Adventure Gamers - Forums

Mind’s Eye

Dialogue writing at it’s finest!

The trope of a main character waking up in some form of cell or restraint with apparent amnesia and then trying to escape and bring back his memory is so well established in games, films, books, TV shows etc. that it’s difficult not to dismiss it out of hand straight away, not least of all because it is often done really badly!

In Mind’s Eye the player character wakes up in a padded cell unable to remember where he is, why he is there or even his own name - apparently Noah. I found this game to be a slow burner - Interaction is minimal for the first few minutes (almost never a good idea for a game!) - but you are restrained so it does actually make sense. It isn’t too long before you’re up and about and getting stuck in. The tone is fairly bleak as you investigate the mental hospital meeting “inmates” and “workers” who range from friendly to deranged in a quest to make sense of the present by discovering the past.

The story - beyond the clichés - is actually a good one with a well executed plot twist (no spoilers here) which makes the game worthy of attention. Pleasantly, even though the story and discovery of the past are a very large part of this game, there are a good number of puzzles which are fairly hard by today’s standards. There is also a kind of urgency to proceedings that means it feels like you are fighting for survival in some way in solving the puzzles(sometimes you actually are) rather than just pulling levers to open secret passages etc.

The artwork - unless you’re against the pixel look - is good and particularly the characters and animations. Not particularly surprising as you have probably seen ProgZmax’s artwork in any number of games including Blackwell, Resonance and the upcoming Kathy Rain.

There are less good things too of course. The control scheme involves a “brain” cursor which can’t quite make up its mind what it wants to be and this can get confusing - particularly at first.

On the whole, I don’t know if I can say that I “liked” the game exactly, but it isn’t a game that you forget easily and while it isn’t a happy game nor quite a “horror” game it is interesting and enjoyable.

Anyone else played this one?

Haven’t played it, and yeah, that font is really terrible.

The synopsis of the story sound interesting, and very much reminds me of Edna & Harvey , but without all the humour I assume.

Yeah, although the font has blurred a bit in the re-sizing of the screenshot, it isn’t clear even when seen properly.

The stating premise does sound very like Edna & Harvey I’ll grant you, but man is this a different game! The feel is very different even aside from the complete lack of comedy.