This has become my favorite fantasy RPG, and I think most of my players feel the same. This is a real swords & sorcery game from an author who clearly knows what makes the genre different from other kinds of fantasy, and the fact that it's done with rodents provides a completely unique feel and mood. The grim, harsh sword & sorcery world is lightened just enough by the whimsical talking mice—it's still closer to Howard that Tolkien, but occupies a space neither of them ever conceived of.

Rules set is simple but effective. I can tell this game was extensively playtested. There are a few mechanical snags here and there that a skilled GM will have to iron out, but on the balance fewer than in the latest edition of a certain extremely popular RPG. Some aspects of the rules are familiar (ability scores plus skills, ablative abstract hit points), but the places where the rules innovate is where the game shines. Combat is very important to S&S, and the combat system here is unique and fun.

The magic system is like nothing else. It is distinctly S&S, with powerful magic accompanied by dark and evil perils, and the sorcerer's very soul at risk in the pursuit of power. Mostly though, the mousy magic system is on the same scale as a mouse: small. Sorcerous PCs will need to rely as much on mundane skills as magical ones.

The smaller scale of this game does result in a few things players just have to turn a blind eye to and suspend disbelief. But overall it works really well. The game never lets you forget the characters are mice, and plays up their unique mousiness.

Highly, highly recommended.

Summary: It's Conan crossed with Redwall.

Hyperborean Mice is a game of swords and sorcery, with all the trappings and tropes that entails. It has an ancient, crumbling empire only a generation or so from disintegration or unlikely renewal, inbred fueding nobility, dirty peasants, barbarians at the borders, dark cults of forbidden gods, ancient ruins of a dead civilization, horrific monsters in the wilds, mysterious places, and adventure. All of it as performed by talking mice and rats.

It sounds odd, but anyone who has read Redwall or its sequels knows that it's entirely possible to take the premise of talking animals completely straight and still make a compelling and somewhat grim story out of it, and Hyperborean Mice does that elegantly. While reading it, I was never taken out of the mood or stopped and thought "wait, these are mice." As the book says, the rules and setting could work just as easily with humans with minimal tweaking.

As it is, everything works. Owls are dragons, shrews are orcs or goblins, undead shrews are ravenous zombies, weasels are ogres, hawks are the horrific terror of the unexplored wild--the animal kingdom provides plenty of horrible threats and dangers for heroes who are the size of a mouse. The dark gods are even based on mousy dangers--Hartaung is the god of winter and the attendant danger of starvation, Skzentic is the god of disease and filth, and Daolotch is the god of death and the afterlife. Various other essentially deified predators fill out the ranks of the banned cults, like Hoorooru, the Father of Owls.

The rules themselves are pretty easy. All tasks are 2d6 + stat + skill, beat a set difficulty, and there are plenty of abilities and magical powers (mostly based on psychic powers--controlling emotions, moving things with your mind, pyrokinesis, speaking mind to mind, that sort of thing) to fill out the Cool Stuff sections on the character sheet. It manages to find a good balancing point between simplicity and plenty of options without going too far in either direction.

All in all, it's well worth your time and money.