Page 76 - PC Gamer - UK (February 2020)

RE VIE W

Mosaic

OKCOMPUTERGAME

Wallowing in day-to-day drudgery

in MOSAIC. By Alex Spencer

ou wake up. You grab your phone to switch off the alarm, commute: watching a butterfly or
then stare at it until you’re late for work. You brush your NEED TO KNOW sinking into your own imagination.
teeth, making eye contact in the bathroom mirror with the WHAT IS IT? These moments are presented as off
hollowed-out thing you’ve become. As game loops go, it’s not A point-and-click the beaten path, and some of them
Y exactly shoot, reposition, reload, is it? But then, this is mundanity simulator even are, toying with those well-
Mosaic’s sales pitch: forget the straightforward thrills of action and/or with a strong trained gamer instincts that, if you’re
adventure, here’s a game that simulates the tedious grind of everyday life. visual style supposed to go right, you should try
EXPECT TO PAY heading left first.
Using point-and-click controls, you scared of one another and we’re £15.50 Your efforts will be rewarded with
drag your character – an anonymous always looking at our screens. It’s not DEVELOPER a brief bit of striking imagery: yer
office worker with a wonky tie, a wrong but I’m not sure it ever cuts Krillbite Studio man floating in a sunset, miles away
smartphone and not much else in the any deeper than that classic one- PUBLISHER from the grey tones of real life, or
way of a discernible personality – tweet Black Mirror synopsis: ‘What if Raw Fury fantasising about an office complex
through this loop five times, a full phones, but too much?’ REVIEWED ON crumbling like the end of Fight Club.
working week of Radeon RX 580, AMD If I had to make a case for the
low-level misery. SCREEN TIME Ryzen 5 2600 3.9GHz, monotonous second life of Mosaic,
Which raises the The overall This does mean Mosaic 16 GB RAM these would be my Exhibit A.
question: why exactly effect is of a has more to say than MULTIPLAYER Because this is an undeniably
would you want a well-made most games. But it feels No eye-catching game. Mosaic’s house
second life that’s just as thin here because the LINK style is minimalist: limited palette,
rubbish as the first? Radiohead entire game is just a mosaiccorp.biz deliberately low-poly models, a
If Mosaic was able fan video housing for this smooth blank where everyone except
to answer for itself, I message. Mosaic is a your character’s face should be. And
suspect it’d be a point-and-click vitally, the game is willing to break
mumble about art and mirrors and adventure, but I use that last word those rules, messing with the shape
reflecting reality. And there are some under advisement. There are no real of your character or casting dusty
sharply observed moments here, like puzzles to speak of, or gags and sunbeams, or just introducing some
the daily elevator ride you share with insights to be accessed by clicking on damned colour to proceedings.
two strangers. Seemingly the only background details. For the most The overall effect is of a
control you have over your character part, you just move through the story. particularly well-made Radiohead fan
is which way he looks – so much as There are exceptions, mind. Every video. As someone who spent most of
glance in a stranger’s direction, and day when you arrive at work, Mosaic their teens on long meaningful walks
they’ll do everything they can to switches to a very simple hex-based with Kid A in the headphones, I don’t
avoid meeting your gaze. At which strategy game. It’s half-baked, but even necessarily mean that as a bad
point, you realise there is a second possibly intentionally so – work isn’t thing. But it might grate on you.
thing you can do: look at your phone. supposed to be fun, after all. Outside There’s an eagerness, in Mosaic’s
This is the big message Mosaic has of the office, there’s the occasional presentation and its experiments
to impart: Modern life, eh? We’re all bright spot to be found along your with repetition, to constantly remind
you that ‘This Is Art, Actually’, while
its grand thematic underpinnings
could fit into a tweet.
ON THE PHONE How to distract yourself from real life, the Mosaic way So you might consider that
question, why you’d want to live
someone else’s tedious life and
conclude that, frankly, you don’t. And
you wouldn’t be wrong, exactly. But
Mosaic is at least an occasionally
fascinating way of boring yourself.
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watching numbers get pay your bills! All the price and wait for the and never hear anything monotony that gets,
bigger is still compelling. features of a real-life app. graph to climb back… oh. back either way. perhaps inevitably, a
little monotonous.

76 FEBRUARY 2020