Fractured Minds Review Someone Else S Shoes The Nerd Stash

Title: Fractured Minds

Developer: Emily Mitchell

Publisher: Wired Productions

Genre: Walking Simulator / Puzzle

Available On: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and Mac

Official Site: Wired Productions/Fractured Minds

Release Date: November 14, 2019

Version Tested: PlayStation 4

As someone suffering from depression and PTSD, I have a special interest in tales of mental illness. But I’m disappointed that, sometimes, mental illnesses can be portrayed negatively in media. People with depression are just mopey, and characters with illnesses like schizophrenia are depicted as insane first and human second. That’s why the rise in positive representation of mental illnesses in titles such as Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, for example, is so important. They promote understanding and garner awareness of the needs of those suffering. Fractured Minds is one of these titles. Developed by a single person, the talented Emily Mitchell, Fractured Minds, is an exploration of the mind of an anxious depressive.

A Single, Frantic Story

Fractured Minds doesn’t really have a concrete plot, although it is engaging. By paying attention to the details around you, you can figure that you are a young woman, possibly even a small girl. But the events of the game take place in the mind of the player character, and much of what happens is very abstract and surreal. This contributes to the game’s message, though. This is a story about anxiety and depression. The developer, Emily Mitchell, suffers from extreme anxiety, her experience providing inspiration for the game. The collection of various seemingly unconnected levels highlights the sporadic and frantic elements of the anxious mind. You don’t think straight; you think crooked, every which way but straight. So, the game jumps from concept to concept, representing the drastic switches in mood and thoughts inherent with these illnesses.

It isn’t random, though. Each section deals with a different aspect of anxiety and depression. The level underwater, for example, highlights the feeling of drowning often associated with extreme depressive episodes. The birthday party demonstrates the loneliness associated with mental illness, even when in the company of loved ones. Jumping from level to level never felt jarring because, even though each section was much different from the other, they all dealt with aspects of the same topic.

One thing that did disappoint was the length. Fractured Minds is probably about 20 minutes long, more or less. In this time, there are six levels. Now, I have no problem with short games (I actually find them refreshing), but the story did feel rushed. It seemed that whenever a level started making an impact, it promptly ended. I went from experience to experience without fully digesting what had come before. I don’t want this game to be two hours long; the short length is definitely a strength in some ways. But extending certain levels and taking more time to explore the theme for each one would take the emotional impact of Fractured Minds to the next level.

Taking Action

In terms of gameplay, thematically, you are tasked with fighting back against depressive and anxious thoughts. Fractured Minds gives you an antagonist in the form of the embodiment of anxiety, but many of the obstacles you encounter are abstract. So, you don’t require much in terms of controls. Since Fractured Minds is a walking simulator, you have two control functions: interacting and running. These are fine given the nature of the game; I never desired anything more. But the controls, as limited as they are, don’t exactly work well

First, I never found the need to run ever. All the areas in Fractured Minds are very small. It would only take me a second or two to cross a room walking normally. Sprinting just felt unnecessary and, therefore, like it didn’t have a purpose.

In terms of the action button, well, it just didn’t seem to always work. First, there is no way to determine what you can and cannot interact with. The cursor remains a small dot regardless of what you are looking at. This seems like a small issue, but when coupled with the fact that sometimes the action button doesn’t work with items you actually can interact with, it can lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion. I couldn’t figure out the distance I had to be from an object to interact with it. Exactly how precise I had to be seemed to vary significantly from item to item. Ultimately, puzzles were solved by pressing the action button multiple times on the same item until I picked it up or something happened.

There are puzzles scattered throughout the story, and they are stimulating enough that they don’t feel like filler. The story and theme are certainly the focus here, which is why the issue with the controls isn’t disastrous, but I appreciated that the puzzles clearly had some thought put into them. Actually, the only thing holding the puzzles back was solutions being obscured by inconsistent controls.

What Anxiety Looks and Sounds Like

A walking simulator like Fractured Minds depends on many different elements to succeed. If a game is light in gameplay, it must be aesthetically and musically engaging. One of the strongest aspects of this game is its score. The soundtrack is comprised of multiple composers, such as Olive Musique, Shaun Frearson, and Kai Engel. Each wrote specific songs and scores to certain levels, and each track is engaging and emotional.

The music, in fact, does a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting here. Melancholy yet triumphant, the soundtrack has an admirable range for such a short game. What I found particularly impressive is the fact that the music all feels unified despite being composed by three different individuals. Everything I heard served the experience and the theme, and this focus created a soundtrack with a solid identity.

Since Fractured Minds is a game developed by a single 17-year-old, the simplistic graphics can easily be forgiven. In fact, it’s impressive how much she does with so little. The images in Fractured Minds stay with me because they are creative, unique, and impactful. There may not be much in terms of detail for environments, but what you do see is important. Some levels, such as the one taking place on a street, are particularly striking. It just goes to show that you don’t need a team of thirty people to create a visually appealing experience.

Calming Down

It was a bit difficult to review Fractured Minds. I put my critic’s hat on, dissected the piece, and found what usually are egregious errors for a video game. After all, I would argue that the controls are rough and that the little gameplay that exists suffers because of it. That’s pretty important stuff for a video game.

On the other hand, a single woman developed this, someone suffering from anxiety herself. Her talent is indisputable. As well, and maybe I am biased because of my own battles with mental illness, I find the story and message important and impactful, even if it all felt a bit rushed.

Verdict: So. ultimately, I recommend Fractured Minds. It’s a work of art, and art, sometimes, is rough. It doesn’t completely succeed in everything that it does, but it is for an important cause. After all, 80% of the proceeds from the game are split between Emily Mitchell herself and Safe in Our World, a mental health charity. The game also only costs $1.99, which is a low price of admission for an experience like this. So, pick up Fractured Minds. It’ll be an impactful twenty minutes that will do the world some good.