I hadn’t expected In Sound Mind to have such effective Metroidvania-esque mechanics, but that’s precisely what it achieves.
A gas mask becomes your gateway to new rooms, a flare gun offering you a means to pierce through enemies and darkness alike.
Which makes finding various pieces of equipment and new items that much more exciting. A boarded up door, a toxic splurge of lethal liquid, thick clouds of choking darkness and more will hinder your ability to freely discover everything hidden amongst your hub building and the other areas. As you work your way through areas you’ll come across hazards, barriers and problems you’re ill-equipped to solve initially. As mentioned before, tapes are your gateways to separate levels with their own gameplay mechanic based on the “boss” that’s present.Įxploring was surprisingly the strongest of the game’s mechanics. Your main hub building you awake in has 3 floors and connects you to areas allowing you to access the tapes necessary to progress the narrative. In Sound Mind has 3 main tenets: exploring, stealth and combat. The mixed-bag trend continues into the gameplay, which unfortunately fares less well than the story. Which is a shame, because In Sound Mind has some bold ideas buried in there somewhere, right in the subconscious, and it’s never fully embraced. For a game hosting a hammed-up primary antagonist complete with confrontational phone calls every 5 minutes who also dons a suave suit complete with accompanying hat, it just falls into a routine you’ll likely have seen dozens of times before in other psychological horror media. I just didn’t feel especially invested in the final act or conclusion, which while solid, does little new or interesting with In Sound Mind’s foundations. On the contrary, I fully enjoyed the individual stories from each tape and their resolutions. That’s not to say the story itself is bad. Sadly, the overarching narrative thread that eventually ties it all together is predictable and about halfway through you’ll likely work out what’s going on, which leaves little to discover by the conclusion. The 4th tape in particular has brilliant creature design to create a looming, impending foe to overcome. There’s some compelling representation of different mental health disorders in how each patient’s level develops and the associated “boss” figures play out. As you progress, you’ll learn more about Desmond, his patients and the overall plot will begin to unfold. Transporting you into a new area, tapes act as separate levels that you’ll be required to progress through.
Over the course of the runtime you’ll have 4 main tapes to discover in sequence – each tape representing a different personality that worked with our supposed hero. See, Desmond is a psychologist by trade, and a busy one at that. In Sound Mind smartly delivers the history and context of Desmond’s role through the use of tapes you discover around the building you awake in. As you explore, our supposed hero – Desmond Wales – will slowly recover his memories and experiences with the folk of Milton Haven. As is commonplace in horror titles, your protagonist awakes in a trash room of a nondescript building with no sense of context nor reason.
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