I think the only reason that Mosaic wasn’t named “The Depression Simulator” is that there is already a game with that title. The game is told without any dialogue so you have to figure out the story through context alone. I can only say that this seems to be the story of a depressed man with no joy in his life who is trying to change that. Maybe the game was just making me depressed playing it, I don’t know. You start each day waking up with messages from work berating you and your progress; then you fix your hair and brush your teeth (seriously no shower ?); then you make your way to work. Along the way to work you encounter various bits of colour in an otherwise grey looking world. These bits of colour seem to awaken something in the main character if just for a moment. You then go to work and have to complete this resource gathering mini game before going home and doing it all over again. I detested this mini game but a part of me feels like I was meant to. I also didn’t like the many frequent camera angle changes while moving around the world, it made me think of the old school tank controls of 90’s horror games and I didn’t like that then or now. You also can’t move freely, you have to hold down the left mouse button to move in the direction you placed the arrow. If the goal was to make a bleak world the game succeeded. It is filled with ads for ways to increase productivity; a colourless world; and people who look away if you look at them. The backdrops; objects and water were well done. The music was great as well and reminded me of Off-Peak. I in some ways enjoyed the story that unfolded but hated the game play required to advance it. The aforementioned mini game was annoying; there were also a conveyor belt puzzle that was frustrating due to the camera angles.
I played Mosaic on Linux. It never crashed on me. I did notice some flickering textures a few times throughout the game such as windows or the characters tie. There was also one scene on a train where if I go left instead of right the screen just went black until I went right. There was one graphics setting and a v-sync option. The game ran great aside from a few moments where the frame rate would drop to the 60’s and 80’s. This was still very playable but I couldn’t find a good reason why the drop happened based on the image quality and what was going on at the time. The game uses a checkpoint save system and a terrible one at that. There are major checkpoints and minor ones. I say that because at certain points it actually registers a checkpoint in the menu but any other time it says “saving” it won’t actually bring you back to that point if you exit the game but will bring you back to the last major checkpoint listed which will lose you progress. Why it says “saving” at times when it clearly doesn’t save there is unknown and very annoying.
Game Engine: Unity
Save System: Checkpoints
Graphics API: OpenGL
Game Version Played: 1.1.9:113
Disk Space Used: 3.3GB
Settings Used: Max Quality @ 1080P with v-sync on
GPU Usage: 25-100 %
VRAM Usage: 824-1547 MB
CPU Usage: 11-35 %
RAM Usage: 2.2-3.6 GB
Frame Rate: 65-144 FPS
Overall I find it hard to recommend Mosaic. It does a great job painting a bleak world and making you feel trapped in a routine you want to break but maybe the developer forgot games are supposed to be fun as well which is something Mosaic lacks. I finished the game in three hours and ten minutes. I paid $22.79 CAD for it and feel that is a bit over priced. The $10-15 price point would have suited it better based on content. The annoying mini games; poor camera angles; and terrible save system ruins any enjoyment I had of the world and story.
My Score: 6/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.0.1 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.0.1 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.11.10-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz