Hela Beginner Guide: First Steps for New Mouse Familiars (2026)

So you just picked up Hela of Mice & Magic and you're staring at this tiny mouse on screen wondering what the heck you're supposed to do first. I was in the exact same spot. The game doesn't hold your hand - Windup Games (the folks behind Unravel) clearly trust you to figure things out.

The thing that threw me off most? There's no combat. At all. I kept waiting for a tutorial popup about attacking, dodging, something. Nope. You're a mouse. Your job is to explore, befriend animals, and help a witch who's fallen ill. It's honestly refreshing once you stop looking for a fight button.

Your Best Friend: The Froggy Backpack

First thing you notice is this little frog strapped to your back. That's the Froggy Backpack and it's basically your Swiss Army knife for the entire game. The frog's tongue works as a grappling hook - you aim with left trigger, latch onto ledges, branches, floating objects, and swing across gaps. It took me about twenty minutes to stop flinging myself into lakes, so don't feel bad if the timing feels weird at first. Honestly, everyone I know who played this game went through the same thing.

What that tongue can actually do: swing between trees, climb cliff faces, pull heavy objects toward you (or pull yourself toward them if they're heavier), lasso butterfly-like creatures that carry you short distances, and - this one surprised me - form temporary bridges between two anchor points. The bridge thing isn't obvious. The game mentions it once in a loading screen tooltip and then never again. If you're stuck on a gap that looks too wide to swing, try shooting the tongue at something on the far side and holding the button - sometimes the frog just... extends.

One thing I noticed: the tongue length isn't infinite. It has a range. You see a little ripple effect at max distance when you're aiming. Past that, the reticle goes red. Don't waste time aiming at red-reticle targets.

Playing Solo? The Shade System Is Your Lifeline

Hela was built for up to four players. Local split-screen, online co-op, the works. But a lot of us are going to play solo, and the Shade System is how the game makes that work.

Basically you create magical copies of yourself - up to three shades - and place them anywhere you've stood before. You switch between them with the d-pad. Think of it like a teleport-anchor system. Need two mice to stand on two pressure plates simultaneously? Shade. Need to hold a door open while your main mouse goes through? Shade.

What the tutorial doesn't tell you: shades inherit your Froggy Backpack abilities. So you can chain tongue swings between shades in really creative ways. I once crossed half a wetland by creating a shade mid-swing, switching to it, swinging again, and repeating. Took a few tries but it works.

Your First Hour: What Actually Matters

Ignore the urge to explore everything immediately. The starting meadow has a lot of shiny distractions but here's what you should actually do:

Talk to every village NPC. The owl postmaster gives you a free map marker for the first biome. The baker mouse trades you a basic potion recipe for three mushrooms you find literally anywhere. These little starter interactions save you so much backtracking later.

Learn the sniff ability. Press up on the d-pad and your mouse's nose twitches, revealing nearby ingredients as glowing sparkles. Ingredients are how you brew potions, and potions are your power-ups in this game. The Tailwind spell, for example, gives you a speed boost that makes crossing open fields way less tedious. You get the recipe early - don't sleep on it.

Don't panic when a fox shows up. Your instinct will be to run or fight. Neither works. Instead, look for what the fox is interested in - usually berries or a rabbit trail - and interact with that thing. Most hostile wildlife can be befriended. Befriend a magpie early and it becomes your fast-travel option between biomes. This isn't explained anywhere obvious. I stumbled on it by accident and spent the next hour flying around on a bird.

Getting Lost Is Part of It

The map is handcrafted, procedurally nothing. Northern Sweden-inspired - think forests, wetlands, lakes, meadows, and eventually rugged mountains. Each biome has its own look and its own traversal gimmick. Meadows are wide open and great for learning the paraglider (inflate the Froggy Backpack by holding jump in mid-air). Wetlands need more tongue-swinging. Mountains introduce the plunge slam - drop from height and hit the ground hard to reveal hidden burrow entrances.

You won't get penalized for wandering, by the way. There's no enemy scaling, no missable story beats, no punishment for taking three hours to find one ingredient. The witch needs help, sure, but she's patient. Take your time. There are other things I could mention - hidden ingredient spawns, the full creature friendship chain, the post-game spellbook quests - but you'll discover those as you go.

One last thing: the soundtrack is by Frida Johansson and Henrik Oja, the same composers who did Unravel. It's gorgeous. Play with headphones if you can. The audio cues for hidden ingredients are subtle - a faint chime when you're near something the sniff ability didn't catch - and you'll miss them on TV speakers.