State of Mind

This was a surprise! Not sure what to call it - an interactive animated sci-fi movie? It seemed a little confused and even clumsy at first but it grew on me. The storyline is adult: takes place in a future Berlin where scientists have developed a VR world and (bit of a spoiler) are transferring the consciousness of real-world folks into VR-world folks. The sets are very stylized and the characters a little hard to manipulate at first, but the plot thickened until I was totally hooked. I think this one will please you if you like the style and take the time to explore the two universes ("real" and VR) presented here. Voice acting is very good and the ending satisfying. I squeezed many hours of gameplay out of State of Mind and came to appreciate the depth of planning that went into it. Excellent for quarantine!

A great narrative game with a stylish setting and minimalist design. No unnecessary action forced into gameplay, the focus is rather on telling a story.

This is not exactly an action game. You walk, you talk, you sort things out, you solve some puzzles. But, oh, so beautiful this is. I was completely fascinated by the graphics, the pictures followed me even into my dreams. The story as such is decent enough, something to think about, and if you can get into it, you have a few quiet, satisfying hours ahead of you.

It is a game in third person view, with a character control that spoiled my gaming experience. I would have rather just watch the cutscenes (like a movie) : the player has almost no influence on the story. I did not manage to get myself into the game world, and so all the issues seemed pretty futile. To give credibility to this universe, I would have liked that the game presents more on details this imaginary future. And I did not manage to identify with the characters, which seemed a little simplistic (emotional reasoning). The story never surprised me (predictable and classic) and did not make me ponder about the subjects overflown. One star because I finished this game and another because it's SF ^^

The story is interesting and reminded me of "altered carbon" a bit but it lacks depth and by the end of the game you have huge plot holes that don't add up. There is an accident in the game, a key part of the plot, for which you'll never find out the exact details of what happened, at least I didn't. You don't really get the story of the main villain, only fragments of it, the same happens with other characters that have a huge impact on the plot but you learn very few about them (such as the main vilain's girlfriend / partner). As for your missing wife who plays a very important role, the story you get at the end doesn't match what you've learned so far and is a bit contradictive (that was too much for me, that's why I'm giving it 2 stars instead of 3). There are other inconsistencies as well throughout the game. This story has so much potential and I was very disappointed when the game ended, leaving many questions unanswered, maybe if I'd played the game a few more times I'd get more answers but I doubt it. The aesthetics are very nice and consistent with the environment, the graphics, the music and the acting were petty good. The gameplay could 've been better though. You have a few puzzles to solve and the ones you get are very simple, to me the worst "puzzle" is the way you hack things which is basically having a steady hand while holding the mouse. I think the most challenging part was using the drones to spy through the air-vents at some point. The way you combine clues to figure things out is interesting but again not challenging at all (and at least in one case it didn't make much sense to me), also there was only one time throughout the game when I had the chance to combine things from my inventory to create something. There is also a whiteboard-like thing on the main character's office where clues are "pined" that was basically useless. Overall I believe this game was released prematurely, it feels half-finished to me.