Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery – PN – Review

Starting off as human pond scum in
the dregs of Egypt, you are looked down on by everybody. But a chance
happening has you now discovering the surroundings of King Tut’s death, and as
you decipher the hieroglyphics almost magically you find yourself getting
smarter as well as rising up through society’s ranks. If you can just make
your mind complete the clues you just might be able to hold your head high as
a member of the Pharaoh’s horse poop patrol.

Mosaic is a fun little title that
wraps the mystery around King Tut’s death with a unique and interesting puzzle
game with all sorts of Egyptian flair. The premise is interesting enough as it
promises to delve into who was responsible for the Pharaoh’s death as well as
all those who had motive to kill the young king. And while the way the game
moves itself along with you solving puzzles that translate into the mystery, I
had to grin as I listened to the voice narration and read the cleverly
humorous passages that are made available prior to the beginning of each
level.

Kind of looks like a virus in the Petri
dish.

But how the puzzle plays is
similar to other puzzle-style games in this vein. Basically, at the beginning
of each level, there is a strange shaped design in the middle of the screen
made up of many smaller shapes. On the left of the screen shapes that may or
may not fit begin falling and stacking up on the bottom of the screen. You
must take the shapes and (by rotating) place them into spots on the large
puzzle. Of course this is made all the more difficult by the pieces stacking
up and coming at you that much more quickly. Now the game has several other
little nuances that help mix things up. For one, every once in a while, one of
the puzzle pieces is lightning charged and you place it on the board then,
when the next lightning charged piece is placed on the board the two pieces
charge up and fill in any empty spaces that are between them. So it makes
sense to place the two pieces as far apart as possible so you can take that
much more advantage of the magic.

Next, the puzzle sometimes has
gems pop up on the spaces, if you can place a puzzle piece on the gem space
before it disappears, you are rewarded with a glyph that appears with your
stack of puzzle pieces on the left side. Now these glyphs are one of three
types that you can use. One of them destroys all of your stack and therefore
buys you more time since the game ends if your stack reaches the top of the
screen. Another glyph shows you where you can put the puzzle pieces by
lighting up the parts of the puzzle where they will fit. This is easily one of
the best tricks you can get in the game. The last glyph is the falcon, the
falcon can be used to pluck already used pieces from the puzzle permanently,
allowing you to place another piece in it’s place. Hmmm tricky…

From this distance, it looks like we are
playing the board game RISK.

But that’s not all, oh no, this
game still has more tricks for you to use in your quest for the truth. Next
up, the crusher, the crusher is used to destroy any pieces that don’t fit into
the puzzle, but you need to use it pretty much as a last resort as it can only
hold one piece at a time and each time it crushes, it slowly opens up before
it will work again.

Lastly there is the enormous
obelisk on the right side of the screen, each time a shape is placed on the
puzzle the obelisk rises towards the top of the screen. When it reaches the
top, shapes will appear on it as will a number, these are essentially free
puzzle pieces, merely left click on the puzzle piece that’s on the obelisk and
it automatically goes to the puzzle. You can do this until the number is run
down to zero and then the obelisk falls to the bottom of the screen and you
must start over.

The graphics featured in Mosaic
are a decent bunch. It is a puzzle game, after all, so I went in not expecting
the second coming of the wheel; I am happy to say that the game looks pretty
good. The puzzles and the shapes are a bit strange and that’s the way they
should be. Strange in the way that there are odd angles and pieces that look
like they should fit, but don’t. It’s visually a complicated beast. The audio
was fun, the Egyptian music that plays in the background is a nice
accompaniment but the narrator who guides you along is where the audio does it
best. A female voice that’s both sly and educational at the same time.

Gameplay: 8.2
An easy-to-use unobtrusive setup. There is an awful lot going on and
you need to bring your mental "A" game in order to get very far. I swear this
game could potentially increase your hand/eye coordination.

Graphics: 7.0
Like I said, it’s a visually busy
game, there is always something going on and the lightning effects are bright
and crisp, but it still is just a puzzle game so don’t expect anything really
awesome. It should be noted that I thought they did a good job with the whole
"Egyptian" thing. Pictures, hieroglyphics, translations, all really nice.

Sound: 7.8
Good voice acting by the female
narrator, clever; un-annoying Egyptian background music.

Difficulty: Hard
Yeah, really hard. It starts off
going all right, but you need to be on top of things when the tougher puzzles
start coming, I’d say that’s right around the time you become a rope-pulley
operator.

Concept: 9.0
It was such a wild idea coming up
with the whole peasant trying to solve the murder of King Tut, then wrapping
it around a puzzle game that translates hieroglyphics (I really enjoy typing
that), that then has all sorts of really unique gameplay.

Overall: 8.3
It’s a good entry into the puzzle
genre, and for $20 bucks should provide you with all sorts of challenges. A
couple of times I would wonder why there was so many different tools in which
to deal with the puzzle pieces, but then things started coming fast and
furious and I asked no more.