Fragments Of A Mind

Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided by the developer. Fragments Of A Mind is an intriguing action-adventure taking a journey through Cassandra's dreams as she tries to figure out reality from nightmare. Cassandra's dreams serve as an interesting world to experience, driven by the mystery of her forgotten past. Different locations are explored that provide decent amount of variety across the 9 chapters. The pacing is nicely balanced between action, puzzles and storytelling. While the mystery gives a good incentive to unravel the story, I found that the ending wasn't as emotionally impactful as it could have been. The gameplay does a good job at immersing the player with how figuring out how to get through a level is similar to how Cassandra tries to figure out her situation. Focused on evading and clever use of the skills or the environment rather than direct confrontation, the action parts are the most fun part featuring obstacles, enemies and boss fights. Logic based puzzles offer a nice break from the action. Some of them will require trial and error, but fortunately they aren't too long to become tedious. There are a decent amount of checkpoints to make dying not feel frustrating. Chapters are mostly linear, but exploration is encouraged with fragments that not only reveal the story, but make a part of the game easier. Perks that can be reset without a cost to experiment or to make chapter specific builds. And for replayablility, there are speedrunning and deathless challenges. The speedrun times don't scale with difficulty. They are balanced around the hard difficulty, so on the easy difficulty they might not feel too challenging. For achievement hunters: All the fragments are required, chapter specific achievements and chapters can be replayed. Speedrun and deathless runs that are generous since they can be done on the easy difficulty.

I have just completed the all the chapters in the game as of writing this review. In retrospect, I really love the pacing and the story in this game. While the ending makes me want wish there was more closure, I also did not find every fragment in every chapter to reveal the whole story. And I'd imagine that if you would want the full ending, you would probably have to replay some chapters as I will have to. Just a thing to keep in mind if you're not into that sort of thing. The gameplay features a mix of a few variants of puzzles, scattered story, lots of evasion, and boss battles. The puzzles are not necessarily that challenging, although I found a few of them a bit odd in comparison, most were not that big of an obstacle and instead provided a nice change of pace. Some puzzles are pretty much just reused a few times or reskinned, but it breaks up the game at just the right times. I had significant trouble with one light puzzle due to me not fully understanding how the linking worked. And another I never really solved, because I didn't understand how I was doing it wrong. It seemed quite straightforward, so I was confused, but I ended up glitching past it in the end before I figured it out. The boss battles felt particularly lacking, in my opinion, as they were very repetitive and offered not much diversity in movement or strategy within their own fights. It was rather consistent in their own personal arenas and although some didn't have as much health to get to the point of tediosity, some of the later bosses' lack of evolution became apparent due to their longer lasting lifespans. I'd still say most of the bosses are quite fun despite this and only one really seemed more of a nuisance rather than a boss. Magic in this game is fun, it just is. It's very simplistic, but it works. As a person who enjoys magic in games, I may be a little biased, but it is great. Using them to avoid enemy attacks and dashing is simply quite gratifying. Some perks directly influence cooldown speeds and such to amplify your strengths which I don't think is all necessary, as I did enjoy the challenge of managing cooldowns given multiple enemies. That's just a personal preference though. There's a perks system that allows you to gain more abilities as you play through the game which I feel is a nice addition and provokes more of a reason to explore for those not as interested in the lore of the game. Although if you're not, I'm not sure this is your game, but I digress. Some of the perks seem rather useless and some are, inversely, majorly helpful even if they're on the same tier. You can, however, reset your perks at no cost if you find one distasteful in practice at the beginning of any chapter; and this is a very nice touch. Replayability is added through the use of challenges. I personally have not yet attempted to utilize that for replayability, but it is there for anyone concerned with play time. There isn't a huge amount of enemy types, most are very similar, but I don't find it to be a bad thing. Usually a couple are added per chapter which really makes it diverse enough. I never really found it stale even though a lot are alike. Addressing bugs and glitches, there are several. Not game breaking, with the ones I saw, but rather ways to completely bypass puzzles. I found at least 4 - 5 during my playthrough just by trying to see if I could; and I could. It never softlocked me or anything, it was just a free pass. And although I did purposefully try to see if I could glitch through walls, some were surprising easy. But like I said, none really broke the game in anyway of those I found. At most, I maybe fell through the ground and got reset to my last checkpoint. To close, I want to address the story a tad more. I do think it's interesting so far, as I said I didn't get every memory fragment as of now, but I did finish all the chapters. I do feel as though the ending is a bit lackluster in terms of impact. Obviously there's a final boss, no spoilers, but it's just kind of there. Like suddenly it exists and I felt what it was could have been more developed. The idea was continuous, but the manifestation was sudden and a little random. I just thought maybe it could have had more of a personality or notable traits. It barely had dialogue or spoken words to really define itself. It does serve the purpose of feeling like an ending to the story, I just wish it had more of a punch. Maybe it would be if I got all the fragments, but I can't say at this point. Other than that, I really enjoyed the story, even though some of the dialogue seemed a little unnatural. The art style is great, the music fits, none of the music was particularly memorable for me, but it served its purpose. Overall, thoroughly enjoyed this game, will probably go back to get the fragments at some point; and I do indeed recommend this game to anyone interested.

