The Mind's Eclipse Reviews

The Mind’s Eclipse is a great mix of visual novel and adventure game – it’s easy enough to follow and hard to get ‘stuck’, but it’s also got depth if you want to engage with it. There’s very few difficulty checks – no reading comprehension questions or complicated puzzles – but if you want to truly understand what’s happening, you need to pay attention. Most of the story is told through the game’s artwork and emails, and it’s up to you to piece together how different people feel about the Eclipse, and what they decide to do about it. The game’s atmosphere, set by the black and white art and soundtrack/soundscapes, is pleasant and quite varied for a short game.

I had a chance to play the demo of this at ECGC 2017, and was immediately sucked into this sci-fi futurepunk story. The art style for The Mind's Eclipse is a wonderful ink shaded world that appropriately sets the tone for the world. A fantastic visual novel.

A cute choice of words? This is a tragically gritty piece of sci-fi that is worth every 59 seconds out of 60. The story is not painfully obvious, while not forcing one to dive into every single phrase and detail to get a firm grasp of it. This game is text heavy as implied, beautifully drawn, uniquely presented and apart from some technical difficulties (the Start button starts the new game and needs a whole volley of clicks to go past. And there is no "Continue" button) can quite well be a 10/10. Simply put, i love it. Ever since i laid my eyes on its demo, covered by Markiplier i wanted to get my hands on it and after these 2 years, i got to play. I won't say much, but this is a story of a man's fanatic battle versus death, with subtexts of betrayal, loss and death, overzealous devotion and sacrifice. You are Johnathan Campbell, medical prophet, who basically runs a cult that believes humans can ascend into a higher form, free of death and suffering called "The eclipse." The myriad of textbooks collected will inform you of the key players of the game and also provide interesting bits of story behind the world. I do wonder how could some low-life working Joe's device has personal messages of you and people close to you, but i'd digress. I won't talk too much as the story is 60% of what this game offers. The rest is taken by the artstyle, which although simplistic and monochromic fits the settings of a barren, dead world, with occasional gorgeous shots and emotional scenes. I'd say its simplicity does a nice job and allows many key moments to stand out from the rest. There is also a barely existent puzzle mechanic that most likely is trying not to make you feel like a ghost, simply skulking through the abandoned streets, only capable of observing and processing information. The story, again, is really well made, with some interesting ideas and a couple of very cool plot twists. In the end I love it, its worth it from the start to finish. I guess it slightly pricks at my hear that it follows the "Very last decision dictates the ending" trope. But you know what they say "Its the journey, not the destination." If you're reading this far, I hope i persuaded you to give this one a shot. Thank you Sebastian Stag Agner

This is available for free on itch.io - go and download it there! [b]The Mind's Eclipse[/b] is an atmospheric sci-fi point-and-click VN - awakening in an abandoned city, you piece together its past from fragments of emails and logs you find, making for a highly effective mystery. The striking black-and-white artwork and electronic soundtrack really help to make this VN stand out. Highly, highly recommended.

Amazing story and characters! I really enjoyed this game. On the gameplay side, it's a visual novel, so expect something simple that doesn't ask much from the player. Moving between rooms is a bit tedious, but fortunately it has almost no backtracking. Congratulations to the developers!

The Mind's Eclipse is really freakin' good. It is much, much better than I expected. So many visual novels have a bit of a dating sim feel to them, shoehorned-in romance or "clever" references to present-day pop culture and events. Not this one. There's nothing funny. Nothing cute. The Mind's Eclipse is straight-up no apologies science fiction. The singularity is here and it's a clusterfuck. You walk around a moon base trying to figure out why. The graphics are raw and uncompromising, like an indie comic book. The story... well it goes exactly where you would expect it to go, but it's told so well that it doesn't matter that this is a well-worn path. Nanotech. AI. The singularity. It hits all the classic notes you would expect from a solid cyberpunk novel. If you are even just a little bit into hard sci-fi, you owe it to yourself to get this game. Really great work.

A point'n'clicky visual novel which kept me hooked until the end. Pros: - Nice artworks - Moody soundtrack - Gloomy atmosphere - Interesting story. Nothing groundbreaking, but worth the time. - The surface of some existentialistic philosophy is touched here. Might be a bit bare bones if you're into that. - No romances, no love interests Cons: - It lost some of its pacing and claustrophobic atmosphere and felt therefore a bit dragged out in the middle part - Clicking on a hotspots a second time will trigger the initial events and dialogs, which became a chore from time to time. Don't click on a hotspot twice if you don't want to go through everything again.

What a shame that at the time of this review, the game is no longer available for sale on Steam. Looks like you can buy it on itch though, so please do so there. This is one of my favorite walking sims/visual novels of the past few years. Super well-written and interesting sci-fi story and characters. Multiple times while reading an email/text log/dialogue, I actually had to stop and ponder my own thoughts on the subject. Not many games ever compel me to do that.

Try the demo, and the full game has the same look, sound, and mechanics. So, I really liked this game. I played it through in one sitting. It straddles the line between point and click (which I like) and a visual novel (which I don't), but I enjoyed reading all the very interesting text here. It gave me the same feeling as the cyberpunk that I saw in the late 80s, from rpgs, paperback novels, system shock logs, and obscure animes. This game has a compelling ambient soundtrack that pulls you into the stark, black and white scenes. What I really liked about the game was that clicking on objects was an opportunity to explore the scene further. There was no pixel-hunting or insane object combination puzzles in The Mind's Eclipse. There were no puzzles to solve. You could choose to advance without examining everything, but why skip the story? I am planning on playing the game again, just because the narriative details are so interesting and deep, that they can only be fully understood after learning the whole story. Bottom line: great story, black and white visuals, good music (and MP3s files) although no voice acting, functioning on ubuntu linux, and yeah try the demo.

8.5/10! Oh man! What a pleasant surprise! This VN is mad good!! Its beginnings aren’t terribly original—you awake in a decrepit hospital with no memories and with only an AI to help guide you out before the hospital loses oxygen. Everyone else you meet is dead. Everything is crumbling. Why? Where the game goes after that is interesting, and tackles questions I see a decent amount in sci-fi about life without death in interesting ways. The writing is tight and punchy, and the rate at which information is revealed is the right one, with the right rhythm and pacing. Smaller substories end up feeding into the larger one in exactly the right way. Your AI companion, L, provides the perfect compliment to the dark tone by being a breath of fresh air, sharp and irreverent but never annoying. This is one step shy of a point and click adventure game, and it’s rewarding navigating the world and exploring the map to find more information in the world and in messages you find. I loved the art style, and found that even though its loose, everything was easy to make out and navigate. The CGs in particular are great—there are several dozen of them, more than I’ve ever seen in a VN before, and they’re incredibly evocative. Major major kudos to the two women who made up the main art team! I started and finished this in one day because I really wanted to find out what will come next, what will come after that, what else will I explore, and that’s a great feeling.