It has rough edges, but it’s really memorable
The first-person psychological horror adventure game In Sound Mind is free this week on the Epic Games Store, and it’s an easy “Yeah, you should check this out” recommendation. You might not end up finishing it, but you should try it, at least. It’s pretty ambitious.
If you’re someone who likes digging around for clues and solving puzzles in fairly open-ended environments that are “big, but not too big,” you’ll probably dig In Sound Mind.
Things start out spooky enough in an eerie apartment building, and from there, you’ll explore twisted dreamscapes, from a lighthouse with a searing gaze to a grocery store with a roaming ghost. Each area is a self-contained zone with its own backstory, though everything fits together in the end. It’s kind of creepy, strange, and cheesy all at once. While there are flaws and nitpicks to bring up — and I also ran into technical issues in my review of the PS5 version — there’s no denying In Sound Mind‘s creativity.
At a certain point, the game stopped being scary for me… but you know, I didn’t actually mind. It still kept my attention, thanks in large part to its sense of exploration and atmosphere. It’s not a short game, either — it can easily take ten hours to finish.
This is all to say that if you’re remotely interested, play In Sound Mind for free on PC. Or, knowing our habits, at least redeem a copy so you have it for a rainy day.
Next week’s game, Demon’s Tilt, will be an awesome freebie. It’s one of those pinball games that isn’t just a digital recreation of real-world machines — instead, it’s an all-out “occult pinball action” Video Game. We used to see a lot more of these titles (my mind immediately goes back a few decades to Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush) and they rule.