State of Mind

State of Mind is a story-driven point-and-click-style adventure set in a near-future Berlin where surveillance is total, bodies are failing, and a digital world called City 5 promises something better. You play primarily as Richard Nolan, a journalist piecing together a conspiracy that connects his fractured family life to a much larger transhumanist agenda. The premise is genuinely interesting, pulling from the same philosophical well as films like Ghost in the Shell and novels like Neuromancer without ever quite reaching their heights. What Daedalic got right is the atmosphere. The low-poly character models, deliberately angular and a little uncanny, give the world a stylized coldness that actually suits the subject matter. Walking through Richard's cramped apartment or the sterile corridors of a tech corporation feels intentional, not like a budget shortcut. The soundtrack reinforces all of this, ambient electronic textures that sit just at the edge of unsettling. I kept the volume up. That is not always my habit with games that are primarily dialogue. The structure eventually splits your perspective between Richard in the physical world and a second character inside the digital realm, and the contrast between those two environments is the game at its strongest. When the writing clicks, usually in the quieter domestic scenes or the moments where characters genuinely disagree about whether uploading a mind counts as survival, the game earns real emotional weight. These are not easy questions and State of Mind does not always take the easy answer. Where it stumbles is in pacing and polish. The first couple of hours ask a lot of patience before the story gains momentum. Dialogue can tip from contemplative into meandering, and some puzzle logic feels arbitrary rather than organic to the world. The voice acting quality is inconsistent, which in a game this dependent on character relationships is a real drag. The 78 percent Steam score and mixed label are honest reflections of an uneven experience rather than a dismissal of everything the game attempts. For players who come to games for story and ideas over mechanics, and who are willing to sit with a slow opener in exchange for a third act that genuinely tries to say something about identity and what we owe the people we love, State of Mind has enough going for it to be worth the time. It is roughly seven to eight hours, and it knows when to end, which I respect more than I probably should. Not every concept it introduces lands, but the ones that do linger.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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