IN SOUND MIND GAME FULL

As Desmond, you need to get into your patients’ apartments, get their tapes, and then go into them to confront what they’ve been twisted into by mysterious external forces. In Sound Mind is played in the first person and the game’s structure lends itself well to reinforcing both forward momentum and exploration. It’s hard not to be impressed by the consistency and attention to detail in the writing.

Everything comes together to make sense in the end and there are a lot of really clever things going on even in the incidental details.

IN SOUND MIND GAME FULL

You never really meet any other characters face to face, but the game’s levels are full of context and insight into their lives and struggles to the point that you get a great feel for everyone. The story seems a bit silly at times and some of the voice acting isn’t great, but I very much enjoyed the narrative of In Sound Mind. Only, playing the tapes leads Desmond into strange worlds stalked by twisted versions of their owners.

The kicker is that doors to four of his patients’ apartments show up in the building, leading to cassette tapes of their recorded therapy sessions. Strange things had been happening to Desmond’s patients prior to the start of the game, and he’s been persistently hounded by a strange man who only identifies himself as Agent Rainbow. He wakes up in a facsimile of the building his office is located in, but something is wrong. In Sound Mind sees you controlling a therapist named Desmond Wales. The game isn’t quite what I expected, which was a good thing, as it exceeded my expectations to deliver one of the year’s best adventure games. While you do carefully look around for supplies in the dark as dangerous enemies search for you, there’s also action, platforming, Metroid-esque exploration, puzzle solving, and more. It’s billed as a survival horror game, and it sort of is, but that’s a bit misleading. In Sound Mind doesn’t come close to having either of those issues. Most times when a first-person horror game pops up, I expect it to be super short and not particularly compelling.

In sound mind game