In Randomice, you play as a mouse exploring a big house. You'll find upgrades as you travel, like some firecrackers, or a lighter, and using these upgrades, you can reach new places and find more items, like in a classic Metroidvania.

But Randomice is also an item randomizer, so you won’t find these upgrades in a predefined order. Each run will shuffle the location of every single item in the game. You can start with a magnetic grapple to access the kitchen sink in one run, but in another you may start with a rocket to burst through the glass door of the shower.

You must adapt to the tools in your possession to determine where you can go, the thrill of the game coming both from traversing the map with fun and increasingly powerful tools, but also from the mental mapping of the house, to know what’s reachable at any given time. When you obtain a new item, you need to update this mental map to determine the best possibilities, optimize your path, and decide where to go next to increase the chances to find all the keys to exit quickly.

In later challenges, not only are the items randomized, but the rooms themselves can be shuffled. You may find the baby room just next to the workshop, the kitchen, or the bathroom.

The characters as well can be shuffled around! Grandpa, who you find near the fireplace normally, may now be chilling in the bedroom, the garage or… the toilets. When you have an item for him, you have to remember where the character is to deliver this item.