I used to have a friend who really liked to play Scrabble. We never bothered to play by the rules and keep track of how many points each word got. (Well, we did gloat at each other when we played "ZOOLOGY" on a triple word score.) It was more fun to keep going with foreign words and proper names until we ran out of tiles, and by the end the board was so clogged I could hardly find a place to put down another word.

Mozaki sort of reminds me of those Scrabble games. The goal is to lay down groups of tiles as they are "dealt" to form single-color bridges between the center and the side of the appropriate color. That sounds easy enough until you consider two things: 1) if you’re angling for a high score, you need to form big tile squares for big points, and 2) the groups of tiles are funny shapes and mix colors, so your straightforward path turns into a torturous circuit around marooned odd-color tiles until you can’t find a place to lay down the next piece without completely blocking yourself in.

What is Mozaki? It’s a game played with mosaics that makes you wish you had some sake.

Getting Started

Once you’ve installed and registered through the desktop installer or a CAB file, you’re basically good to go — picking up the main rules is very intuitive. The main screen offers you a choice between marathon and timed modes, which play the same except for the obvious.

Gameplay

The object is to connect each side to the middle with a bridge made of the same color as the side. Once a connection is made, all the tiles that are part of the bridge disappear from the board (which is starting to happen to the big chunk of yellows in the screenshot below). A level ends when each part of the perimeter has been connected to the middle.

Like in Tetris, the pieces show up as inconveniently shaped groups of 3-5 blocks. The similarity to Tetris isn’t a coincidence — Mozaki is another creation of Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov. The top three circles on the right hold the pieces you can play, and a piece won’t be replaced until you do play it. To make your life a bit easier, you can rotate the pieces in the holding circles before you drag them onto the field. An Undo button also is waiting to rescue you when you mistakenly drop a piece in the wrong spot.

At higher levels, each half-side of the square is marked a different color, and making bridges becomes even more hectic. Meanwhile, the pieces you are given become more and more difficult to place productively — at least, I think that’s not just my incompetence speaking.

To keep things from getting too impossible, Mozaki includes power-ups. For example, the pinkish popcorn piece in the bottom circle from the screenshot above is actually an eraser that can get rid of lone orphan tiles of the wrong color, freeing up your path. The paint bucket is handy for completing a bridge when the piece you need absolutely refuses to show up in the regular slots.

Although the power-ups bailed me out of tight spots more times than I’d like to admit, my biggest complaint with Mozaki is that they were not well explained. Although pop-ups between levels gave tips on using them, this was not enough. I never figured out exactly how I earned a specific power-up, or even what exactly some of them did.

When you are ready (or are forced) to resign your game, Mozaki will record your high scores.

Graphics and Audio

The game’s designer may be Russian, but Mozaki has an Asian flair down to the backgrounds and music. The glassy graphics and Asian accents make it clear that Mozaki was crafted with skilled attention to detail, and the Asian-inspired soundtrack fits the mood without being distracting.

Conclusion

Mozaki is the type of game that makes you want to tear your hair out, but in a good way. It calls for a lot of strategy, and finding the best play gets complicated fast. If your brain can take it, Mozaki can keep you scratching your head for hours.

The good: puzzling gameplay, eye-catching graphics

The bad: confusing power-ups

Where to buy: Astraware ($9.95)

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