REVIEW : Mosaic (PC)
Mosaic is a fairly ambitious and rare experience. when you start digging in. This game has a French look and feel.
If you thought your life was boring and routine just wait until you walk into the shoes of the unnamed warrior in Mosaic. You’ll be playing a corporate drone, one of the thousands who make their way to work each day in a tower of computer cubicles to crunch numbers and reach their milestones. When the story begins you wake up to start your workday with an alert from the office saying that if you are late five more times you will be terminated. And therein lies your entire premise for the game; getting to work on time which, due to the very nature of life and scripted events outside of your control is an impossibility.
Mosaic sets a pattern of behaviour for our hero; beginning the day with fixing your hair, aligning your tie, and cleaning your teeth. We are never meant to ask why he never showers or changes the same work outfits he wears while sleeping, each day the bills on the kitchenette table pile higher and his fridge remain often empty. A quick analysis of his banking records clearly shows he’s consuming more than he makes – yep; this is life. You’d imagine by resting in your work clothes and not showering you could get to work on time but there are numerous other disturbances between the job and your home building that is home to a crazy amount of people – look at all those mailboxes – and yet you regularly monitor your own there is nothing but past pending bills inside.
The first day you enter work by simply leaving your home while other trips will include all kinds of clever distractions. Intrusiveness is the villain in this game; as you fall victim to back-alley amusements, an open gate, a taunting butterfly, a flock of doves, and a quartet of road artists that you will meet individually on your everyday walks to work.
Another key component in Mosaic is your mobile, so key in fact that all of the Steam successes in Mosaic centre on the BLIP-BLOP game preinstalled on your mobile. The real strength of this game pokes insightful fun at just how low mobile sports and their players have sunk. In this play, you simply tap a key as quickly as you can to boost your coin total. You can then use those coins in the app store to acquire boosters that allow you to make more coins more quickly. The play is a great analogy that reflects the hopelessness of the game and our character’s ordinary life. Over the five days, you will be capable to download and use other apps like a dating app that will quickly tally just how many souls really “dislike” you. There is also a crypto-currency app where you can purchase low and sell high to earn some virtual currency.
Mosaic has a wonderful visual exhibition that satisfies the mood excellently with its disheartening blues, greys, and blacks. There always appears to be the warning of rainfall at any provided moment as indicated by the umbrella by your gate, and in those rare views of sunshine where oranges and yellows fill the screen, you get a real sense of warmness and comfort. There is a prominent use of light and shadows and some extraordinary camera work that dynamically moves around the view to focus and guide you on your trip. The camera even becomes a component of the game design as you open the skill to change the view and rotate the camera to discover new angles that enable you to progress the journey.
One of the best early minutes in the play is where the camera pulls back clear over the street to a building site.
The game scales perfectly to a variety of PC specs. Everything runs smooth, crisp and clean with no jaggies and super-smooth panning and animations. Keys were perfect using a gamepad or you can choose to play with a mouse and aim and drag to move then communicate with the mouse button. The keyboard is not used other than to hit ESC to access the menu or quit the game.
Mosaic doesn’t have a story, A lot of this game is left exposed to interpretation, both while you’re operating and in the conversations that will pursue after the credits have surged. Mosaic is like a slice of art, meant to spark your creativity and sentiments. Putting a price on that is tough, and while $20 might seem a bit high for a 2-4 hour experience with no replay value you will enjoy every minute spent in Mosaic.
