There’s an intricate sequence towards the end where you are using radio-controlled switches to shut down and power various parts of an electricity maze, and it’s a highlight. It’s greatest moments are in the puzzles, sometimes small and other times taking the form of an entire level. We were never bored playing In Sound Mind. There’s no tonal whiplash, as the paranoia is constant throughout, but it means that the template-driven narrative structure still has the ability to surprise. In some latter parts of In Sound Mind, the game is hilarious, including the best use of a cat since Captain Marvel. Some move at an incredibly slow speed, encouraging exploration, while others move at a breakneck pace, forcing you to move to stay alive. What makes In Sound Mind so refreshing, outside of the whole paranoia thing, is how varied these levels feel. She is afraid of her own reflection, which echoes the patient’s fears of being seen, thanks to a facial scar. The apparition can be pushed back through the use of mirrors, in a neat Medusa-like mechanic where you can use a mirror-shard to see what’s going on behind you. The first tape and patient, Virginia, takes you to a supermarket, which is being haunted by an apparition. By playing them, you jump into a proxy of the patient’s consciousness, where their various mental illnesses manifest as terrible creatures. These tapes are recordings of interviews with your patients. Your apartment acts as a Metroidvania-lite hub with rooms both available and not available to you right now (a gas mask waits frustratingly out of reach), and scattered about the apartment are cassette tapes. As is the common horror trope, he’s got no memory of how he got there, so you will have to guide him through a surprisingly rigid and circular structure to find out what’s going on. You play as Desmond Wales, a psychiatrist who finds himself locked in a creepy, alternate version of his apartment block during a flood. Undoubtedly you’ll hear news soon that We Create Stuff has been bought by Microsoft or Sony. It’s an outright X|S game, and – while it does have it’s clumsy or janky moments – you could have told us that it was made by a major studio and we would have believed you. This is an eight-to-ten hour experience in a first-person viewpoint that is normally the province of AAA games. For me, it was one more way the atmosphere was subverted by the mechanics.Developed by relative newcomers We Create Stuff, In Sound Mind looks and feels more ambitious than its indie background suggests. Perhaps the more savvy puzzle fans among you will never encounter this specific grievance. Too much backtracking saps a stage of its frightful allure, you see. ![]() That creepy storage room seems downright ordinary once you’ve plumbed its depths a dozen or so times. The downside comes when you’re properly stuck. You’re pushed to explore every room for a solution, forcing you into deeply unsettling spaces you’d otherwise avoid. Puzzles are a natural fit for horror games. Your time in said stages is extended somewhat thanks to the heavy puzzle elements, which also suffer from some pacing issues. Things like shame, isolation, and violent self-hatred are all converted into fraught, fascinating stages. Every patient’s psychosis is made manifest in unique ways. These are wild, incredible worlds, packed with terrible danger and sinister forces. What your left with is still something rather beautiful. Just as it happens with your patients, your own fears are being conquered in real time. To that end, In Sound Mind’s slowly shifting tone makes perfect sense.
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