In Sound Mind

Back in the day, there was a standalone mod for Half-Life 2 called Nightmare House 2 in 2010. That mod genuinely scared the hell out of me... it was disturbing, intense, and totally unforgettable as a teenager. Before that, there was Nightmare House 1 in 2005, also for Half Life 2, a shorter, less fleshed-out experience, but still creepy in its own right.

Both mods were made by a developer called We Create Stuff, the same team behind the psychological horror game In Sound Mind. That was my first exposure to their work, and it made me a fan instantly. I remember even messaging them on social media back in the day, asking when Nightmare House 3 would finally drop.

So when In Sound Mind was eventually announced, I was beyond excited. Just based on their history with horror mods alone, I knew I had to play it.

But something about the promotional material for In Sound Mind threw me off, for a little while. It leans heavily onto purply neon colors, a cutesy cat on the box art, and an honestly goofy man in a tophat. The trailer on Steam even has streamers playing the game being goofy, so I wasn't convinced the tone was as terrifying as their roots in Half Life modding. Still, I knew these guys were competent developers and I eventually got the game to see where they had progressed after all these years.

In Sound Mind released in 2021, over 10 years since Nightmare House 2, the game which made me believe in this developer.
In Sound Mind, likewise is a psychological horror game, but it has quite a few tricks up its sleeves.
You play as a therapist, Desmond Wales, which after playing the game for a little bit it clicked with me and I appreciated the concept of playing a psychological horror game where you play as a therapist. You're sort of being stalked by this trenchcoat man with a tophat (which admittedly looks goofy and not very scary at all) who keeps calling phones all around you and basically just being negative and taunting you every time he talks to you.
The game takes place in a sort of apartment complex with a main elevator that has 3 floors. This building serves as a sort of HUB world where you will eventually go back and forth between the four different chapters of the game. The chapters are case files, where you relive some trauma of one of your patients. The whole concept is innovative and well done, its a clever idea for a horror game, to be a therapist going in and out of these memories of your patients. Even the world around you in the apartment complex hub subtly shifts. One moment you can be looking at a painting, then you walk away and come back, and its entirely different. The game is constantly doing subtle little things to mess with you which I found pretty entertaining.

You start off on the basement floor without much of any items to use. But very soon you find a flashlight in typical horror fashion. The flashlight has batteries, and slowly runs down to 0%. However when it reaches 0% it still works, just at a diminished power, but its still bright enough to be useful. You find batteries scattered around the world seemingly spawned at random, though I could definitely sense the game start to spawn more of certain items once you are low on resources. Like when the flashlight is 0%, It felt like it would ramp up the battery spawns. Or when my health was low, I'd find more health items like food. Its an interesting way to handle resources, I do like that the flashlight isn't infinite, because it gives you something to interact with and scrounge for, and it avoids the dreaded 0% dead flashlight in pitch black which can sometimes ruin a game. Even still, most of the time I was playing the game at 0% flashlight battery and still not finding enough batteries to really keep me charged.

This isn't a typical "walking sim" horror game. It has all sorts of items to collect, which all have their use in both puzzle and combat contexts. The game starts off simple in the basement, where you do simple puzzles like changing fuses from washing machines to power on the elevator, but eventually you collect all sorts of items which are required to progress through the game. It has locked off areas in the Hub apartment, where at first you're scratching your head wondering how to get there. But as you keep playing you realize these are areas you need to back track to with your new found items to proceed through them. Each of the four cases has an item related to it, that you keep with you afterwards to return to the hub apartment and unlock new areas. One such item is a Glass shard to cut caution rape, and also to look through the glass as a mirror which reflects hidden details in the environment. This is a neat and innovative addition, and there will be glowing purple glass shards on the ground which make a loud audible cracking noise when you step on them, cleverly altering the player that they can look through the glass piece to find hidden details, such as creepy messages on the walls, and hints on how to proceed. However, I did find it a little disorienting and janky trying to look through the glass shard sometimes. Typically it just resulted in me mindlessly spinning the camera around until things in the environment started to glow. You come across other items such as a Gas Mask, which is obviously used to proceed through these purple gassy areas on the floor. Though the gas mask doesn't have a strap so you have to hold it up to your face, meaning you can't use other items at the same time. This Gas mask isn't used all that often, only a few times in the whole game. Maybe could have done more with it. There's a radio device which is used to aim at distant electronics boxes to toggle them, which also adds another layer of puzzle solving because sometimes they will be invisible inside of walls and you have to use the Glass shard vision to see them. Lastly, there are these pills you can find which you can either consume for +20 health and a short speed bonus, or you can throw them which makes them explode like a little grenade, and also attracts enemies.

And the game has combat, a fair amount of it.
Though there is only really two combat items:
A pistol, which you find early into the game by collecting a few different pistol parts, and then combining them at a workbench in the basement.
Weirdly enough, this is the only time I ever had to use this workbench feature. Its like they just put it in the game, thinking it would be significant, but they only ended up using it for the mandatory pistol segment.
The pistol is also required to unlock certain areas, because you need to blow up these barrels to proceed through some areas.
There also a shotgun you can find much later into the game, but I think it is optional and kinda easy to miss.

