Before subjecting you to my incessant spiel about the game in question, let me tell you something that happened just over a week ago. I was barely sitting on a seat in this crowded public transportation bus, returning home from my daily routine. As usual, my face was glued to the display on my phone as piles of unfunny 2019 meme kept on flashing. The old man sitting nearby, after cheating the bus conductor of 2 rupees turned to me and asked me whether he could trouble me for a question. Although I don’t always enjoy the reek of cheap alcohol blowing down on my face, I decided to indulge his curiosity and told him to go ahead.
“Will you be able to live without this phone?”
I almost chuckled at the cliched nature of his question but replied’;
“Well, I can’t really kill myself over a phone now, can I?”
What followed was a series of back and forth questions regarding the ‘spoiled generation‘ of today and how technology and imitating Western culture has made us lose sight of our tradition. Unfortunately, our deep debate got cut in half when the drunkard was thrown out of the bus by the conductor for being a public nuisance. Back to the phone, I went.
Soon, I got home and couldn’t help but feel that the guy did have some valid points. We’ve all heard the story of how capitalism, globalization, free market and technology has made us slaves of a dysfunctional society thousand times over. While easy to laugh at and disregard, it really makes you think, doesn’t it? The dilemmas of the modern man and the robotic lives we live. The cogs in a relentless machine and all that jazz.
Sorry if I got ahead of myself. I love it when games pull the ol’ magical realism and make you think about the sad reality of the modern world while entertaining you at the same time. The particular source of infotainment in this question is an indie title called Mosaic. In case you haven’t heard, Mosaic is a narrative-driven adventure from the talented folks at Krillbite Studio, the same people behind 2014’s Among The Sleep. To be more precise, it’s a surreal adventure detailing the monotonous life of the working-class man in an overpopulated city where thoughts are faster than race cars and meaningful relationships, impossible to find. Soaked in bleak atmosphere and standing out due to its low-poly visuals, I’ve had the chance to see my reflection in Mosaic last day.
The game begins with the main character, an average joe with a disproportionate head to body ratio drowning in the depths of a silent, dark, ocean. Suddenly it’s no longer the vast ocean that surrounds you but the disturbing silence of a moody studio apartment. You jump out of the bed to put the alarm to snooze and lie there, in between dream and reality, before realizing that it’s a workday. You slap your cheeks for a quick refreshment, before turning off the alarm for good. There are three message notifications on your phone. One from mom, another from some ‘friend’ and an annoying alert from the F2P game you occasionally dabble in. The three messages mean nothing to you. It’s a workday and you’re running late.
After brushing your teeth, trying to fix your dishevelled clump of hair, analyzing your pathetic excuse for a morning face, walking past the ever-increasing pile of bills on the desk, you head outside. The society doesn’t want anything to do with you nor does its citizens. They turn their heads away or keeps their phone covered when you look over to them. Your very gaze repulses them. It’s a jungle out there for you. Competition is the sole means of survival. Your existence is only in the form of a chart or statistics in a stamped piece of paper. There are no Tea Ceremonies or soothing melodies to console your overworked brain. Stop for even a second, and you’ll be trampled on by another blob of flesh and blood that just wants to take your place.
Like some Hindi poet once sang, the modern man leave departs for work, leaving his belonging under the care of a rusty lock. The darkness of the night frightens and the scorching sunlight blinds him. Ignorance is bliss and as long as you keep moving forward in this race with no finishing line, you do not have to think about pointlessness of it all. Yet sometimes, you wish to have a friend to talk to in those lonely nights. But you’re not made for a social life. Your gentle touch frightens the little girl standing on the street. When she asks about your family, you hug her and cry because you are unable to say that the whole world is your kin.
All right, the last bit doesn’t happen in the game. The curse of being studying literature for a career is that you pretend to see poetry in everything. But I digress. Mosaic mimics and parodies the current social climate while presenting the bitter realities of our life with each step you take. Your mobile phone periodically alerts you on social media alerts and corporate propagandas. It almost feels like you’re reliving the same day, every day.
Yet there’s still a glimmer of hope. You are an active dreamer and are presented with surreal experiences every now and then. These dreams let you experience suspensions of disbelief, makes you think that one day, all this will be over and you’ll find your rightful place in the society. One second, you’re soaring towards the sun and other, you’re talking to a fish that wants to come with you to work. For these brief seconds, isolation becomes a distant memory and you can almost sense a tiny speck of hope looming over your head.
Mosaic is a work in progress, or so the opening screen tells me. The short demo ends with your character coming to halt at a bridge. The screen zooms out and you can see countless motorcades in the roads below, scurrying towards some unknown destination like ants to a colony far away. Mosaic doesn’t forget to show snippets from the full game and it looks and feels genuinely interesting. You can sense that the game is being made from real-life experiences that each of us will be able to relate to. Isolation, depression, unemployment and escapism is becoming more and more pronounced with each passing day and it’s taking a toll on the youth of our society. We may not change the world overnight but it’s always nice to get a reality-check once every now and then. Maybe what I and Mosaic are trying to say is, make the best use of what you’re given and live life to the fullest. On second thought, do I even deserve to say that? My phone is going off like crazy right now and it demands my attention. I just wish tomorrow would be any different.
Mosaic comes out on PC Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 Xbox One and Apple Arcade sometime this year. Like my friend Udit ‘ren-pai’ Singh said, “it’s kind of poetic that a tale about our detached, monotonous lives is being told on a device that’s the biggest distraction from said life.”
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