The story is intriguing and the puzzles are cool. Game is a bit difficult at times on normal but it's nothing to worry about if you like a bit of a challenge. Definitely recommended for the atmosphere and great level design!

An absolute gem of a game, as some one who hasn't played games with puzzles since Portal it's refreshing, the difficulty of the game feels perfect (currently playing through on normal, will go back and play through on Hard later) Beautiful music and a story that keeps you wanting to play just to find out what is going on. I've only managed to squeeze in a few hours so far, but as I play more I will update this review.

Its pretty good. It's simplistic and doesn't have any elements that annoyed me. The controls for xbox controller are good. I didn't notice any bugs. I had fun with the game and found myself aiming for 100% completion after completing the game the first time round. I am very confident I will replay it again fully. I suggest giving the demo a shot and then deciding whether or not to buy it based on that. Bear in mind your character gains more abilities in later levels and cooler situations occur then also, each level is very distinct and you never feel like you're replaying what you did earlier. Play the demo, decide from there. I recommend it. Peace!

Overall very enjoyable game with interesting story and catchy gameplay. Gradually introduces spells/mechanics in the beginning so it is not overwhelming, but it can become very challenging on hard difficulty. The difficulties are tuned very well. Never played a similar game, but I like the concept a lot. I wish the game was a bit longer and introduced more types of spells, enemies and puzzles. The things that could be improved are occasional bugs (enemies spawning after you die and chasing you to your new respawn point) and adding running animation for dogs (breaks my immersion!) :D and lastly, graveyard level on hard is a bit insane...but it has the "souls-like" tag, so I shouldn't complain. Great game, 9/10

I'm not the best at these types of games where you must use quick reflexes and make quick decisions in order to avoid constant traps and obstacles. However, I was enjoying this game quite a bit. That is until I reached Chapter 8 (Graveyard) towards the end. There are difficulty settings in this game but "easy" is not actually easy at all. In fact, playing on easy difficulty can be downright frustrating. I made it through every trap, obstacle, and puzzle until it was time to break the curse of the witch in Chapter 8. I literally must have attempted this endeavor a hundred times over the course over a couple of days. Either I'm that bad or the difficulty of this game is unbalanced. The developer recently added a god mode cheat option to the game by pressing F4. So I finally got past this level. However, I ran into more difficulty in the final levels where some star looking attacks chase you around while rock crushing giants are smashing you from all sides. I was forced to use the god mode cheat again to get past all this, but using god mode kinda makes playing the game pointless. There are also some highly annoying mirror puzzles towards the end and a Nightmare final boss that takes no damage from attacks. So I had no idea how to defeat it. I was ready to give up playing by that point anyway. I also experienced constant frame rate drops in these final levels while so much was happening on screen and when approaching some save points. There are also no graphic options except bloom and depth of field. So nothing can be done to eliminate the frame rate drops. I also found the dialogue with no voice acting and story fairly uninteresting so I was constantly skipping through it. Overall, I finally determined that this game is just not for me. I would say that unless you are incredibly good at games like this, I would keep in mind that it can get really frustrating.

This game has a lot going for it. The story is intriguing from the very beggining. The gameplay is interesting with variety in abilities and level design doesn't get repetitive and I love discovering secrets in them. I'm still in early game, and I wonder how it'll end up :)

Might have been a fun, casual little romp, but only if they could have gotten rid of the "gotta step on this and then go to this specific place within a second or else you die and have to to back to the most recent checkpoint" stuff. Giving it a begrudging thumbs up, because maybe others might enjoy that sort of thing, but this one's not for me...

This adventure game is not only impressive in terms of graphics and storyline, but it's also incredibly fun to play! From exploring exotic locations to solving mind-boggling puzzles, every aspect of this game kept me entertained and engaged. The game strikes a great balance between being challenging enough to keep you on your toes, but not so difficult that it becomes frustrating. And let's not forget about the sheer joy of uncovering hidden treasures I found the music to be particularly effective in helping me focus on the game and get lost in its world. Whether I was exploring an ancient something or fighting monsters, the music always added an extra layer of depth to the experience. Overall, this adventure game is a great choice for anyone looking for a mix of adventure, puzzles, fighting monsters and RPG elements. With its engaging gameplay, it's definitely one of the more immersive and enjoyable games out there. I'd give it a solid 8/10!"