The combat mechanics are serviceable. The animations and guns look okay, it says theres "Aiming down sights" but really when you press the button it only kinda just zooms the screen in without any actual iron sights. Accuracy does improve, though. You never really have tons of ammo, but I almost always had a few dozen bullets at any given time. A few times I ran out of ammo and it wasn't sure what I was supposed to do at that point, I guess just run nonstop, which I did. The game isn't difficult or anything, it has a very forgiving autosave so the few times I'd die I didn't go back too far.

But really the combat, and overall enjoyment of the game is let down by some very disappointing flaws.
Simply the enemy design and monsters are just...lame.
This is a horror game, but its not horror at all.
The monsters are these multi colored glowing transparent.....things, they almost look like Bionicles.
It's not scary at all, in fact when they show up it sometimes plays Rock N Roll Metal music, like you're some kind of demon slayer badass.
What tone are they trying to go for? I hate that I have to say this, but I think this game might have some of the most disappointing and lamest monster designs of any horror game I've played.
It's so sad, because everything else is pretty well done.
There's only really two monsters in the whole game. A little multicolored transparent guy, and then a Big multicolored transparent guy... thats really it.
Theres places on their body that glow bright red, indicating that if you shoot them there you will do more damage I guess. But theres not much to it.
The first time they showed up, the game told you to sneak past it - Yeah, I only did that a single time, every other time it turned into a fast paced action game where I just blasted them away.
Since they look so non-threatening, it was hard to take it seriously or be scared by it.
Both the pistol and shotgun were quite effective, the shotgun didn't seem that much better for how its an optional reward.

But its not just the monsters that are off in tone. The whole game just...isn't scary. Like, I still enjoy playing it, but it didn't lean too much into the visceral horror. The game has a really oversaturated usage of neon colors everywhere, bright purples, greens, blues, it doesn't look very gritty. The actual graphics are fine (it runs on Unity engine), but the art direction is very questionable. Its more like PG13 horror for children or something. Its super toned down. Keep in mind, this is the developers of Nightmare House, which I thought was actually gripping and creepy, but this game is really toned done and feels more family friendly compared to that. Even the main tophat antagonist guy I found just lame in both visuals and even his voice calls came across as being too tryhard as an "evil antagonist" trope. I get that its later revealed hes just supposed to be a projection of the main characters insecurities, but still. So I am disappointed about the overall vibe and lack of scares. Not a single thing in the game made me feel the slightest bit uneasy or anxious. Even down to the achievement names, stuff like "10/10 GOTY" and meme references. As a horror game, thats a bit of a failure, but at least everything else around it was decently enjoyable.


So you make your way back and forth from the main hub apartments, to your main office on Floor 2. Inside your main office you find a Tape deck. This is where you insert Tapes which you find around the world (often acquired by using a new item to bypass some obstacle). You put a tape in the tape deck and it opens a magic door that serves as a portal to another world (The next main chapter). However inside your office theres some other things also. There is a cat called Tonia which frequently shows up, at first just looking at you and being a basic cat. But not long into the game the cat starts talking to you and acting like a companion and almost comic relief. I think the devs are proud of this one, as its plastered all over the games marketing, and even the loading screen is a cat icon. While I was complaining previously about the weird tone shifts in the game, and how it detracts from a horror atmosphere, I still think this game is better for having the cat companion in it. Its nice to look forward to coming back and interacting with this cat, you can pet it and it will say silly things if you keep petting it too much, the cat talks in a female voice and is there to guide you through the game and be a trusty ally. It helps add memorability to the experience and helps differentiate it from all the others in the genre. But you can really see what I mean where the tone of the game is all over the place, and doesn't lean so much into the isolated horror vibe. Theres even these friendly mannequins that frequently pop up, pointing towards places you should go, giving you keys, and morphing and changing as you correctly progress through the game reinforcing that you're doing the right thing. These things are quirky, and amusing when they pop up, but once again reinforces the more whimsical vibe of the game and less so tense horror atmosphere.

The plot and narrative of the game I actually found gripping and was interested to know what happens next. I was interested in each of the four patient tapes, and each of them are distinct and memorable. As I said, the premise of being a therapist in a psychological horror game is a clever idea, and the main character Desmond frequently talks to himself as you explore and is generally a likable character.

Each of the games four main tapes are distinct and memorable. Each of them starts by a road surrounded by water, where you have to do brief platforming sections. In fact, the game has quite a few platforming sections. I don't mind it, because it helps break up the pace. Like I said earlier, this isn't just another basic walking sim where you do nothing but walk around and pickup objects and get jump scared. Theres platforming, puzzles, combat, problem solving, traps, etc.
So you platform around these water areas, listening to tapes as you go. Then you arrive at the main location.
Each location is fairly long and a big slice of map to explore. Each lasting over an hour long or more.
The first tape, is inside a big grocery store surrounded by water. Theres a ghostly woman inside who hates her reflection, and theres mirrors scattered around where you can lead her to the mirrors which shatter and make you progress.
All sorts of puzzles and items to collect in this store, toy pieces for a doll house puzzle, receipts to do a cash register puzzle to get coins, and even a cool spooky TV room where you have to point the eyeballs on the TV towards the woman which enrages her.

