Mutazione

A kind and gentle adventure that's filled with vivid life.

It’s a rare game in which you’re asked to give something, whether it’s your time or effort, instead of taking something you need to move the story along. It’s a game about being of service to a community, and the rewards that comes with that act.

Most of the inhabitants of Mutazione are engaging and lovely, especially the ones who aren’t. You will have favourites, and you will know where to find people, running around to talk to everyone like you would in the hub area in a BioWare game.

Mutazione is simple, but achieves what it sets out to do: tell an emotional story about community, family, and forgiveness among a memorable ensemble cast. It's relaxing, compelling, and unique. That it also looks and sounds magnificent is just the icing on the cake.

The art style, music and sound effects work very well with a story that has a specific tone with proper emotional punch but the gameplay doesn’t really give you anything to have enough motivation for reading so many dialogues that sometimes go longer than they should.

If you like narrative-style adventures, like Night in the Woods and its ilk, then this is an easy recommendation. If you like strong characters then this should be a priority to play. However, if you need a little more gameplay in your games then this might not be for you.

Mutazione makes us see, with praiseworthy ease, the wonders that are hidden in our daily lives, the beauty of tranquility and calm, the need to stop and observe our surroundings and converse with those close to us: listen to their stories and feel ourselves heard.

I had an unexpectedly good time with Mutazione. I thought it was going to be more of a quirky point-and-click adventure, but it turned out to be something very different. Not that that’s a bad thing! Quite the contrary, in fact. Mutazione proved to be an unbelievably zen experience that I haven’t enjoyed since I last played Spiritfarer, which, considering how much I loved that game, is pretty high praise.

With an unusual art style and even more unusual characters you’ll encounter on a remote island Mutazione just feels different than most any game I’ve played...

Mutazione imagines a beautiful and complex life founded on small, self-sustaining community and a respect for the natural world. It is charming and warm but also plain about the challenges of sustaining a community like this. It reckons with the contradictions of colonialist greed and asks if things couldn’t be rebuilt without hierarchies and violence.