‘It Feels Like A Music Video’: How Brikk Turned ‘Good Mouse’ Into More Than A Game Trailer

Later this week, Fumi Games’s hugely hyped video game, Mouse: P.I. For Hire, will release, featuring golden-era-inspired aesthetics and plenty of rubber-hose hijinks. Ahead of the game’s release, the music video for the track “Good Mouse” by Caravan Palace has gone viral thanks to those same early animation callbacks, racking up nearly 700,000 views on YouTube in less than two weeks.

Produced by Swedish studio Brikk Animation, the video sidesteps game trailer conventions in favor of a fully realized piece of musical storytelling. It borrows aesthetically from 1930s animation, but its pacing, density, and editorial rhythm are unmistakably modern.

Ahead of this week’s game launch, we caught up with the video’s director, Matthew Reeve, to talk about the video, collaborating with game developers, and operating a pipeline overrun by cartoon mice.

From Gamescom to Mouseburg

Brikk’s involvement with the project began informally. The team’s first exposure to Mouse: P.I. For Hire came during the game’s very early development, when it was circulating concepts online and making first appearances at industry events.

“When they first saw the initial screen capture tests… they loved it,” Reeve recalls of his Brikk bosses. “When they saw the booth, they basically just love-bombed the guys… and left them a bunch of business cards.”

A year later, the developers reached out. The ingredients were already in place, but the form was not. “They had the band and the song, and the game,” Reeve says. “They wanted to do a music video, but they didn’t have a concept for it.”

Working from early character designs, fragments of lore – the game devs kept most of the narrative a well-guarded secret, and limited visual material, Brikk developed a narrative framework that extended beyond the game itself. “We kind of extrapolated this idea of a tale of two cities within Mouseburg… trying to give the city life outside of the game as we imagined it.”

The finished video leans into that worldbuilding, with multiple distinct characters and locations that hint at a deep lore full of crisscrossing narratives.

Multi-Generational Influence

As a mostly commercial studio, Brikk’s ability to shift between styles has become one of its defining traits, but Reeve frames that flexibility as a byproduct of the culture rather than a technical trick. Many Cartoon Brew readers will recall another rodent-starring Brikk ad that went viral over the last holiday season.

“It is first and foremost the talent,” he says. “We just have some of the most talented people in the business… and it all comes from love for the craft, love for animation, across all styles.”

That ethos is critical in a project so rooted in a specific generational aesthetic. The rubber-hose influence is obvious from the first frames, but the execution avoids feeling pastiche. Timing, staging, and character performance are tuned to contemporary expectations while preserving the elasticity and graphic clarity of early animation.

“It’s fascinating… we all grew up in slightly different decades,” Reeve explains of the Brikk crew, outing himself as the “old man” of the group, despite only being in his mid-40s. “We all grew up with different influences and seeing the artists at work, their adaptability, their flexibility, their versatility, it’s just remarkable.”

The result is a piece that feels influenced by history without being overwhelmed by trying to mimic it. The visual language is consistent, but it is not rigid. It expands and contracts depending on the song’s needs.

Music Video Function

The “Good Mouse” video works because it doesn’t treat the music as background while trying to push a game. Instead, it adopts the logic of a music video and builds around it.

“We always knew it would be that way,” Reeve says, explaining his own experience with the format, having directed several live-action music videos in the early 2000s and worked at MTV for a time.

“Good Mouse” cycles through repeating visual motifs and performance beats, returning to the band and key environments in a way that mirrors popular live-action music videos. These repetitions create rhythm and familiarity, allowing the narrative elements to weave in and out without slowing momentum.

There is also a subtle layer of sound design that deepens the experience. “We added some effects that are not in the song… engine sounds, city ambiance, poker chips… just to feel a little bit more alive.”

Those additions are understated, but they help ground the animation in a physical space. They also reinforce the sense that the world exists beyond the boundaries of the frame.

Four Months, Three Mice, One Company

The production timeline was compressed even by commercial animation standards. “It was about three months of heavy work and then maybe another month of additional compositing,” Reeve says.

At the same time, the studio was handling multiple projects. “Everyone was drawing mice,” he laughs, noting that all three of the ads featured mice characters.

That overlap shaped Brikk’s production approach. The music video format, with its emphasis on rhythm and repeatable sequences, allowed the team to prioritize key shots and maintain flow without overextending resources.

Even so, the schedule required a high degree of coordination across departments. Animation, compositing, and sound all had to align for a quick turnaround.

Collaboration

The collaboration with the game’s developer, Fumi Games, followed a familiar pattern for projects tied to in-progress titles. Development focused on aesthetic alignment, while early production allowed for more autonomy before the teams aligned more closely as the project neared its end.

“They shared character sheets and lore,” Reeve explains. “And then after that, they had a game to finish.”

Once the foundation was established, Brikk took the lead. Feedback came later in the process, when the animation was already taking shape. “It wasn’t until further along… that we had some notes on the animation and tweaked it.”

This approach allowed the animation team to build momentum while still ensuring consistency with the evolving game.

More Than an Ad

“Good Mouse” stands out for its style and execution, but also for its clarity of purpose. It commits fully to being a music video, even as it serves a promotional function.

That commitment allows the video to operate on multiple levels. It introduces a game, expands its world, and stands alone as an animated work that justifies itself independently of the product it supports.

For Brikk, that balance between craft and commerce is ongoing. “Navigating that… is a challenge for anyone,” Reeve says. “But it’s also what makes it exciting.”

In this case, the result is a project that feels less like marketing and more like a music video that invites repeat viewing.