2024: Mosaic Retrospective

Play it on: PC

Current goal: Not play this at some point

My fascination with 2024: Mosaic Retrospective all started when I found Proverbs in November, a vast puzzle game the size of a wall, in which you deduced which tiles to fill and which to block based on the numbers splattered all over it (it’s Fill-A-Pix, basically), to create a vast recreation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting Netherlandish Proverbs. It was tremendously entertaining, and a perfect game to play on one monitor while watching things like Game Changer on the other. Then after I finished it, I discovered the developer—Mark Ffrench—had made a previous, similar game, Mega Mosaic. I played that one while catching up on two years’ worth of Nebula’s Jet Lag: The Game. And just as it was done, to my complete delight Ffrench put out yet another one, 2024: Mosaic Retrospective. And once again, it’s a wall-sized puzzle that eventually depicts dozens of events that occurred in the last year.

I’ve been playing it for days, and am 33.61 percent through. What am I watching for this one? Why, Nebula’s version of The Mole (a game in which one player was designated the Snitch) called The Getaway, which has the crucial difference that they’ve secretly told all of the players that they’re the Snitch. Hilarity results, as seven people attempt to sabotage each other while not getting noticed, at the same time becoming increasingly bemused as to why everyone else is so terrible at everything. It’s great. As is 2024: Mosaic Retrospective, which is free! FREE! And even better, because it’s free, the game encourages you to pay what you think it’s worth to Unicef.—John Walker