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• Your character
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Kiwi Acres and Mausritter are both great for all ages (requires number recognition or some help)

Kiwi Acres is a setting and adventure collection for the Mausritter system that takes place in New Zealand!  Because this was my first time playing Mausritter, in addition to reviewing Kiwi Acres I’m reviewing Mausritter from a mechanics standpoint and Kiwi Acres from a story standpoint below. 

For the story, Kiwi Acres is a wonderful setting and is appropriate for all ages.  There’s some combat, but there’s also options to handle without combat (like how my kid and partner convinced a couple of the opossums at the market that they were violating OOSHA, the Opossum Occupational Safety and Health Administration), and there’s a variety of adventures to pick from depending on your group’s preferences.  We played the Market Day adventure, for example, and also took a look at Scarecrow Stand, and I didn’t come across anything that wasn’t OK for my 5yo in either one. 

For the Mausritter system, it has rules lite mechanics and a visual inventory system, which made it really easy for my kid to understand and for me to help him with while we played, so it’s highly accessible for young players.

Kiwi Acres is set in New Zealand!

Kiwi Acres is a New Zealand based adventure setting that comes with an illustrated bestiary of setting specific critters and new maps, stories,and spells!  As of writing this article, there’s 10 adventures sprawling across a farm with 19 different key locations.  In the center of it all is Scarecrow Stand, the mouse settlement on the farm, which is the homebase for your characters and populated with some fun NPCs!  There’s also larger NPC critters across the farm that have full descriptions and roll tables for their disposition towards the mice (so you get some fun variation between your games). It also comes with adventure hooks across the map and adventure connections so you can quickly link all the extra adventure to the central map and story.

I really liked the New Zealand spin on everything – items like a Kākā Beak or Taniwha Tooth and critters like a Pūkeko or Patupaiarehe and Ponaturi were both immersive and had us looking up and learning more about New Zealand in a really fun context.  There’s also a really good pronunciation and meaning guide at the end, which helped with teaching my kid about properly sounding out words and how different words can have similar meanings.

Your character in Kiwi Acres and Mausritter

Mausritter is set in a world of mice with you playing a mouse character, and so is Kiwi Acres!  

You create your character by rolling up three stats (STR, DEX, and WIL), your HP, and your starting pips. It took maybe 5 minutes max to roll everything up and explain to my kid what it all meant, so it was easy to start out.  There’s also room to draw your character, which both kiddo and my partner had a lot of fun with. 

One thing I really liked in character creation was rolling for your profession or origins based on your starting HP and pips – the table was pretty funny and also helped to balance starting gear and spells vs HP and pips to make character backstory creation easy for players that might be a bit stumped.

Mechanics in Mausritter

Because Kiwi Acres is the setting and Mausritter is the system, I’m focusing on reviewing Mausritter for this part of the article!

Stat checks and stat damage

In Mausritter, once you have your stats rolled up, you have that number on your sheet as a target number that you want to roll at or under for all of your checks, so you just need to track that one number for your roll without worrying about adding modifiers.  I really liked how this simplified the stat tracking, and my kid was able to do all his checks on his own because it was a really clear “less than or equal to” check!

I also really liked that those stats can sometimes change in the game – if you take damage beyond your HP, it spills over to start damaging your strength (so your STR stat decreases), and if you overexert yourself on a spell, it can reduce your WIL score.  This was another really easy but effective mechanic for having consequences or risk to taking actions without making the system super complicated. 

Spells and weapons

Tracking spells and attacks in games with my kid is often one of the hardest parts of playing a TTRPG that involves set spells and weapons because it’s commonly represented by a list of words that he can’t read yet and very different rules and tracking for each bit, so it requires a lot of interaction and help for him to be able to use it.

In Mausritter, though, it was actually pretty easy.  Spells are represented on tokens that have the number of pips (uses) marked with circles to fill in for tracking, and you’re limited on the number of spells you can carry.  This means that, while you may need to remember a one sentence description of the spell to use it, you probably will only have one or two spells, so it’s manageable for my kid to recall.

With attacks, this was even easier to track despite having a ton of options to pick from!  All items in the game have a picture of what they are with the die you get to roll on the token with it.   When I gave out starting gear, I laid out a few tokens in front of the group, and my kid immediately saw the spear picture and said he wanted that one – no explanation needed.  When it came time to roll in combat, the die amount was right next to it, so he just rolled what it said on the token without needing to remember anythingt.

Inventory tracking

Mausritter has an AMAZING inventory tracking set up. I mentioned above that spells and gear are on tokens that have a picture and some basic information (like what die to roll or tracking uses) – these are all set up to be the size that they occupy in your mouse’s inventory.  You place the tokens on your character sheet to cover the space in your hands or pack to track your supplies, loot, etc.

This works so well on so many levels.  First, it’s picture based, which is perfect for kids who can’t read yet.  Second, it’s super visual in terms of representing how much you can carry and makes it easy to see what you want to pick up or leave behind.  Third, it limits your inventory in a very gentle way by showing how much is reasonable to carry and reminding you what you have – smaller inventories are easier to remember and track AND seeing it there means that players actually use the items.

I really liked the mechanics as a whole, but my favorite part is how items are handled because it is set up in such an intuitive way.

What did my kid think about Kiwi Acres?

When I asked what he thought, he said, “I like… liked probably EVERY part of the game.  I got to do magic, but it made Mousey tired, but that’s OK because I got to poke the opossum in the bum with the spear [insert child giggles].”

It’s also only been one sleep since playing, and he’s asking to play it again later today as well – this was a big hit with the kiddo, and I’m excited to try it out again with him!

Overall thoughts on Kiwi Acres and Mausritter

I LOVED this – the setting was great and gave us opportunities to look up and learn more about the location, the adventures were super cute and accessible for my kid, and the mechanics were streamlined and easy to pick up while still being interesting.

It also is perfect for all-ages (not just kids).  My partner and I have played D&D together, and he’s not super into it as a system because the amount of info to track can be overwhelming, but with this, he played along with kiddo and me, and he had a blast and got way more into the game than I’ve ever seen him get into D&D, I think because it was easy to pick up and moved along so quickly.

I think the Kiwi Acres adventures and the Mausritter system are both great for kids and/or families who want to have a solid and fun game to play together, and it is probably the easiest campaign-style game I’ve come across yet.  I am excited that kiddo wants to play more, and I hope you get the chance to check it out and enjoy it too!

Find a copy of Kiwi Acres and Mausritter

You can find a copy of Kiwi Acres on DriveThru or itch.io!

And you can also find Mausritter on DriveThru or itch.io!

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