Mouse P.I. For Hire Achievement Guide: A Masterclass in Paranoia and Save Scumming

Mouse P.I. For Hire has no chapter select and no New Game Plus, so every one of its 34 achievements has to be earned on a single, careful playthrough.

The single most important thing to know before you start collecting anything is that Mouseburg has a mission called "Jack Squat." Once you accept it, the P.I. Office hub is closed off for good. There's no going back to clean up loose ends after the credits roll, because there's no chapter select to fall back on either.

That means the mission has to become a checklist stop. Before touching "Jack Squat," your evidence board needs to be full, your weapons need to be fully upgraded, and every merchant in the hub needs to be cleaned out. Treat it less like a story beat and more like a locked door you shouldn't walk through until everything else is done.

Manual saves matter here too. You get 50 slots, which is generous, and there's no reason not to use most of them. Dropping a fresh save at the start of every mission, and another right before returning to the hub, gives some insurance if you realize later you skipped something.

Talk to Everyone, Every Time

It's easy to breeze past NPC dialogue in a game built around shootouts and collectibles, but skipping conversations at the office comes with a real cost. Side Jobs don't surface unless dialogue gets exhausted with the people who offer them, and missing those Side Jobs locks out multiple achievements outright. The habit is simple: talk to everyone in the hub until they start repeating lines, every single time you're back there.

The Missables That Have Nothing to Do With Combat or Collecting

Two achievements in Mouseburg don't fit any obvious category, and they're the kind of thing that's easy to walk past without realizing it.

During the "Saltwater Cambozo" mission in Wallop Bay, there's a dead shark hanging near the diner. Kicking it repeatedly eventually knocks a license plate loose, which is the entire trigger for "Quint's Delight."

The other one shows up after picking up "The Bookkeeper" mission. Back at the P.I. Office hub, there's a BMP Agitator standing near the Little Big Bar entrance. Punching him in the snout unlocks "Herr Flick of the Wrist." Neither of these is hard once you know they exist, but there's nothing in the game pointing toward either one.

Combat Trophies Mostly Handle Themselves, With a Few Exceptions

Playing aggressively covers a good chunk of the combat-related achievements without much extra effort, but a handful need a specific setup to land cleanly.

Barrels are the common thread through several of them. "Boom Town" asks for 20 kills using thrown or kicked explosive barrels, and kicking carries more personal risk, so it's worth grinding out early while enemies are still weak. "Firestarter" is the inverse of that, 20 kills from shooting barrels rather than throwing them, and it's easy to accidentally mix the two up mid-fight.

Multi-kills reward a bit of patience. "Hole-y Trinity" wants three enemies down with a single shot, which works well if you lure a group next to a barrel or line up a charged Boomstick shot on weak melee enemies once it's fully upgraded. "Goud'em!" needs five kills inside 10 seconds, while "M-m-muenster Kill!" bumps that to 10 kills inside 20 seconds. Bandel's Laboratory throws large hordes at you later on, and that section makes the tighter time window far more manageable than trying to force it earlier.

"Spike-D 16 TONS" is the odd one out mechanically, since it wants 20 enemies crushed by objects falling from the ceiling. The Tinsel Ave level has suspended pianos and stage lights you can shoot down, so keeping your aim pointed upward while moving through that stretch does most of the work.

The Baseball Hustle Is Its Own Small Economy

Mouseburg's baseball card minigame ties into three achievements on its own, plus a fourth for grinding out wins. Each match costs 50 coins to enter, and losing is simply money gone, so it's worth waiting until you've built a decent card deck and have around 1500 coins banked before leaning into it seriously.

"Starter Deck" and "Babe Got Bat" just track partial collections, 5 and 10 cards respectively, with "Card Shark" covering the full set. "Pocket Aces" only needs a single win, which will likely happen naturally. "S'all in the Cards," which asks for 30 wins, is the real grind, and leaning on high Strength cards while batting and high Fielding cards while pitching gives a real edge, since it tends to freeze opponents in place rather than let momentum swing back.

Paper, Comics, and the Evidence Board

The collectible side of Mouseburg is where the bulk of playtime disappears. Two separate paper collections run in parallel: the Mouseburg Herald, tracked through "Paper Person" (5 issues), "Cover to Cover" (10 issues), and "Extra! Extra!" (the full set), and comic strips, tracked the same way through "Comic Relief," "Extremely Graphic Novel," and "The Prequel."

If a paper gets missed out in the world, it sometimes resurfaces for sale at the ammo store back in the P.I. Office. It's a fallback worth knowing about, though buying back issues eats into cash that's better spent elsewhere, so it shouldn't be the primary plan.

Every clue picked up along the way also needs to be pinned to the evidence board at the office for "So, Whodunit?" It's a passive achievement in the sense that it tracks automatically, but it's still worth confirming before the point of no return closes things off.

Weapons Take Real Investment

Fully upgrading the arsenal requires 63 weapon schematics, and the developers scattered more than 80 of them through Mouseburg, which leaves a comfortable margin for error. Checking safes as they show up on the main path covers most of them without much detour.

"Guns, Lots of Guns" covers every non-corporate-locked weapon, which come naturally through story progress or direct pickups rather than anything hidden. "This is My Boomstick!" only needs one weapon pushed to Tier 3 at Tammy's shop, while "We'll B.A.N.G., ok?" asks for every upgradable weapon to hit that same tier, which is where those extra schematics start to matter.

"Everybody Loves Rayguns" is tied to the X1 D-Mousifier, bought from the Spike-D vending machine for 20 Prize Tokens, which come from the baseball minigame. That ties the weapon collection back into the card grind more than it might seem at first glance.

Side Jobs and the Story Spine

Side Jobs, unlocked through hub dialogue as mentioned earlier, need five completed for "Dime Novel Sleuth" and all of them completed for "Real Deal Gumshoe." Given that "Jack Squat" cuts off hub access permanently, these need to be cleared before accepting that mission, not after.

The story-related achievements are largely unmissable by nature. "Tricks of the Trade" unlocks as special abilities come in naturally through progression, and "Tip of the Cheeseberg" simply requires finishing the game. The three case-specific pairs, covering the Blue Betty case, the Shrew Shortage case, and the Missing Magician case, track key clues and case completion separately. Worth flagging that the Missing Magician and Shrew Shortage achievements are currently facing bug reports, so there's a chance they don't trigger cleanly even when the requirements are met.

"The Platinum Falcon" sits at the top of all of it, requiring every other trophy in the game, which makes the planning above less optional and more the actual game plan for anyone chasing full completion.

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