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As a habitual early adopter, I rushed through the turnstile to board the PlayStation VR train. I was excited to have an easy plug-and-play solution for VR, and I eagerly consumed the sparse early library consisting of games like Batman: Arkham VR. After a year or so, the lack of new releases started to take the shine off the device. It was taking up space–not only as a physical object but the empty space needed to enjoy it–and I ultimately sold it. What felt like immediately afterward, in 2018, Moss arrived.
Moss was the first of several critically acclaimed VR games, which would ultimately include Moss: Book 2 and others like Astro Bot Rescue Mission. I cursed my rotten timing and never got a chance to play Moss or its sequel. So I’ve been especially keen to check out Moss: The Forgotten Relic, a compilation of the two games reworked for consoles. Judging by a short demo, my excitement hasn’t been misplaced.
My demo included a short segment of Moss: Book 2, walking me through the basic puzzle and battle mechanics. You are the Reader, peering down into the storybook and able to impact the world through your own actions. Your perspective is locked to a point, as the characters move through the world below you, so it’s as if you’re looking down into the hidden world of mice adventurers. This is a remnant of its VR roots, but it doesn’t feel so innately tied to VR that it’s out of place in a standard action-adventure game.
After being introduced to the brave (and adorable) little mouse Quill and learning how to move her around the world, she’s struck down and you as the Reader have to reach inside the book to save her. This is one moment I’m sure was more impactful in full VR, where you would presumably feel yourself physically moving into the play space, but The Forgotten Relic maps it to a shoulder button, which gets the feeling across relatively well.
That starting-point illustration of reaching inside the world was iterated on by showing me that I could “grab” an enemy beetle to guide it to certain points. This wasn’t an actual grip around the enemy, though, since I didn’t pick up the beetle itself. Instead I guided it like a cursor using an ethereal blue light, and it followed the path. Similarly, the shoulder button was used to grab and pull and mechanisms, opening pathways or raising platforms for Quill to cross, all the while taking down scattered beetles with a tiny mouse-scale sword.
After a while I came across enemies with tougher shells, along with icons marked with a hammer, and sure enough, a nearby statue split open to reveal a new weapon, a hammer. This was a bit more awkward. I could swing the hammer as normal for a heavier attack, but this wasn’t enough to take down the enemies with metallic shells. To do that I had to use a charged attack, which didn’t work exactly as I’d expected. Instead of simply charging and releasing, holding down the button would produce another ghostly blue outline of a hammer, which floats in place where it was charged. Then I would have to highlight it with the cursor to bring the hammer down.
That delayed action is used for puzzle solving–letting you queue up a strike against a pressure plate and then move into position for whatever device it activates–but it takes some getting used to. Fortunately the combat in this demo was low-pressure enough that I never felt overwhelmed by this strong attack requiring multiple steps, but I could see it being tricky in the full game.
After this it was just a matter of combining the skills I had learned thus far–fighting with the sword and hammer, guiding a beetle enemy to a pressure plate across multiple platforms, and solving a few other environmental puzzles. The demo ended just as it teased a boss fight, which looked massive compared to Quill.
Moss: The Forgotten Relic looks to be a second chance at life for a great series that I missed the first time around. While aspects of the game still seem made for VR, the charm and personality shine through. VR might still be the best place to play the Moss games, but for those of us who never got a headset–or foolishly got rid of it–this looks to be a close second.
