Mind Snares: Alice’s Journey Review

Brief Description

With over ten video games under their name, Artifex Mundi and World-Loom share many similarities: developing high quality video games on the personal computer (PC) and mobile devices, working in the national and global markets, and sharing their passion through their original and inspiring work. One of those works includes Mind Snares: Alice’s Journey; this psychological thriller and horror game was first released and published by World-loom on March 11, 2014. After forging a partnership up with Artifex Mundi, Mind Snares: Alice’s Journey has been rereleased for the PC on October 16, 2014.

After downloading this creative masterpiece, I spent several hours solving puzzles, finding objects, and traveling between dimensions in this bizarre universe that contains some of the female protagonist’s scattered memories.  Like typical casual games, an average gamer can finish them within hours.  Despite the short-coming, Mind Snares: Alice’s Journey is still one hell of a memorable game.

Here are the reasons about why this contemporary project has been dubbed as “memorable” and has earned this average score.

Gameplay

Cinematic Introduction

First and foremost, the cinematic opening sequence starts off like a bang!  Instantly, audiences will see a brief cut-scene of the heroine named Alice Dahl being interviewed about her success in opening a bookstore café. When explaining her story, she starts off by mentioning a strange event that took place two years ago. Traveling back in time, folks will see an unhappy Alice who has been working nonstop to complete a ridiculous amount of assignments behind her desk during the night. Before heading home, her manager orders her to attend a meeting in Seattle. As she quickly drives to the meeting, a mysterious hooded man throws a puppet into a water, which causes her car to dive into a river. Fading into darkness, the menu screen suddenly appears with various options.

Three Difficulty Modes

After clicking the “Play” button, the game will provide three modes: casual, advanced, and expert. By selecting “Expert” (a mode that I deliberately chose), the storyline and puzzles won’t change, but mode does impact how much and how fast you will receive help, such as the heart-shaped hint button can be filled either quickly or slowly. Afterwards, you’ll arrive in an eerie hospital in Alice’s place (first-person view) with her feet buckled down on her bed.

Interactive Gamplay and Extra Steps in Hidden-Object Scenes

By following the strange red mark (which only appears in your hospital room and bathroom), players will proceed along with a tutorial or not through the interactive gameplay steps with three-dimensional graphical scenes. This short tutorial introduces the players to find random but necessary objects within the environment and use it to advance to other locations. After completing this cognitive challenge by freeing your feet with a nearby pin, the red line stretches further into a messy bathroom where the bathtub starts your first hidden-object (HO) scene. This visual test requires folks to not only find the listed objects but create them as well. To find and acquire a house on the list, the player must first finish the stencil drawing by grabbing a marker to draw it in place. Meaning, this extra procedure will require additional time on future HO scenes.

Mini-Games and Help Options

By finishing these challenges, you will be rewarded one object. Though, the first one would be directly used on the broken sink to provide an alternative item to use in the future. When these tools or items cannot be utilized, they will be placed in the inventory. Besides repeating these interactive gameplay and hidden objects scenes, folks will also encounter some puzzling mini-games, which can be skipped at any time when players consider them too difficult. Additionally, a map and journal have been provided for guidance in finding the right destination or remembering the past events. However, expert mode will render the map as useless, so there’s no point in having or using it.

Please note that by completing the first mini-game (a tile puzzle on the door), you will start your real adventure and intense story.

Storyline

Human Connection

Believe it or not, you will feel immediately hooked at the very beginning of the game. After all, you discover bits of pieces of information about Alice who we don’t really know just yet. For example, players will find a carved month and date (which coincidentally is two days after my birthday) inside a medicine cabinet. These numbers happen to be her birthday and a code to enter through a passageway. Later on, folks will retrieve a business card, New Year resolution, drawing, etc. Eventually, you will see her chronological life story. Unfortunately, these fragmented pieces do not impact the linear story-line and won’t appear as often toward the end.

Four Mystical Artifacts

Besides understanding her fears and strengths, you have one sole objective in mind; you need to find the exit to leave this disarrange abstract world. Fortunately, folks will find that very door, but they need to construct a bridge. Thanks to the tree mentor, she basically explains that you have to acquire four mystical artifacts from four dimensions, which has been divided into chapters.

First Chapter: Factory Level

The first dimension focuses on a huge factory setting that’s quite suitable and fitting since Alice has been obediently following her boss’s commands like a perfect subordinate or a robot. Stepping inside the facility, the nightmare continues. The presumptuous peaceful environment filled with mechanical beings has a terrifying secret; the factory has been harvesting humans to create human-like robotic workers that can work long hours and carryout several assignments like Alice has once been doing. Angst by this outrageous production, she shutdowns the factory against the owner’s wishes.

With her new-found courage and her action against the owner, she has finally carried out her own independent action, which has been something she’s been meaning to do with her former stressful job.  Folks can easily see the strong connection between this whole chapter and her workplace. Unfortunately, these strong connections decrease over the gameplay.

Three Other Dimensions

Like the first dimension, the tree mentor opens up two more dimensions that lead to unique worlds. The second location has a colorful atmosphere, and it’s filled with nature with a sweet old lady living in a nice lodge. This particular chapter emphasizes the need for Alice to reconnect like the dying branch on the same trunk. One could interpret this section for her to reconnect with loved ones and former goals. Meanwhile, the third dimension is drastically different: decaying trees, skeleton grave site, cranky hag, and etc. Though the other two dimensions provide visible connections, this chapter is supposed to be about good intuition and sacrifice. Sacrifice will make sense later, but it’s hard to link any reason for her to establish good intuition with her life. Yes, having good intuition is handy, but audiences won’t see when she has previously made a bad choice from bad intuition in her past. Remember, the fragment pieces don’t technically appear anymore.

Terrible Ending

What doesn’t also technically appear anymore is another dimension. The fourth and final dimension is basically a replica of the hospital hallway, room, and bathroom. In fact, the fourth chapter feels quite non-existent and less-impactful as one could have expected for the conclusion. Though we see the hooded figure face-to-face, his final message was predictable and yet disappointing. Like the dimension, the ending scene is equally abrupt and unsatisfying. Therefore, don’t skip because it’ll only last a minute. Confused and annoyed by the outcome, I had hoped this bittersweet ending would unlock collectibles, so I could replay the entire game again. However, that didn’t happen too.

Other Highlighting Points

The English voice acting was pretty decent and good for each individual, especially Alice and the hooded villain. Secondly, each background music was also fine for each setting. Finally, there’s no loading screens, so people can enjoy the smooth transitions of scenes and events. However, the game automatically saves, so check every corner before advancing.

Verdict

Overall, I still find the beginning very memorable and fun for several reasons. Waking up in a hospital room felt surreal but also cunning. Hospitals are supposed to represent a place of recovery. In this case, audiences wonder if she’s recovering from her car incident or her whole life. Additionally, I really like the whole factory setting and the HO scene on a 2D sketch (that was a nice twist). Though the game had great potential with the memory fragments and use of dimensions, I can only hope the abrupt ending would mean a false exit and a possible sequel.