Mosa Lina (2023)

a beautiful, perfect game. the hempuli influences feel strong (regardless of if that was intentional) but that is definitely a good thing. the atmosphere, no reward, game mechanics, and gentle encouragement to not get so tied up on one level in general makes a session feel almost therapeutic for my tunnel vision mindset tendencies. and as much as i love it, thank god there's none of that overly addictive "one more run" feeling that most endless games feel plagued by. the moment you get to the end of that big room in between "worlds", that always feels like a satisfying place to stop

i could also talk about all the specific things i love, but you'd end up getting me talk about every single object in the game, lol. so i'll choose a random one (see title)

I saw Mosa Lina hyped up by several youtubers I watch as a brilliant randomized immersive sim. It was made as a response to the perceived "lock and key" nature of modern immersive sims (one solution for one problem), but I'd describe it as a physics based puzzle platformer with a sort of roguelite approach to play sessions.

Each run, 9 items and 9 levels are made available. The goal in each level is to either touch all of the fruit or knock them off the edge, and then return to the portal. The items range from anti-grave fields, to frogs, to growing bamboo. to bombs, to teleporting butterflies. It's a fun and chaotic mix. You try repeatedly to beat the levels with a subset of 3 out of 9 items. Not every level is completable with every subset of items, but you can retry with a different subset until you win. You get more points for less attempts at a level and various other things, some of which aren't explained at all, but I don't think the game even keeps track of your highscore anywhere, so it's a Whose Line type situation.

Once you've completed all but one stage on a run, that stage upgrades to a final stage. A new section with extra fruit is added, along with the ability to pick up some extra items in map. Frequently, this final stage is one that you've previously failed -- potentially several times, so it's pretty brutal to then make it harder. I've found that the final stage frequently requires some crazy physics based goofy execution to solve, which easily slides into more frustrating than enjoyable. I suppose there's no real reason to not quit and start a new run if you don't want to deal with it, though.

In the end, Mosa Lina is fun and has a nice pick up and put down quality, so I'll keep it in the rotation. While it can be very satisfying to have a hare-brained scheme play out as you imagined, I don't think it reaches the level of brilliance I was promised on youtube. Kinda gets you thinking that people on youtube may exaggerate positive and negative qualities to make their videos more interesting and thus get more clicks... nah, that's crazy talk.