Moss Book 2 | Preview
The real problems of the first Moss were, basically, two: the short duration of the work and the basic management of the fights. Two aspects that Polyarc took into consideration during the development of Moss Book 2, the second chapter of the fairy tale universe created by the Seattle studio, coming soon to PSVR.
As in the previous chapter, the player will find himself accompanying the mouse Quill into an enchanted kingdom, actively supporting the protagonist's journey, interacting with the game environment, hindering the most dangerous threats, solving environmental puzzles and communicating with Quill through the language of gestures.
Similarly to the first “book”, also in Moss Book 2 the player will play the role of the “Reader” who, leafing through the pages of the tome, will actively intervene in the drafting of Quill's story. With the movement controls you can move a globe of bluish light that will allow you to interact with the elements on the screen while with one of the levers you can move Quill, going back to creating that synchronous gameplay, borrowed from some famous productions of the past, which thus made the first Moss peculiar.
In fact, in the ten minutes of gameplay viewed , we were shown a rock hammer that can be wielded by Quill to take out the toughest enemies. The novelty, however, lies in the fact that if the threats in the area are too massive for the little mouse, Quill will be able to stop on the magical plates in which it will be possible to summon an ethereal version of the hammer, and we assume of every weapon present in the game , with which the player can interact to thwart threats in person.
Obviously, in the case of the rock hammer, we have seen how it was also possible to use it to solve some of the environmental puzzles present in the pages of Moss Book 2, further stratifying the “puzzle” component present in this sequel. Even as regards the enemies, although we have seen just a couple of them, we have appreciated how they have been diversified not only in form but also in their defensive and offensive abilities, changing their nature from simple threats to components of environmental puzzles.
From the animations, and reactions towards the player, of Quill to the movements of the elements on the screen, everything it seemed to take a step forward from the previous chapter. But be careful, we are not talking about leaps forward in absolute terms, but rather a work of improvement that covers a whole series of details capable of making every page of this second book by Moss a joy for the eyes.
Now we just have to wait to get our hands on the final version of Moss Book 2 to understand if all these improvements will make it a "new media event" for the genre of virtual reality productions.
