Mind Snares: Alice's Journey

Mind Snares: Alice's Journey
by World Loom - March, 2014

Available at:
Big Fish
GameHouse
iWin



Alice Dahl has found herself stuck in an occupation that makes her very unhappy. She knows that her only shot at happiness is to leave her job behind, but past fears are holding her back. After rushing to meet a client, Alice's car careens into a river. She wakes to find herself in what looks like a hospital, but turns out to be a strange shadow world. Her only means of escape is to overcome her fears in Mind Snares: Alice's Journey.

• Solve mini-games generated by Alice's subconscious
  
• Help Alice overcome her fears
  
• Explore a strange shadow world
  

Click images to enlarge
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Wow! Fantastic!*****

BASED ON DEMO

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
One of the best stand alone SEs I have ever played, this game opens with a casual confidence, twists into mounting tension, builds on into creepy, suddenly becoming downright scary, and then that darn sinister laugh - nearly gave me goose bumps. You just don’t see many intros which are that wide-ranging in emotions.

And everything about the game is just a little bit different.

SIGHTS & SOUNDS
The graphics are easily CE standard. The cut scenes are extremely well done, the HOP scenes are clear, detailed, and with just the lightest of surreal touches making them interesting. Lots of life and light, but with that colour palette that always lets me know this is a game that will have its gross moments. You know, the purples and greens, and oranges with pinks. Liked the interface, too. All that dangerous broken glass!

The main character/narrator’s voiceover is excellent. She acts very well, with the right emphasis and intonation, as well as clear and flawless pronunciation. The other characters achieve a close approximation to lip synch. The music is multi-layered, often ominous, but also exciting & energetic at times. Great ambient sounds and effects.

WHAT’S HAPPENING?
This is a good somewhat original story, well structured, but little emphasis is really given it in the game. You used to be trapped in a dead end job with an over-demanding boss, but without the fortitude to get out. Then something terrible goes horribly wrong. An evil laugh follows you down into darkness, and you wake up trapped in a hospital room. But the story does not descend into another of the ‘abandoned asylum’ games, it is way more weird than that!

Alice’s journey is an internal mental one, as most of you have probably already guessed, and so anything is possible. We find ourselves on a quest to find 4 totems, each from a different world, in order to escape back to reality.

GAMEPLAY
The adventure gameplay is fairly easy, and so too are the many HOPs and mini-games. There are, wait for it, 30 (!!) HOPs, but don’t panic, because there are 40(!!) mini-games. At least, it seems so according to the achievements list. Yes, there are also (many) achievements! No collectibles however.

Again, some at least of the HOPs you can expect to be quirky, for example the one of Vitrupian Woman (hee hee), where all the items on the word list are silhouettes on a poster.

So far the mini-games are easy and fun. The journal gives objectives and sub-objectives, as well as notes. Hint is directional, and you will eventually get an interactive jump map, which indicates task available, if you choose. There are choices of 3 levels of difficulty, volumes, widescreen, and aspect correction.

COMBINED IMPACT
It took me almost exactly the full hour to complete the demo, which was still in the first of 4 chapters, and a reasonably long way till its completion.

These developers have spent their money wisely. There are only a few but very effective cut-scenes, which you can’t play later, and carefully distributed excellent voiceover, rather than endless chat. It just doesn’t have the glamour of many games. But it has good solid gameplay, attractive and interesting artwork, and a little quirkiness as a bonus.

In all, a great SE game. If this is the quality of games we can expect for our PCCs in the future, I for one am happy to accommodate the recent changes!

I recommend this game!

I was just looking at Alice's Journey, and thought it looked good.

You just convinced me to buy it.   

Yes, it has gone straight to the top of my wishlist as well. Am trialling the other HOPA game at the moment - and it has given me a headache. My sub-woofer has never worked so hard! The table is vibrating and my head is echoing with brmm,brmmm, mmm creepy sci-fi machine sounds. Oh. And the hurricane of course, which is quiet by comparison lol   

JustTheFacts wrote:The adventure gameplay is fairly easy, and so too are the many HOPs and mini-games.

I'm downloading the demo and will try it out this afternoon. It sounds very well done and fun, but I hope the game isn't as easy as it sounds. In general I'm disappointed by how easy casual games have become. Lovely graphics and bells and whistles are gladly accepted but I prefer a more challenging level of play that gets me really thinking. Could use more of that as I get older, not less. 

Well, if I remember, you're not wild about puzzles, are you? If you are like me and a bit dodgy on them, you should get a decent challenge out of this.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for more challenge in the adventure side, it might disappoint. I, like you, think games have gotten 'soft' - with interactive jump maps as standard, and journals with everything, and directional hint, and black bar comments. Even I can't go wrong with the 'bells and whistles' games - which, for me, is a good thing! This game has enough of that kind of help to be a bit too easy for you I think, but maybe on a higher level of difficulty?

btw, does playing a higher level usually actually, "feel" more difficult, do you think?

Well, we're actually discussing 2 different kinds of "challenge" here. I love good puzzles that require strategy and (hopefully) logic to solve. The typical ERS puzzles that almost solve themselves are too easy for me and hence boring.

OTOH, many casual games these days have a gazillion scenes and places to go with something to pick up from every location -- I mightily appreciate jump maps and hints on where to go and what to do next, cause I often have a hard time keeping track of everything. In the old adventure gaming days no journals were provided and one had to constantly take notes and make maps. I quite liked that! But now that everything's pretty automatic I take more for granted so get lost quite easily, lol.

So to wrap up, the challenge I enjoy is figuring out puzzles, and I mean the clever kind not the annoying & tedious tile-sliding-to-make-a-picture kind.

When it comes to levels I prefer to play the medium level, not the super advanced, simply because I like to have skip buttons in case I want to bail out on the especially tedious puzzles and I definitely need hints for HOs (I am not a hidden object lover and they put me to sleep).