Puzzle and VR – a mixture that, in my opinion, harmonizes perfectly, but can also go completely wrong. I’m a big fan of both genres, so today’s games definitely piqued my interest: Moss Book I and II. First released exclusively for PS VR, but thankfully later for PC. A strange mix of classic and VR controls. And a special main character – can that be good?

We already noticed it with Ratatouille: there are very few games in the world where you control a mouse or a rat to solve puzzles or defeat enemies. Moss is one of those few games. In it we accompany Quill, the mouse lady, through an adventure on which, of course, no less than the whole world depends – but how exactly do we do that?

It all starts very interesting. We’re sitting in a library, leafing through a book of fairy tales – Moss. It tells the story of a realm where a powerful artifact exists that can grant any wish of its holder; so of course evil forces are after this artifact. For safety, it was broken into several pieces and given to various heroes to preserve. And you guessed it: Quill finds one of those splinters.

But this does not directly give her great power. Rather, he connects them with us – the reader of the book. And at this point the fourth wall is broken. We become more and more friends with Quill as the adventure progresses. In the first part, we’re looking for your uncle, who went off alone to keep evil at bay; in the second part (Moss: Book II) we conquer evil ourselves.

We as players are challenged in two different ways: on the one hand, we control Quill directly, i.e. with the joysticks and buttons on the controllers. We mainly can jump, fight and activate mechanisms. On the other hand, we can reach out directly into the world. We can activate mechanisms, hold enemies or revive Quill. The game is designed for sitting: the levels build up in front of us like a diorama and we can change the perspective, for example to find hidden scrolls. Getting up was sometimes worth it.

In each level we then find opponents that we fight with Quill and the “Controller Controls” and puzzles that we often have to solve with “VR Controls”. The game mixes these two concepts in a very intuitive way, so that you never really need a tutorial (although I didn’t understand some mechanics and controls very quickly). It also makes it feel a lot more like Quill is a real character we’re helping.

And that’s the part that excited me the most about the game. It was very positive in many aspects: the graphics were beautiful, the sound design was engaging and very emotionally appropriate, the overall atmosphere was very nice. But what really surprised me was how quickly and how strongly you empathize with Quill.

Whether it was success after solving a riddle, the anxiety in a dark, narrow cave or the grief of a loss: despite the (by human standards) small facial expressions and gestures of a mouse, I could sympathize with it almost immediately; excite me or make me sad. It’s rare in games that I get so carried away, but I was really excited about it.

Two particular interactions I would like to highlight here are high fives and sign language. For one, Quill actually communicates with the player in ASL (American Sign Language); I don’t know that at all, but it was enough for the most important information. This, at least in me, triggered a strange feeling of connectedness with her. The other, the high-fives, may be seen by some as a pointless gimmick. But the happy hopping of Quills when you slap her outstretched hand has you right away – as already mentioned, the grandiose sound design also has a large part to it.

Is there anything negative to say at all? Unfortunately yes. The first part worked great – the second unfortunately not. There were a few technical bugs that got us stuck in the world and the performance especially in terms of framerate was significantly worse. I don’t know why it was like that, but it took us a few tries to stream the second part properly.

What is my conclusion now? It’s definitely very positive! I really enjoyed both games. The first was an overwhelming experience that the second part could only improve on with additional mechanics and even an additional playable character. The story was told very well and the mixture of emotions, puzzles and sometimes just fights meshed very well. It’s definitely a game I recommend you!

How did you like the game? Do you share my opinion? Do you see it completely differently? Feel free to discuss it on Discord!