Reflexive Entertainment has recently published Mosaic - Tomb of Mystery (download free trial here). This game is a clever matching puzzle game set in the time of Egypt's King Tut, where the player is attempting to work their way up the food chain of Egypt to discover who may have killed the king. The only way to do that is to solve the various puzzles which then decrypt the hieroglyphs to reveal more clues in the mystery.
The game is beautifully built - the graphics are top notch and the sound is appropriate for the Egyptian era, as well as the puzzle type of game. It's generally a matching game, but rather than match 3 or 5 of a kind in a row, the player must find a way to place the different shapes into a wide range of puzzles (see screenshots below) in order to solve the scene before the puzzle shapes pile up to the top, just as with Tetris. There are a variety of enhancements that arrive later in the game, such as the "Crusher" where a player can periodically destroy pieces which don't fit the grid, or the "Falcon" which a player can use to remove pieces from the screen to open up the puzzle for other pieces.
There are a lot of strengths to Mosaic. The hint feature is built into the game itself, allowing the player to get more advice by winning certain pieces as the game progresses, so it's more sophisticated than just allowing a user to click on Help whenever needed. Mosaic is complex enough to require some actual choices or strategies to keep winning, but it's simple enough to understand the basic gameplay with the built-in tutorial. A key feature is that the user can play either in Relaxed mode (round never ends in failure) or in Challenge mode (round ends when pieces pile up), giving players a couple of different ways to play. On the other hand, Mosaic is a pretty tough game, even on lower levels, so it gives the user a good way to decide if they like the game emough to buy it.
Verdict - Give this game a shot if you like Egyptian themed games, or tough puzzlers. Free trial is here
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