Moss
ADVENTURE MOUSE. $44.95 | PSVR | www.polyarcgames.com
GIVEN THAT VIRTUAL reality brings the player closer than ever to the fourth wall — if it’s a window on another world, we now have our noses pressed against the glass — it’s only natural that games should seek to break it. Moss goes further by embracing it, making it an essential part of the game, its world and its story. This charming storybook adventure does not have a player; it has The Player.
Yes, you’ll control Quill, the strong-willed, agile field mouse, using an analogue stick, something the fairytale narration chooses to gloss over. But as The Player, you’ll have plenty else to do besides guiding our heroine through this taut four-hour adventure. A shimmering blue orb denotes your presence in the world, and using DualShock motion controls you’ll line it up with your target, before squeezing a trigger to grab hold. You’ll raise and lower platforms, rotate scenery, grab and reposition enemies and, when Quill takes damage in combat, nurse her back to health.
It’s simple enough, but the fact that you essentially control two characters, each with very different sets of abilities, gives developer Polyarc plenty to play with. The game is broken up into single-screen 3D puzzle chambers that, while never particularly difficult, are taxing in the way they force you to think about two different things at once, like trying to rub your stomach while patting your head.
Yet while there may be two characters, Quill is the undisputed star. If we see a better mantling animation in 2018, we’ll be surprised, and her little shrugs and waves to The Player are frequently well-timed, mirroring your thoughts at just the right moment.
If she shares our frustrations with Polyarc’s work, however, she’s not telling. In the back half of the game the developer suddenly starts asking for a degree of timing and precision that exposes the frailty of the controls; the little shift in Quill’s direction on the approach to a crucial jump, the perfectly fine-looking leap that somehow sends you tumbling. We like Quill a lot, and a sequel is all but certain.