
These four disparate locations all have a unique, recurring threat that will make things tricky for you as you scrounge for puzzle items, ammo, HP-restoring food, and secret pills that offer permanent buffs to your health and stamina, among other stats. Over the course of In Sound Mind, you’ll find cassette tapes from therapy sessions that will lead you - teleport you, really - to four main self-contained twisted dreamscapes. The place has really gone downhill, and weird stuff is afoot, which is a great jumping-off point for a very exploration and puzzle-centric adventure. Playing as a therapist with an unknown past, who’s stuck in a sort of dreamlike or hallucinatory version of reality, you’ll poke around an abandoned apartment building - your apartment building. My favorite part of In Sound Mind is the way it’s laid out, though it does eventually start to wear thin. In others, it’s totally its own thing.īy the end, tonally, it goes a bit goofy. In some ways, it’s part Layers of Fear, part Alan Wake. Initially, at least! As you fall into the routine of this game, the mood settles in, and a new larger-than-life conspiracy emerges, which takes center stage. In Sound Mind has some of the elements we’ve come to expect from these indie and mid-tier horror games. One early area, a sprawled-out grocery store, is dark, confusing, and there’s a ghost chasing you that can only be temporarily warded off with its own reflection. The first time I saw (and then ran from) the inkblot creatures - the only “common” enemy in the game - I was on edge. To give you an idea of the early scare tactics, there are a handful of maybe imagined, maybe real glimpses of something moving past your periphery. But in this case, it feels more intentional, due to the story. Ordinarily, I’d call that a bad thing for a psychological horror game, and for you, it might be a real drawback. The longer In Sound Mind goes, the less spooky it becomes - but the first couple hours are creepy. Released: Septem(PS5, Xbox, PC), TBA 2021 (Switch)
#In sound mind alan wake series
In Sound Mind (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Nintendo Switch) It’s a wonderfully cheesy touch, and I never got sick of it. No, really, it’s kind of hilarious - there’s this deep-voiced entity who hounds you the entire game and constantly rings you up just to talk trash and get a rise out of the protagonist. There are sneaky mannequin shenanigans, specters who stalk you while you’re scrounging for puzzle solutions and hidden items, and lots of random phone calls that you can freely hang up on. And on the surface, it seems like In Sound Mind might run the risk of being too samey, but it actually goes to some wild and original places over its 10- to 12-hour runtime. Admittedly, across the board, there have been diminishing returns.

It’s not what I was expecting based on the kinds of games we’ve gotten from this genre in the last decade. So even though I was a bit unsure of In Sound Mind, a small-team first-person psychological horror adventure, I was eager to go for it.
#In sound mind alan wake Pc
There's a demo on PC I believe.so that could be a good place to start.It’s not even October yet, and I’m already looking for excuses to squeeze more horror movies and games into my life. But this is something I really feel more people should be playing and talking about. The game is honestly excellent and is only let down slightly by some performance issues (I played on PS5) so maybe wait for some patches.

Each case even has a hidden record that's been written and recorded by the band "The Living Tombstone" that basically acts as a kind of theme tune for that patient and they're all really good.

Voice acting and music is seriously on-point too. The horror elements don't really rely on cheap scares or gore and instead prefers to have a constant building tension and atmosphere (this aspect and the noire-esque narration and locations reminds me a lot of Alan Wake) and in general it's just a very intriguing premise and story. And the combat is competent if not exactly amazing. There's a lot of long-form environmental puzzle solving that isn't brain surgery but makes you feel pretty smart. And each has their own unique trauma that you find out about as you play. each patient is relatively unique in their gameplay and location. There's a hub location and 4 cases (tapes) that take a couple hours or so each. You play as a therapist haunted by agent rainbow (the guy on the cover) and made to face the cases that you failed as a therapist and give them closure. But if you enjoy games like Alan Wake or old style puzzle focused survival horror games, I totally recommend it. I know some of the reviews havn't been great, mostly due to performance reasons.and I totally agree it needs a few patches to really polish itself up.

I've just completed the game and i feel like it's flying way under the radar.