At first, going into each tape you don't know why you're being chased by each monster, but at the end of each tape you fully realize the backstory and that each monster is a reflection of one of your patients. In the first one, the girl was forced into beauty pageants at a young age, and when she was putting on makeup as a child she slipped and cut her face after breaking a mirror. Thats why she hates her reflection. It all ties together nicely and does add a dramatic and creepy backstory.

The second tape, is about a weird loner who works as a lighthouse watcher. It takes place on a coastal island, which is quite large, and this time you go all around being stalked by this black shade that comes from the ground and sucks you in, but goes away in spotlights. This one was perhaps the most annoying, it resulted in just running around like a manic dashing towards spotlights. Its a lot of moving fuses around from generator to generator. Here you get the Flare gun which can be used to make the "unnatural darkness " spots go away, allowing you progress previously inaccessible areas. This area had some crane puzzles, warehouses, and a few platforming sections. Theres even a big boat that you get on and go through and go through some weird hallucinogenic areas. Overall Costal lighthouse tape  area probably had the best atmosphere and was closest to a horror game. The lighthouse guy turns out he shot a flaregun at something that scared him in the dark, catching himself on fire, so thats why he hates darkness (and thus is the shade that stalks you).

The third tape has you basically going from factory to factory, in the midday, while youre being chased by some giant Bull vehicle...thing. Its about a guy who has anger issues after losing his job at the factory. I think this is my least favorite tape, the locations just arent that interesting and its a lot of stale looking factories and electricity puzzles. You end up having to make the bull knock down a bunch of walls to progress, having to go from electrical boxes taking voltage batteries to and from doing electricity puzzles, and eventually get inside a big main factory where you go from room to room doing puzzles including finding components to make this magical drug pill after doing a valve puzzle, which you can then use to lure the bull around. It ends up with this comical boss fight in a pit arena where youre luring the bull to knock pillars down ontop of himself, ending the tape. Probably the goofiest of them all.

Lastly is a tape about an army veteran with PTSD. Has you going around the outskirts of some army camps in the forest, where you get a radio which you can use to toggle power boxes and open gates and such, and you are being chased by a giant angry robot that reminds me of the Strider from Half Life 2. You just run around avoiding his bullets, trying to find the Codes for this bunker. The codes are from 4 different radio towers which you can see glowing in the distance, so its a lot of trying to figure out how to get to these towers, which at times was a bit aimless and frustrating. But once you get there you do a simple puzzle with glowing stars and the radio and then get each of the codes. This level was pretty decent and enjoyable, theres some intense action sequences like trying to get on a tram ride while being shot at. Eventually it ends at another kind of boss fight ontop of a tower where you press a button to lock onto the enemy robot enough times and he gets weakened and dies from this giant beam.

After the four main tapes, theres a final ending tape. This finale starts with an admittedly cringing almost musical sequence where the tophat guy sings at you, then you get into  This a big floating dreamlike arena where the tophat guy is giant and floating in the sky talking shit at you the whole time. You're being swarmed by infinite enemies all over, and you just have to sprint to these radio stations, put in all the tapes and record over them. A short but intense ending sequence, but once again not exactly horrifying or anything, moreso silly with its zero-gravity and arcadey gameplay. After you record over all the tapes,  you find out the tophat guy is just a projection of your insecurities that youve then mostly overcome, I think here its revealed that all your patients from your tapes actually had tragic deaths, which is why the main character is filled with so much trauma and doubt about his own techniques and therapy. The cat shows up and asks you go to to the roof to beat the game, and hints at a sequel.


Thats In Sound Mind, mostly.

There are tons of notes scattered all around the game, almost too many. Its like every 15 seconds you come across another note to read. Its actually a bit obnoxious. Sometimes theres multiple notes in the same room. It feels a little bit too unbelievable and too much like a developer is just trying to guide the player rather than someone actually leaving notes around. That would be one of the biggest complaints besides the lame enemies and tone being all over the place and not very scary. The games soundtrack is also a mixed bag. The atmospheric horror drones are great, but sometimes it plays rocking metal music like I mentioned previously which felt a little strange , you can find Vinyl's records to play music in your office, and its kinda neat, but again it has this Musical vibe. Like High School Musical with its corny lyrics. Its a bit off-putting in a supposed horror game. Also, you can actually upgrade your stats. There are items scattered around the game that is like boxes of drugs, when you collect 3 of them it upgrades your stat permanently. The stats are: Stealth, Speed, Health, and I think another one. But really I sensed very little difference in any of this, and it did not seem important at all. Almost just seemed like something to throw into the game to try to give it more longevity entice people into collecting them all for achievements or something, but as for core gameplay it barely seemed to matter.
The combat was also just okay, but really felt more like an afterthought and just shoved in there to say there is combat at all. I do appreciate the game for trying something distinct, with its therapist concept, its four individual tapes with individual worlds, the hub world, the variety of items and mechanics to progress through the game. A fun game, but not exactly a great horror game. If theres going to be a sequel, I do look forward to it and will play that as well one day.

7/10