There are a lot of concepts that a horror game can use to create a story and build strange events around. One of the more popular base concepts is the psychological aspect. With how wild our minds can be on their own, the added stress of emotions can really be shown in creative ways. This is what developers We Create Stuff utilized when they developed In Sound Mind. Being released with the help of publisher Modus Games, players have an interesting and unique journey with this one.

Story

Therapist Desmond Wales finds himself waking in the basement of an apartment building with the world outside flooded, a therapist begins a journey, unlike anything he could have expected. Immediately finding oddities within the building, he learns that something strange is happening and that this building has a strange connection between him, his practice, and his patients. With the help of his talking cat named Tonia, he must find what connects everybody together while bringing peace to the disturbed souls of his lost patients.

Gameplay

Starting the game, you’ll have no tools or items to work with. Just a strange setting and a confusing start to a long journey. From here you get to experience the first form of puzzle setup and exploration that this game will throw at you. Once you are able to assemble the pistol, grab the flashlight, and find your office, the real game begins.

After you are introduced to Tonia, the first level will be opened up to you. In order to access levels, you must enter the home of the patient that the level is based around. Inside their home, you will find a cassette tape that you take back to your office, put in the tape player, and press play. After a bit of in-game visual action, the door will open with nothing but a bright white behind it.

Once you step through the door, you get a section of a strange pathway that has the theme of what the level will consist of and a bunch of cassettes to listen to while you make your way through to get lore information. After you get through this strange area and listen to the optional lore tapes, you will step through another door with the white light and the real level begins.

Each level is completely different and features the troubled, emotionally stressed version of a patient’s ghost. Whether they were sad, angry, or troubled, the version of them presented in the level will match both the emotion and the level’s theme. The patient’s troubled spirits aren’t your only enemy however as you will find yourself running into mannequin-like entities with a light for a face. Coming in the form of small and large enemies, these can be taken out with the gun that you put together. If you are low on ammo, you can also sneak past these enemies.

Along with unique patient ghosts, you will be presented with unique puzzles for each area. While not a lot of them had to do with riddles and it was more of a “find what you need” style game, there were a few variations. What I thought was interesting was the fact that the item you gain to solve puzzles is used in future levels and becomes an essential item.

For instance, in the first level, you will get a broken piece of mirror. This broken piece of mirror will then be used to break vents open, as well as, look behind you for items, enemies, and special actions. This could be a safe code or a pathway to a puzzle element.

Once you finish the level, the key item that you obtain from it will also be used to help you gain access to the next level. It also helped that figuring out which apartment to get into next was easy thanks to them being numbered, starting with your apartment being number 0.

I will say this though, despite usually preferring to use keyboard and mouse when I play games, I found myself using the controller instead. I couldn’t figure out a way to best optimize the keyboard and the controller setup had a naturally sensical setup to it that it was a preferred choice. I suggest checking out both setups before diving into the full game.

Audio and Visual

The mixture of solid environment, funny jump scares, and unique themes were well blended with the art style they went with in this game. While it wasn’t realistic, it also didn’t have a cartoon-type of style to it. This gave room for the impressively unique enemy styles that were presented in the game. I was especially impressed with the patient spirit design in the third level, or “angry spirit” level if you prefer.

Providing music and sounds that bring out an environment can sometimes be just fitting or even basic, but somehow they managed to make each level have good quality music that fit the theme. From distraught sounds in the first level to hard rock sounds in the third level, I was never disappointed with the audio effects throughout this game.

Replayability

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say the game has much replayability. It can all be done in one playthrough and the levels will be the same the second time around. But, if you did want to play it again, there is a level select menu when you select “New Game.”

What Could Be Better

The checkpoint system they had set up was indirectly faulty. Games like this are best to offer the option to allow players a save state and then do autosave checkpoints on a separate file. Because they have a single save set up for the game that gets overwritten when you reach checkpoints, I found myself having issues at times. There were moments where I could complete a big chunk of a level or solve a puzzle room that I thought was pretty massive yet it didn’t give me a checkpoint save, so since I also couldn’t hard save myself I had to keep going till I found a checkpoint or close the game and redo the last area. This was something learned the hard way and I didn’t notice until after it affected my playthrough. Definitely suggest they update this save system as it is also the reason I ran into a few soft locks that I reported and am hoping are fixed prior to launch.

Conclusion

In Sound Mind is intriguing and enthralling! The story keeps you confused and curious throughout while each level presents a series of unique puzzles and stressful situations to get through. The fear in this game is brought through more than just enemies as the environment itself sometimes feels hostile. They definitely gave justice to the idea of building an entire level around a specific emotion and brought each theme together with a character that you could truly see going to a therapist and acting the way they do on their recorded tapes. All-in-all, this is an impressive indie horror game that should be played by first-person horror fans!