So, I’ve lately fallen a bit in love with a wonderful and underappreciated little horror game called In Sound Mind. And given that it’s currently 90% off on Steam until June 2nd, this is clearly the ideal time to try and get more people to give it a go.
So what is In Sound Mind? In brief, it’s surrealist psychological horror at its twisty, dreamlike best, built from a thick stack of classic horror tropes. It is gorgeously colourful (literally and metaphorically), wonderfully atmospheric, and full of interesting mechanics – and gay enough to leave me wanting to write fic about it, which never hurts.
It has a great little sense of humour too. If most of the ideas here are stuff you’ll have seen before, this is still the kind of game with the guts to ask, "yeah, but what if the creepy faceless mannequins that move only when you’re not looking at them were friendly and helpful for a change?"
It is, in even briefer, a whole lot of what RE8 left me wanting more of from this genre, and which RE9 sadly didn't seem that interested in delivering.
Plotwise, well, it’s 1997, and you are mild-mannered therapist Desmond Wales, trying desperately to piece together the truth behind the tragic deaths of three of his patients in time to save himself from the same fate, all while trapped in a twisted little psychological mindscape of his own, and while being stalked and threatened by the most helpful tsundere of a charismatic weirdo in a sinister trenchcoat imaginable (see cover image). From the hubworld of Desmond’s apartment building, you’ll find your way into separate worlds representing each of his patients, gradually accumulating weapons and tools as you go. Gameplay is largely exploration and puzzle-based with some gun combat – and for a game this indy, all those aspects hold up impressively well.
I owe my own discovery of this game to a random youtube video from a relative newbie of a creator. He covers the whole plot in pretty decent detail, though personally, I only got about fifteen minutes in before pausing the video, because I'd realised I wanted to play this thing for real.
The visuals and the game's sense of humour were major parts of what won me over, but I cannot lie: Desmond’s weird-ass stalker would have to be my favourite thing about this game.
He is a little tricky to talk about without dropping spoilers – even his name is a spoiler, though most people will probably have figured out exactly what his deal is long before the game spells it out. Regardless, he’s on Desmond’s tail from the opening moments, and will spend the rest of our playthrough regularly leaving us colourful notes to find, and phoning us up to drop hints and leave threatening messages (look, this is a horror game, text documents and audio logs are its native language).
At least when he’s not actively dropping you into a deathtrap, that is. Or just walking up behind you to scare you out of your socks, drop a one-liner, and disappear in a haze of smoke.
The very first phone message he ever leaves you is...suggestive, to say the least.
What makes this dude so much fun is that, despite his loudly-stated goal of killing Desmond, he's also the game’s official clue-delivery-system. Seldom will you encounter a real puzzle without him leaving you a note or calling you up to deliver the most passive-aggressively cryptic hint as to what you need to be doing. He won’t even let you enter the first major level if you haven’t found all three pieces the gun you can assemble in the hubworld (and if you’ve found some but not assembled them yet, he’s got more dialogue to mock you for that).
This guy is a full wheel of pure, smokey cheese, and the “Not that I’m trying to help you or anything, baka!” vibes are off the planet.
So yes, I was shipping the fuck out of it before I’d hardly started the game. Do you people even know me? This shit is like, the definition of my jam!
But the charms of In Sound Mind certainly do not end with my personal weird lady-boner for a good monster stalker. It's also beautifully creepy (when it's not just being plain beautiful), surprisingly well-paced and plotted, and fun. Though the game has some of that classic low-budget jank, level and puzzle design is surprisingly solid throughout. Like, lands right in that Goldilocks-range between "too easy" and "I am never solving this without googling" kind of solid, which so many games miss completely. Even after solving every single puzzle, I have now gone back to replay this thing through three more times, including twice on the highest difficulty, because I genuinely find the world and gameplay that compelling. Almost all the tools you'll receive have multiple uses, some of which won't even be obvious (I'm looking at you, radio!), and there are some genuinely clever mechanics mixed in.
Combat did take a little time to get my head around – enemies in this thing are fast, and take fuck-all damage if you aren't hitting them in their glowing weakpoints. They're aggressive too, and will come charging at you and force you to stay on the move. But by the time I'd figured out that a reliable strat is to just run straight back at them and watch them breeze past and lose me for a handy few seconds, combat had become a lot more fun. I still don't think I've nailed it, but maximum difficulty has become a fun challenge.
I'm not sure the game really deserves the 'survival horror' flag it has on Steam. It’s horror, certainly, but even on higher difficulties, the game is mostly pretty generous with health and ammunition, and there’s no real inventory management. Even more questionable is the one review I saw that called it an immersive sim. Nominally, stealth is an option, but the ‘stealth’ in this title is painfully rudimentary (enemiesWILLspot you if you give them more than a distant glance at you), and you can’t even stack boxes, so ‘immersive sim’ does not feel particularly cromulent. That said, there are enough interesting mechanics in this thing that it did genuinely have me reloading saves right before some encounters, just to try out different ways of tackling them, which means it was getting me in the same exact corner of my brain that finds immersive sims so terribly addictive. So, immersive sim, no, not really, but I can see where that reviewer got the idea.
Writing and voice acting is... well, solid, but not entirely top-tier. Characters are pretty broadly written, and some of the dialogue does get a little cringy. I don’t love that Desmond’s one female patient is a former child beauty pageant contestant with crushing anxiety about her mild facial scars, for one – that feels just a little bit lazy. And for all the hints that Desmond might be just as damaged as his patients, his actual baggage turns out to be relatively pedestrian (minus the recent crushing self-doubt that comes from rapidly losing three patients, at least). There is a very Ethan Winters quality to the guy, at least his general oblivious mild-mannered everyman character, but that’s certainly no negative for me.
As well-trodden as the subject of mental health can be in this genre, it’s hard not to be a little charmed by how it’s used here. Desmond may be a pretty mediocre therapist, but his need to find answers for three patients he feels like he failed is as earnest as motivations come, and for once, the answers involve no evil doctors or asylums, no crushing nihilism about the human condition. The villains are explicitly the forces of capitalism and government corruption. Regular people have their problems, but are mostly just doing their best. And it’s so damn refreshing to play something where the whole world of toxic masculinity is represented by exactly one guy (a patient), and not only is he not the hero, he’s a disaster that even Agent Trenchcoat thinks he’s nothing but hot air and bullshit.
To summarise then: the gameplay hooked me hard, there are characters who got me right in the id, the plot hangs together impressively well, and the horror vibes of this thing are truly delightful. And there’s enough humour in this thing to forgive it for many more flaws than I ever found in it. And did I mention it’s 90% off on Steam right now?
This is a game that’s been our for years now without really gaining a major audience, but there is some truly excellent fanart of it out there on tumblr already, and the least I can do is encourage more people to give the game a shot, and then go check it out. Four playthroughs in and I am still finding new stuff in this thing, it is so very much worth your time.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to deny location sharing and turn off personalized ads and reject all non-essential cookies and not set up siri and face ID
This was on a post about how it's ignorant and privileged to wear headphones in public and I fear its already become a part of my vocabulary. Must everything harbor a moral failure.
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