Mosaic Chronicles Deluxe

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist + Mosaic Chronicles Deluxe, along with Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist.)

Mosaic Chronicles is a Jigsaw-style Puzzle game originally released on PC in 2022 and then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023 with “Deluxe” added to the title (though I’m unclear on what’s “deluxe” about this version). This game has players piecing together “mosaics” of scenes that look a bit like stained glass windows using various pieces.

The presentation here reminds me somewhat of the game Glass Masquerade, which similarly had players piecing odd-shaped pieces into a stained glass-esque picture. The pictures themselves are gorgeous, using 2D images with a very expressive art style. And with each puzzle you solve, you get a little bit more of the story attached to that particular series of puzzles, which is a nice touch.

These visuals are backed by synthesized music that vaguely fits the medieval fantasy theme of the pictures, though I will note I’m pretty sure this music is using public domain songs I’ve heard in other games elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the comparison to Glass Masquerade doesn’t end at the concept and presentation, because I have to talk about the terrible controls here. Unlike Glass Masquerade, the game isn’t hobbled by horrible input lag, but rather a poor, nonsensical control setup that’s confusing and will have players repeatedly doing the wrong thing as they try to perform a simple task like releasing one piece to pick up another.

In the end, I do think you can eventually get used to Mosaic Chronicles’ controls, and players who play the game in handheld mode can opt to use the touchscreen, but it’s still absurd that players would have to consider doing that at all simply because the controls are so terrible. This results in taking what would have been a pretty great Jigsaw Puzzle-style game and making it into an unnecessarily frustrating and mediocre one.

tl;dr – Mosaic Chronicles is a Jigsaw Puzzle-style game that has players piecing together stained glass-esque mosaics and unlocking more of that image’s story. The artwork here is wonderful, but this game balances out its good qualities with absolutely abysmal controls that will cause tons of unnecessary frustration. The result is a game I would have difficulty recommending.

Grade: C

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