He would rather sit in jail in his Nazi cosplay than change his mind. But the game is asking you, as a player, to put forth your own political worldview. Saying Aiden is “technically right” allows you to offer counter-plans. You can choose to focus on combating inequality and consider building a system . You can choose to focus on combating institutions and suggest building a society with as few institutions as possible, presenting a community-focused framework instead. Saying Aiden is “completely wrong” builds broader discussion of why he’s wrong and why his philosophy is garbage. Or you can skip those steps and just choose to mock him for being a tool. All of these options are presented as equally valid. But it's your choice. Your beliefs. It won’t change the world or the ending or any gameplay event. It's just a single moment asking the player to truly think about the hows of building a new society.
It’s the kind of polish and consideration that makes this game really shine. Sometimes it's clumsy, sometimes it's simplistic, sometimes it misses the mark of its goals. But it strives and it swings and it goes for it. And it does it all without wasting my time or padding out the runtime. And for that alone, I just gotta adore it.
The opening hour of Small Saga sets its tone well. Anxious mouse Verm is traveling with his brother Lance to Heaven. A place where food is plentiful and sits out in the open. Where the Gods mingle and chat and live in their utopia. The grocery store.
There, the two brothers encounter an exterminator. A Yellow God, who effortlessly commits damage in the hundreds with even noticing, when your heroes have 12 health max at the time. The scale is clear. These are almighty beings that cannot be crossed. You are a mouse.
But the way the game toys with that line is so endlessly intriguing to interrogate. The general twee trappings I expected are present. Magical mouse society living beneath the floorboards, mouse governments and mouse politics, all hidden from the mundane reality of the humans. The humans finish their normal day jobs, unaware of this hidden world beneath their feet. In a normal game, humans regarded as gods would be fun little background set dressing.
Small Saga is about a mouse planning to kill god.
Suddenly, the set dressing becomes gripping to unravel as the game whole-heartedly commits to its ideas. Secret of the NIMH or its other analogues put a clear disconnect between Humans and Mouse. These are different worlds, never to interact directly. By making this connection so direct, by making it clear these worlds can and will interact, the narrative world-building suddenly gets really difficult to square in my head. Not even in a negative sense! But the sheer implications of a mouse’s ability to murder a guy doing his banal 9 to 5 shocks you into truly thinking about this divide between the above and the floorboards. If a mouse could kill this guy, what if the mouse killed me?
It's this tension that helps fuel the game’s wider examination of institutions and oppression. There are several different territories in the mouse kingdom with their own systems of government. They all answer, broadly, to King James, but the King himself tends to let Barons and Dukes run the show any way they please. This provides an easy excuse for the settings to vary in aesthetics. Mole Town of peasants. Mouse Capital with medieval knights and warriors. Grey Squirrel Tree with Fascist Squirrels. Roman Lego Town with Shrews doing slaving and gladiator games. Evil Science Lab run by cultist rats. Variety! And the kind of variety where you get to topple some corrupt systems and dunk on despicable dorks. It’s a hoot.
The gameplay I can mostly just describe as serviceable. Turn based combat, skill trees, effect stacking. It's not complicated, but it's fun to play around without thinking too deeply. Progressing and improving your character build requires very little thought. Nearly every battle in Small Saga is story-required, with level ups plotted out along the same terms. But you also can reformat your skill points at any point. As such, the upgrade system very quickly becomes easy to manipulate to an ideal strategy. This doesn’t mean a lot in terms of challenge for main story or bonus bosses. But the core adventure is also just so tight and fun that it's kind of hard to be annoyed.
The game politics are about what I came into expecting. There was some Steam review bombing for daring to have a majority LGBT cast or frequent Nazi punching. One enemy screams “debate me bro” talking points. The British Hall of Commons is regarded as “Hell” by rodent kind. It's not subtle, but I’m not even really asking it to be. The non-binary mole gets to be besties with the gay squirrel and the bi punk rat. It's good shit. I don’t expect a more elaborate thesis from the cute, if dark, mouse game. At the same time, the character writing of the antagonists is often a little off to me. It sometimes feels like they know that they're villains. One call his empire a "bloody institution", albeit as a positive descriptor. They are perfectly aware that their institutions are corrupt, but they take pride that its corrupt. Corruption is the point. Which is the truth in such matters, but I don't expect the corrupt figures to beso self-aware about it. Just an odd sort of writing distinction that itches in a weird way.
Which is why I was caught so off-guard by my favorite, easy to miss segment in the game. I don’t want to go too deep into broader plot stuff, but I feel it's safe to say you get to topple one of the evil governments in the mid-game. The fascists get owned, it's great. A new society is built over it, determined to avoid the despots of the past by avoiding leadership entirely. The dungeons are freed, the laws are repealed, it's a bright new era.
But eventually, some hours later, you can visit the dungeons to find Captain Aiden. The other fascists chose exile or reform. Aiden refused either option. He demands to be killed or imprisoned. He keeps coming back when they try to exile him. He is a True Believer in The System that used to exist. So, he’s the only prisoner of the town’s new era.
And so, you can sit down and talk to him.
Unlike the Debate Me fascist, Aiden has tangible beliefs to interrogate. When he hears about the new “leaderless” system, he offers counterpoints. Who is running the society then? How are laws and rules going to be governed? How are they going to be enforced? The current New Era system is vague and ill-defined by little else than that it's better than what it used to be. But how long can that last, once the cast as we know it dies out and the seasons change? The existing conditions of the town seem to be largely unchanged. If those conditions breed inequality, Authority and Hierarchies will take control once again.
You cannot change Aiden’s perspective. And like, it goes without saying, fuck him. He would rather sit in jail in his Nazi cosplay than change his mind. But the game is asking you, as a player, to put forth your own political worldview. Saying Aiden is “technically right” allows you to offer counter-plans. You can choose to focus on combating inequality and consider building a system . You can choose to focus on combating institutions and suggest building a society with as few institutions as possible, presenting a community-focused framework instead. Saying Aiden is “completely wrong” builds broader discussion of why he’s wrong and why his philosophy is garbage. Or you can skip those steps and just choose to mock him for being a tool. All of these options are presented as equally valid. But it's your choice. Your beliefs. It won’t change the world or the ending or any gameplay event. It's just a single moment asking the player to truly think about the hows of building a new society.
It’s the kind of polish and consideration that makes this game really shine. Sometimes it's clumsy, sometimes it's simplistic, sometimes it misses the mark of its goals. But it strives and it swings and it goes for it. And it does it all without wasting my time or padding out the runtime. And for that alone, I just gotta adore it.