In Sound Mind

Above all else, In Sound Mind is fun. The horror and melancholy of what’s going on in the plot is balanced out by light-hearted camp, the levels are all interwoven exploration puzzles where a new tool invariably makes you realize several new areas you can discover, it’s all so easy to just get lost for hours and hours until next thing you know it’s 3AM.

A psychological horror game with a focus on narrative consistency and gameplay variety, In Sound Mind is a great time due to excellent pacing, level design, and pure ingenuity, even if it's not particularly scary.

It doesn’t provide an experience that’s free of frustration or hiccups, but that doesn’t stop In Sound Mind from being one of this year’s biggest surprises – an action-horror game that delivers not only scares, but also head-scratching puzzles and plenty of engaging combat encounters, all wrapped up in a story that makes you think. With this sort of creativity, it’s exciting to see what We Create Stuff comes up with next. But until then, if you’re brave – and clever – enough, you’d be wise to throw yourself into In Sound Mind.

At the start of the review, I asked myself if this was the horror game to finally click with me. And long story short, the answer is yes. In Sound Mind does a good job in juggling both horror and mystery, even if it leans more towards the latter at the end. Although the story conclusion was a little lacklustre, the phenomenal voice acting, the great level design and the creepy atmosphere make In Sound Mind a game worth playing. And yes, even for those who aren’t horror game fans.

While some obscure paths and crashing issues hold In Sound Mind back from greatness, the game still has a lot going for it. A fantastic story, great exploration, and some genuine scares make this indie horror worth seaking out.

But while I enjoyed the visuals, had fun figuring out the puzzles, and had plenty of laughs, In Sound Mind doesn’t quite impress anything upon you. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the game, but it also doesn’t strike me as extremely inventive or revolutionary. On the other hand, if you’ve played any psychological horror games in the past and enjoyed them, you’ll like this one for much the same reasons.

Mental Health is and will always be a complex topic to handle. Novels, films, TV Series and Video Games; the world is full of titles that looked to tackle aspects of mental health and abjectly failed. Why did they fail? It could be due to either a ham-handed approach to the subject matter or simply not understanding it. Whichever aspect of mental health you are looking to represent, depression, guilt, psychosis, or something else, it takes a level of nuance most people in entertainment aren't capable of managing. In Sound Mind, a play on words from the term "Being of sound mind", looks to repr...

Horror games are my bread and butter, some of my favourite in gaming. The recent Tormented Souls was a great callback to classic survival horror, fixed cameras and all, whilst Visage was a relentless assault on the senses, providing some of the best scares in recent memory. Time try out the supposed next big thing in the genre, In Sound Mind, created by the amusingly named We Create Games, a studio behind the popular Nightmare House mod for Half-Life 2. It goes for a combination of survival a...

In Sound Mind is a flawed but fun horror-adventure game. Flawed on the horror but fun on the adventure.

No summary available

In Sound Mind features plenty of unnecessary and frustrating mechanics, but a complex, entertaining story and the deft application of classic and psychological horror tropes help carry the game.

Despite some disappointing and frustrating moments, there’s enough compelling stuff that I can still recommend In Sound Mind to fans of adventure-leaning indie horror games. Overall, I dug this team’s ambition, and I was excited to see where it was headed. I just wish the game ran better and streamlined some of its level and puzzle design.