State of Mind

Gameplay wise it doesn't do much, think Detroit: Become Human without quicktime events. World and story wise I had a great time. I personally like the stylized graphics. Definitely get it if you like Science Fiction stories like Detroit: Become Human!

This is a hybrid of a walking simulator and a movie, with minimum amount of gameplay. The good points of the game are its setting. The world is interesting. Unfortunately the writing failed to deliver the maximum possible impact for me, and while the game started out interesting, the longer it went on, the more I felt like everything is falling apart. At the end I was looking at ton of plot holes, some event turns felt forced and overly contrived and so on. The ending felt forced. It didn't help that the protagonist is one of the least likable characters I ever seen in a videogame. Gameplay component in this game is incredibly weak, and while developers tried to add minigames and tasks, they have very low difficulty and are not interesting. Additionally, protagonist walks incredibly slowly, and there's no way to run. This makes moving between locations very tedious. The developers chose polygonal visuals as stylistic (not low poly, but polygonal. Think "Orwell" for exxample). Unfortunately, they do not look that great. If you're looking to buy this one, expect a movie with walking sequences occasional "puzzle", where puzzles will be always easy and not particularly interesting. The writing probably has its fans, but could've been better.

This "game" is a mixture of walking simulator and "interactive" movie. It feels like Daedalic Entertainment watched "Welt am Draht" (World on a Wire) and thought they could profit from it. None of the "puzzles" require any kind of thinking. The player is reduced to a "click to continue, monkey". Without a novel and surprising story to tell, this is just boring. There is no real gameplay. You will just walk to the next green triangle and press A or X. Essentially, that's it. Press a button, and watch a cut-scene (often non-skippable!). Imagine walking into a futuristic production site. There is a huge hall with a duct leading to a robot that you know you have to disable. You can't interact with the duct, or the 3 items and the assembly table you find in the hall. The game makes you try to walk past the robot, before it tells you to assemble a robot zapper. Now, you collect the only collectible items, and you ... assemble them at the only place that lets you assemble them. Once that is done, the duct can be opened, and you can disable the robot. Booooooooring! Technically, the graphics look good, but need a beefy PC. My rig can play Cyberpunk 2077 at 4k and graphics options between high and ultra, with 40 to 60 FPS. State of Mind only runs smoothly at 1440p. Even then, I get choppy scenes every now and then. Yeah, F that. Daedalic Entertainment went for an old-school polygon look but requires more resources than Cyberpunk 2077!

The story of the game stood out for me, wondering where it leads you from the very first chapter. While the amnesia trope was a bit meh at first, you can still tell the writers went all out. That said, the last section of the game had too many tedious puzzles - not particularly hard but annoying to handle. I'll still recommend the game for how it handles the story subject matter.

I went in not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. At points the game reminded me of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which is high praise. It hardly breaks new ground when it comes to cyberpunk ideas, but there are times when those ideas are well-communicated. The puzzles weren't too interesting; if the developer had focused on a branching story instead, that would've been better. The ending also left something to be desired, as some loose ends weren't wrapped up. Overall an enjoyable adventure that kept me wondering what was next. Definitely worth a play.