This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the game didn’t keep throwing enemies at you more and more as you progress through the tapes. Hitting a target with your pistol is often a matter of luck as the mixture of the enemy movement, hitboxes, and aim assist aren’t consistent at all. You have a mix of long-range and melee weaponry and neither of them feels particularly good to use. This is also apparent at times in the game play as well, where the shooting, sprinting, and item management could clearly use some work.Įxpanding on this, the weakest part of the game is the combat itself. The game does have some good skyboxes, and some very creative level design, but ultimately the budget and scope prevent it from looking truly good. Graphically, there isn’t too much to write home about. This is just one example, of course, as by the end of the game you regularly make use of every tool in your disposal. Such as needing to look through a mirror shard to figure out hints hidden behind walls or under the ground. Back to equipment, you need to use a mixture of tools to progress through areas. While yes, there is combat, I’ll expand more on that later. The gameplay itself has a fair bit of variety in the number of tools you use, but it generally revolves around exploring your surroundings and trying to solve the puzzle at hand. Couple this enemy with a unique level design and no two tapes feel the same. Each level also has a different primary threat that you either try to combat or run away from. This is a matter of preference of course, but I enjoyed the horror focused levels more than the ones that emphasized exploring. The first tape, for example, felt like a tight and polished experience, while some of the later ones felt a little too open. Each of these levels differs drastically from the other, which wasn’t always a good thing. Doing so allows you to enter their world and progress the story. There were times when I was completely lost but by retracing my steps, I found the location I had just left altered and ready to be explored again.īack to the central hub, you have an office on the top level and it’s here that you “play” the cassette tapes of your patients. This serves the horror aspect of the game very well of course, but it also elevates the mystery and puzzle-solving. Progressing through a shopping mall, for example, you’ll often find mannequins have changed positions, walls have disappeared, notes and items are left for you, and more. In Sound Mind regularly changes the objects, rooms, locations, and sometimes even the sky as you play. Speaking of these notes, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about one of the best characters in the game, the environment itself. This figure haunts you throughout your playtime in various ways, such as leaving insidious notes or taunting you over the phone. It introduces you to both the puzzle-solving you’ll be doing and also to the mysterious figure stalking your every move.
The basement level of this hub, which is where you start the game, acts as a small tutorial. The game takes place in four different “worlds”, you could say, and an apartment building that serves as the central hub. Desmond Wales (Ph.D.) as he navigates the strange mystery around himself, his patients, and his town. And while I can gladly say that the scares weren’t cheap, was this the horror game that finally clicked? Read on to find out! Welcome to Milton Havenĭeveloped by We Create Stuff, In Sound Mind occurs in the small town of Milton Haven, during the year 1997. With all of the above being said, I somewhat hesitantly dived into In Sound Mind. My usual experience starts and ends with me turning off the game within an hour or two, often due to cheap jump scares. While I’m still a fan of the genre, there’s something about the intimacy in playing a game that just elevates the fear factor to new levels. Never have and I had assumed I never would.
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